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they are professional real-estate investors. your analogy is like saying invetment bankers and vc's need protection from their clients or entreprenuers. while t

by 001sky 14y ago

they are professional real-estate investors. your analogy is like saying invetment bankers and vc's need protection from their clients or entreprenuers. while they do need (and are entitled to) equal protection to support bilateral contract, its not clear they need protection laws in the sense of "consumer protection"==which is protection given in the public interest to allow 'naive' parties to trust 'sophisticated' professionals.

tptacek 14y ago
That's an embarrassingly reductionist viewpoint; it's hard to think of a profession that can't be considered a professional investor of some form or another. What's embarrassing about it is that you obviously don't grok the difference between investors and speculators. An investor is someone who spends time and money on something in the hopes that its growth or development or even upkeep will eventually provide a return. This is almost always a good thing. A speculator --- like an investment banker or VC --- leverages capital to place bets, and any good that comes from those bets is an unintended consequence. You will have a very hard time reasoning about most of western civilization if you start from a point that equates all investment with speculation.
- 001sky 14y ago
  I think you are clearly mis-reading what I am saying. Laws apply (thanks to the constitution) to all people individually, equally. That being said, there are levels of abstractions about why laws exists (ie, public policy rationales). Most rules are not written to tilt outcomes toward the more sophisticated, specialized market participants (although undoubtidly some are in practice if not theory). On the contrary: If information assymetry exists, they exist more often to obviate it (ie, the general securities laws). None of this has to do with what you seem fixated on (grok the difference between investors and speculators).

by 001sky 14y ago

tptacek 14y ago

That's an embarrassingly reductionist viewpoint; it's hard to think of a profession that can't be considered a professional investor of some form or another. What's embarrassing about it is that you obviously don't grok the difference between investors and speculators. An investor is someone who spends time and money on something in the hopes that its growth or development or even upkeep will eventually provide a return. This is almost always a good thing. A speculator --- like an investment banker or VC --- leverages capital to place bets, and any good that comes from those bets is an unintended consequence. You will have a very hard time reasoning about most of western civilization if you start from a point that equates all investment with speculation.

001sky 14y ago
I think you are clearly mis-reading what I am saying. Laws apply (thanks to the constitution) to all people individually, equally. That being said, there are levels of abstractions about why laws exists (ie, public policy rationales). Most rules are not written to tilt outcomes toward the more sophisticated, specialized market participants (although undoubtidly some are in practice if not theory). On the contrary: If information assymetry exists, they exist more often to obviate it (ie, the general securities laws). None of this has to do with what you seem fixated on (grok the difference between investors and speculators).