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Financial porn or not, the article still offers an interesting look at how a company or a group of people could be structured and how a "value driven approach"

by rluhar 15y ago

Financial porn or not, the article still offers an interesting look at how a company or a group of people could be structured and how a "value driven approach" may (or may not) beget success. The debate on the social "value" of hedge funds and the like is a horse that has been flogged so hard, one doesn't know if it is dead or a sofa. My take is that speculation and trading have been a part of society since we stopped being hunter gatherers and started living in settlements. The difference is that now, a single speculator, given enough technical and financial means (read - leverage) has the ability to truly disrupt the global market, not just the local village market. So, please, lets not talk about social value - that is irrelevant. In a capitalist system, if there is profit to be made, people will bend whatever rules there are to make that profit. Let us focus instead on the rules and the framework within which hedge funds operate and see what can or cannot be done. But that is way off topic. Apologies.

mkramlich 15y ago
But they are approaching it from the standpoint of rules and a framework. The rules are called ethics and the framework is society. Laws and government regulations are a different set of rules, and much newer and more transient. What should be guiding all of us, I hope -- regardless of the current state of legal rules & regulations -- is whether something is ethical and what the impact is on society. By some standards, what hedge funds are doing is unethical or parasitic, and may in fact be a chaotic force which on the net creates more hardship than benefit to most of society. Thus, the details of whether they are currently legal or not is not important, in comparison. We can change laws to better reflect our ethics and what we think is best for society. So talking about social value is precisely and massively relevant: it's one of the main reasons we have laws. And it's quite possible that hedge funds are exploiting a temporary state of affairs where technology and the legal context allow them to do certain activities, and they'll continue to exploit until and unless we make changes to their environment.

by rluhar 15y ago

mkramlich 15y ago

But they are approaching it from the standpoint of rules and a framework. The rules are called ethics and the framework is society. Laws and government regulations are a different set of rules, and much newer and more transient. What should be guiding all of us, I hope -- regardless of the current state of legal rules & regulations -- is whether something is ethical and what the impact is on society. By some standards, what hedge funds are doing is unethical or parasitic, and may in fact be a chaotic force which on the net creates more hardship than benefit to most of society. Thus, the details of whether they are currently legal or not is not important, in comparison. We can change laws to better reflect our ethics and what we think is best for society. So talking about social value is precisely and massively relevant: it's one of the main reasons we have laws. And it's quite possible that hedge funds are exploiting a temporary state of affairs where technology and the legal context allow them to do certain activities, and they'll continue to exploit until and unless we make changes to their environment.