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In an ideal world, people are free to buy and sell what they want. You feel patronizing to the people who need to be "regulated", but I feel that people should
by cft 8y ago
In an ideal world, people are free to buy and sell what they want. You feel patronizing to the people who need to be "regulated", but I feel that people should have their own agency.
- donedealomg 8y agoLike hardcore drugs and guns?
- jeromegv 8y agoSure, because that never ended badly before.
- chasing 8y agoIn an ideal world everyone would be perfectly informed, no one would ever runs scams, all food and medicine would always be safe no matter what, and cars and weapons would only affect the people who purchased them.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoNo one ever argued that in a free society, no one would get scammed. The argument is that freedom is worth its inconveniences.
- cft 8y agoHN thinks it doesn't.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoDo you even know why there's this concept of "accredited investor"? It IS patronizing, yes, but history has proven that if you don't, lots of people will lose their pants.
- cft 8y agoProofs exist only in mathematics, but not in history
- gamegoblin 8y agoSociety is fine with regulating a particular group of people: children. It seems that for your idea to hold water, you have to accept one of the following premises: 1. Children should be permitted complete agency, free to do anything they wish. 2. There is some arbitrary threshold a child must meet in order to be given agency (in most western countries this threshold is reaching age 18). Option 1 is at least philosophically self-consistent, but seems absurd to me. Option 2 admits that there does exist a group of people who should be patronized and have regulated agency, and that it's simply a matter of debate what the threshold is. If that is the case, OP is simply arguing that people should have regulated agency with regard to crypto speculation, which is consistent with Option 2.
- solveit 8y agoYes, but notice how the threshold of reaching legal adulthood is that something everyone is guaranteed to eventually meet (barring early death). Restricting rights is a lot less* problematic if it's guaranteed to be temporary and applies to literally everyone. But any reasonable restriction on speculation will apply to a subset of the population, most of whom will never escape the restriction. At the same time, there will be a class of people making bank on speculative investments that normies aren't allowed to invest in. Notice how this is actually how the world works outside of the crypto space. I don't think it's unreasonable to hate this state of affairs. *I have many issues with the way the agency of minors is treated, but this is not the place.
- gamegoblin 8y agoI largely agree with you that it is an important and significant distinction, but indulge a little thought experiment in which I try to show that even age-based thresholds can result in undesirable outcomes. What if the age of agency were age 100? Only about 1 in 10000 Americans makes it to that age. So in this world, only the very-long-lived might have access to lucrative investment opportunities. Wealth would accumulate in families with a genetic predisposition for longevity (which is itself correlated with wealth! a positive feedback loop). This seems undesirable to me. One might say "well sure, but 99.9% of people live to 18, so that is a much more reasonable number" (and I obviously agree). But then why not 16? More people live to 16 than 18, tautologically. Why not 10? Because there is threshold of "mature enough" that we, as a society, decide on, and this threshold is completely arbitrary.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoYou're basically saying people should be free to lose money, though; there's no real upside. Put another way: if someone can consistently make money on speculation, why don't they have enough to be an accredited investor? It's not like there's a dearth of less regulated investment opportunities.
- cft 8y agoBecause there's no way to get started for most ordinary people.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThat's not true. You don't need any special status to invest in the stock market or to buy art or real estate, for example.