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Because anything run by politicians and involving large amounts of money is doomed to corruption. Bankers might be pricks, politicians are crooks and thieves.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Well-regulated bankers are usually not crooks and thieves. But politicians write the regulations. If they're regulating themselves... the darker sides of human nature inevitably show up.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  "Regulating themselves" is a misnomer and rarely happens in government. Judges are regulated because they can't bring forth cases. Only a prosecutor can. The prosecutor is regulated because they can't make a decision, only the Jury can (and the Judge handles meta-decisions). The Police cannot execute you, they can only had evidence over to the prosecutor. "Government" is about designing a system of different people, doing different jobs, doing different checks and balances against each other. Anyone who thinks "Oh, X just will self-regulate" is looking at the worst of strawmen. --------- That being said, in many cases we don't know what kind of system should exist to move forward. In these cases, having the free market self-regulate while we figure out issues is probably better. Later on, we can write laws that benefit everyone once we understand what the heck is going on. ------------- I don't think our banking system is doing much wrong. Yeah, I'd prefer if SVB didn't take a bunch of people's money, but the shareholders (and maybe even the bondholders) are going to be wiped out by this debacle. FDIC taking over in the case when things get bad did work, I just personally disagree with what the FDIC did.
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    > Police cannot execute you... In theory
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    At least in the US politicians surely “regulate” themselves. They pass laws setting their benefits, pay schedules, etc. They can even exempt themselves from laws (insider trading cough).
  - racketcon2089 4y ago
    > "Government" is about designing a system of different people, doing different jobs, doing different checks and balances against each other. This definition of government from an 8th grade civics textbook is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, since all the evidence we have from the historical records shows that states are captured by economic elites to the point of stagnation until that economic elite is violently displaced or is forced to reform due to external threats. > That being said, in many cases we don't know what kind of system should exist to move forward. In these cases, having the free market self-regulate while we figure out issues is probably better. This also runs against the historical record and requires extraordinary evidence or at least some walkthrough of how you reached the conclusion that self-regulation was probably better, or even possible. Ie, without postulating a utopian society made up of some kind of post-human who is more moral and more intelligent than all hitherto existing humans, it's unclear why anyone would expect the wealthiest and most influential to refrain from engaging in both the expansion and the capture of state power for their own self-interest. Such a species would have to be engineered and universal because there's no way you could get such traits through natural selection nor can you find them in the cognitive architecture or evolutionary history of primates.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      Because under a fully deregulated scheme, corporations will raise a private Navy + private Army and then conquer India... effectively becoming a government on their own. Governments, in general, are constantly "less bad" schemes compared to their predecessors. The Roman Republic is pretty bad by today's standards, but it was far superior to other forms of government in the timeframe it existed in. The discussion of "Government" is innately about "Good Government", not bad ones. A good government will split responsibilities in a way that proves to everybody that its trustworthy. That's the lesson on modern civics (ie: anything from the Magna Carta or more recent). ----------- In any case, I'm not convinced that the fully privatized scheme discussed in this blogpost is to anyone's benefit. The current scheme of free-market banks that collapse on their own (and then the US Government stepping in afterwards) has numerous benefits in practice.
      - 4y ago
aaroninsf 4y ago
I would say rather, humans who feel unconstrained because they are insulated from view, cupability, and consequence by virtue of their institutional agency-laundering, will matter of factly engage in almost any kind of awful behavior, especially bloodless ones, exactly so long as they are able to allay cognitive dissonance, which is very completely done when it's not them, it's <institution> or <role> or <rule>. The difference in taxonomy of standard evils executed by bankers, C-suite types, the very rich, religious authorities, and politicians, vary primarily as a function of the opportunities afforded by each role and the risk-reward surface it affords. Those who thrive in (and most effectively exploit without cognitive dissonance) a given institution in turn underpins the attractor and filter functions for those roles. Cops priests politicians entrepreneurs—they all have their well-known shadow-side stereotypes, for the damn good reason that those stereotypes are rooted in the recurring abuse each invites. Humans, anonymized and/or elevated, deeply suck to at least one standard deviation. Or perhaps you can say, there is no shortage of humans who suck, exactly enough as needed to fully exploit the available amoral crime space; and recruit for it, teasing out and amplifying what might otherwise have been latent. That our society (or I would say, species) has not figured out how to corral this behavior bodes ill.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

Well-regulated bankers are usually not crooks and thieves. But politicians write the regulations. If they're regulating themselves... the darker sides of human nature inevitably show up.

dragontamer 4y ago
"Regulating themselves" is a misnomer and rarely happens in government. Judges are regulated because they can't bring forth cases. Only a prosecutor can. The prosecutor is regulated because they can't make a decision, only the Jury can (and the Judge handles meta-decisions). The Police cannot execute you, they can only had evidence over to the prosecutor. "Government" is about designing a system of different people, doing different jobs, doing different checks and balances against each other. Anyone who thinks "Oh, X just will self-regulate" is looking at the worst of strawmen. --------- That being said, in many cases we don't know what kind of system should exist to move forward. In these cases, having the free market self-regulate while we figure out issues is probably better. Later on, we can write laws that benefit everyone once we understand what the heck is going on. ------------- I don't think our banking system is doing much wrong. Yeah, I'd prefer if SVB didn't take a bunch of people's money, but the shareholders (and maybe even the bondholders) are going to be wiped out by this debacle. FDIC taking over in the case when things get bad did work, I just personally disagree with what the FDIC did.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  > Police cannot execute you... In theory
- withinboredom 4y ago
  At least in the US politicians surely “regulate” themselves. They pass laws setting their benefits, pay schedules, etc. They can even exempt themselves from laws (insider trading cough).
- racketcon2089 4y ago
  > "Government" is about designing a system of different people, doing different jobs, doing different checks and balances against each other. This definition of government from an 8th grade civics textbook is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, since all the evidence we have from the historical records shows that states are captured by economic elites to the point of stagnation until that economic elite is violently displaced or is forced to reform due to external threats. > That being said, in many cases we don't know what kind of system should exist to move forward. In these cases, having the free market self-regulate while we figure out issues is probably better. This also runs against the historical record and requires extraordinary evidence or at least some walkthrough of how you reached the conclusion that self-regulation was probably better, or even possible. Ie, without postulating a utopian society made up of some kind of post-human who is more moral and more intelligent than all hitherto existing humans, it's unclear why anyone would expect the wealthiest and most influential to refrain from engaging in both the expansion and the capture of state power for their own self-interest. Such a species would have to be engineered and universal because there's no way you could get such traits through natural selection nor can you find them in the cognitive architecture or evolutionary history of primates.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Because under a fully deregulated scheme, corporations will raise a private Navy + private Army and then conquer India... effectively becoming a government on their own. Governments, in general, are constantly "less bad" schemes compared to their predecessors. The Roman Republic is pretty bad by today's standards, but it was far superior to other forms of government in the timeframe it existed in. The discussion of "Government" is innately about "Good Government", not bad ones. A good government will split responsibilities in a way that proves to everybody that its trustworthy. That's the lesson on modern civics (ie: anything from the Magna Carta or more recent). ----------- In any case, I'm not convinced that the fully privatized scheme discussed in this blogpost is to anyone's benefit. The current scheme of free-market banks that collapse on their own (and then the US Government stepping in afterwards) has numerous benefits in practice.
    - 4y ago

aaroninsf 4y ago

I would say rather, humans who feel unconstrained because they are insulated from view, cupability, and consequence by virtue of their institutional agency-laundering, will matter of factly engage in almost any kind of awful behavior, especially bloodless ones, exactly so long as they are able to allay cognitive dissonance, which is very completely done when it's not them, it's <institution> or <role> or <rule>. The difference in taxonomy of standard evils executed by bankers, C-suite types, the very rich, religious authorities, and politicians, vary primarily as a function of the opportunities afforded by each role and the risk-reward surface it affords. Those who thrive in (and most effectively exploit without cognitive dissonance) a given institution in turn underpins the attractor and filter functions for those roles. Cops priests politicians entrepreneurs—they all have their well-known shadow-side stereotypes, for the damn good reason that those stereotypes are rooted in the recurring abuse each invites. Humans, anonymized and/or elevated, deeply suck to at least one standard deviation. Or perhaps you can say, there is no shortage of humans who suck, exactly enough as needed to fully exploit the available amoral crime space; and recruit for it, teasing out and amplifying what might otherwise have been latent. That our society (or I would say, species) has not figured out how to corral this behavior bodes ill.