Ha, I would say all, the actions just weren’t initially considered criminal until they were. There is almost nothing that the Dutch East India company did that

Ha, I would say all, the actions just weren’t initially considered criminal until they were. There is almost nothing that the Dutch East India company did that we would call “above board” now. Criminal negligence, collusion, foreign corrupt practices, domestic corruption, pillaging, slave trading, shady accounting, and god forbid if those securities were registered or not. More relatable, the book Flash Boys goes into the history of Wall Street regulations going back to the 1850s and finds something similar, every regulation is some kind of reaction to a novel way that some form of brokers are trading ahead of their clients. “Finance” only very recently was a respectable or attractive entity, sure everyone knew there was a money shuffling place that resulted in potentially having a lot of money for yourself, but there was nothing inclusive about it nor did this really bother anyone because this wasnt the aspiration either (and because nothing was inclusive, many other issues to be honest). Just a small club with no national/federal oversight. Rife with scams. 1920s wall street isnt so different than the entire crypto space today. A stoic onlooker would say “why bother its all a scam” an insider would say “there are a lot of scams but there are ways to distinguish” and a person hungry for opportunity would look at them both, chuckle at how they talk past each other, and buy a random asset on margin because distinguishing didn't really matter. Their opportunities either improved or it didnt.