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Once government claims and exercises powers, be they legitimate or not, it's pretty much impossible to get government to scale back. History is a good guide as
by ferdo 13y ago
Once government claims and exercises powers, be they legitimate or not, it's pretty much impossible to get government to scale back. History is a good guide as to the eventual fate of governments and nations that allow arbritary power to expand without limits.
Generation to generation, the natural tendency of a relative minority is to seek and maintain influence over the many. This is reflected in the continued advance of the power of the State over the rights and liberties of its citizens. Unlike our own political vocabulary, The Greeks had terms for this particular dynamic: hoi polloi and hoi oligoi.
> You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case
My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left.
- mpyne 13y ago> My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left. Perhaps. But in this case you're not speaking of any actual 'right' that people had in the first place, so there's no right that would be eroded by SEC action here.
- ferdo 13y agoTo be honest, I find it hard to take your opinion seriously after you equated your choices for lunch with the exercise of government power.
- mpyne 13y agoWhy? dragonwriter managed to immediately pick up on what I meant. Would my opinion have been more plausible if I used 13-letter words and quoted Steinbeck instead?
- dragonwriter 13y agoIf that "larger argument" is your point, how does it relate to the present issue specifically? How is he ruling here -- that bitcoin is "money" as that term is relevant to the Exchange Act of 1934 and thus sales of investments for bitcoins are subject to the Act, an "assertion of power" that erodes rights?