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Can I blame them? Yes, the same way that I can blame a thief for stealing a car even though society "gave him an incentive to steal it." One of these is an ong

Can I blame them? Yes, the same way that I can blame a thief for stealing a car even though society "gave him an incentive to steal it." One of these is an ongoing source of considerable societal damage. The other is illegal.

cjbillington 9y ago
Making something illegal does create incentives against it, and if stealing cars weren't illegal I'm sure we'd see much more of it.
- drb91 9y ago
  Generally stealing cars is clear-cut and easy to prosecute. The opposite is true for insider trading. As a result, things that look an awful lot like insider trading occur all the time without any interest from the SEC. I'm not very equipped to judge legally what is or is not a crime, but it does seem like there's a lot of leeway for people in control of public companies to effectively take money from their investors.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Yes but it's important that the "crime" of "insider trading" exist so that investors might imagine that executive aren't doing that every single day. Also it's important that the crime is totally discretionary so that prosecutors can punish every single non-executive who somehow gets wind of non-public information while never bothering executives who donate to the right PACs.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  It's kind of a fascinating thought experiment, to imagine our society changed in just that one way... lots of cars would have better security, anyway. Also one suspects there would be less demand for public parking, which would probably improve urban life.
- new_acct_ 9y ago
  Would we? We already know that harsher sentences doesn't necessarily translate into a better deterrent, and we know that when something becomes legal it doesn't mean increased activity. Most laws are just enforcing social norms
EggsOnToast 9y ago
This might just be a whoosh moment for me, but what's the actual societal damage here? My takeaway from the article was that CEOs try to optimize their personal payouts but there was little that seemed to imply this is a serious problem versus an interesting but already accounted for part of how these companies operate.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  It's stealing from investors and employees. Investors in an abstract, probabilistic way and employees in a very concrete, immediate, and dramatic way. "Interesting but already accounted for" doesn't make it right in the same way that an insurance policy covering auto theft doesn't make auto theft right.

cjbillington 9y ago

Making something illegal does create incentives against it, and if stealing cars weren't illegal I'm sure we'd see much more of it.

drb91 9y ago
Generally stealing cars is clear-cut and easy to prosecute. The opposite is true for insider trading. As a result, things that look an awful lot like insider trading occur all the time without any interest from the SEC. I'm not very equipped to judge legally what is or is not a crime, but it does seem like there's a lot of leeway for people in control of public companies to effectively take money from their investors.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Yes but it's important that the "crime" of "insider trading" exist so that investors might imagine that executive aren't doing that every single day. Also it's important that the crime is totally discretionary so that prosecutors can punish every single non-executive who somehow gets wind of non-public information while never bothering executives who donate to the right PACs.
jessaustin 9y ago
It's kind of a fascinating thought experiment, to imagine our society changed in just that one way... lots of cars would have better security, anyway. Also one suspects there would be less demand for public parking, which would probably improve urban life.
new_acct_ 9y ago
Would we? We already know that harsher sentences doesn't necessarily translate into a better deterrent, and we know that when something becomes legal it doesn't mean increased activity. Most laws are just enforcing social norms

EggsOnToast 9y ago

This might just be a whoosh moment for me, but what's the actual societal damage here? My takeaway from the article was that CEOs try to optimize their personal payouts but there was little that seemed to imply this is a serious problem versus an interesting but already accounted for part of how these companies operate.

jjoonathan 9y ago
It's stealing from investors and employees. Investors in an abstract, probabilistic way and employees in a very concrete, immediate, and dramatic way. "Interesting but already accounted for" doesn't make it right in the same way that an insurance policy covering auto theft doesn't make auto theft right.