Many opine that Musk deserves punishment at the hand of the SEC. I disagree, profoundly. His post appears to have been ill-considered, may have been wishful thi

Many opine that Musk deserves punishment at the hand of the SEC. I disagree, profoundly. His post appears to have been ill-considered, may have been wishful thinking, was possibly driven by spite, and/or even written under the influence of drugs. So what? the government has no constitutional power to threaten or punish people for what they say nor for what they think apart from what they say, except for a few extremely limited instances such as a direct threat of force or libel. The SEC embodies the modern drift of the administrative state at its worst; its many regulations are not laws passed by Congress, which is the only branch empowered to write legislation. One of the most famous and often used SEC rules is Rule 10b-5, which "prohibits fraud in securities transactions as well as insider trading." Fraud is a form of crime, but trading on one's knowledge involves neither force nor fraud and is simply a manifestation of our basic rights to talk and trade, regardless of what others may or may not know. The proper rule of markets since Roman time is "Caveat Emptor"; don't rely on nor seek to control or punish the morass of conversations at the local inn or at Twitter. Many thoughtful economists and political philosophers suggest that by and large all of the federal securities laws (originated as part of the New Deal in the 1930s) should be abolished. It may be worth considering, when one small online comment becomes fodder for public calls to have the government severely punish a CEO.