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The US Constitution grants us the legal right to pursue happiness, and for some, that was consuming and/or making a living brewing alcohol. Elliot Ness and his

by javert 12y ago

The US Constitution grants us the legal right to pursue happiness, and for some, that was consuming and/or making a living brewing alcohol. Elliot Ness and his goons were a bunch of arrogant asshats who wanted to trample on that. They go down in the historical category of bad people who get off by forcibly inflicting their immoral, mistaken ideology on others. Comparing this persent witch hunt to that one is, ironically, very appropriate, I think.

harryh 12y ago
For the record, the US Constitution says absolutely nothing about a legal right to pursue happiness.
- javert 12y ago
  Yes. That was a stupid and embarassing mistake on my part. It's the Declaration of Independence. Anyway, doesn't change my point in the slightest.
pyre 12y ago
I'm confused. Al Capone wasn't a freedom fighter that was looking out for your freedoms during the time of an unjust law. He was a gangster that capitalized an opportunity created by poorly thought out government policies. Just because the government created the situation that made him rich, doesn't mean he gets some sort of 'free pass' on being a kingpin that killed people. Do you feel that Al Capone would have just been an honest businessman if only Prohibition didn't exist? If people inside financial institutions are, as common practice / policy, picking the winners/losers and hiding conflicts of interest, do you think that going after such people is a 'witch hunt?' Do you feel that when regulators meet with the people that they are regulating that they should have a "he looks honest, I'll just trust whatever he says" attitude?
- javert 12y ago
  The point about Al Capone is irrelevant. What is relevant is all the honest businessmen that Prohibition violated. Yes, I think it's a witch hunt. And any system with regulators "embedded" is a sick one. The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate. Of course at this point, that's like saying the proper thing for the Soviet Union to do when it fell was to suddenly become capitalist. Doing the right thing here would require an (additional and probably worse) period of sickness because we've been doing the unhealthy thing for decades.
  - Aqueous 12y ago
    'The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate' - What are you kidding me? Just six years ago, a lack of enforced rules - in other words, lax regulation - and a complete lack of regulation of derivatives led to a runaway housing bubble that practically destroyed the entire economy, killed thousands of people (through suicide/inability to afford medical bills) and lost 8.2 million people their homes. You can't let something which has all of our welfares wrapped up in it hinge on the momentary greed of a few people who have every incentive to take short cuts to greater success. If this "creative destruction" is acceptable to you, then I guess we have vastly different views of acceptability. Markets are great at solving lots of problems but they have blind spots. And one of them is the welfare of the people who are systemically connected, but not directly participating in the market. Human beings are not perfectly rational, and so neither are the markets that they make up. Until humans and markets are perfectly rational, we will need regulation to prevent gratuitous human suffering. And if like most economic libertarians you're going to come back at with me with the absurd "It was too much regulation, not too little" argument (which I assume you will), we have very little to discuss.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - pyre 12y ago
      I think that @javert would have a vastly different view if it was his/her welfare that was 'creatively' destroyed... As such, @javert is probably well-removed from needing to deal with such issues, so it's easy for those people to be a statistic.
  - pyre 12y ago
    > The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate. > Of course at this point, that's like saying the proper thing for the Soviet Union to do when it fell was to suddenly become capitalist. Doing the right thing here would require an (additional and probably worse) period of sickness because we've been doing the unhealthy thing for decades. Please explain to me exactly how the financial system will self-regulate. Also explain to me how the consequences of "creative destruction" will be borne by the people that are extracting the most value (i.e. "the 1%") from said system instead of the people that are just crushed beneath it?

by javert 12y ago

harryh 12y ago

For the record, the US Constitution says absolutely nothing about a legal right to pursue happiness.

javert 12y ago
Yes. That was a stupid and embarassing mistake on my part. It's the Declaration of Independence. Anyway, doesn't change my point in the slightest.

pyre 12y ago

I'm confused. Al Capone wasn't a freedom fighter that was looking out for your freedoms during the time of an unjust law. He was a gangster that capitalized an opportunity created by poorly thought out government policies. Just because the government created the situation that made him rich, doesn't mean he gets some sort of 'free pass' on being a kingpin that killed people. Do you feel that Al Capone would have just been an honest businessman if only Prohibition didn't exist? If people inside financial institutions are, as common practice / policy, picking the winners/losers and hiding conflicts of interest, do you think that going after such people is a 'witch hunt?' Do you feel that when regulators meet with the people that they are regulating that they should have a "he looks honest, I'll just trust whatever he says" attitude?

javert 12y ago
The point about Al Capone is irrelevant. What is relevant is all the honest businessmen that Prohibition violated. Yes, I think it's a witch hunt. And any system with regulators "embedded" is a sick one. The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate. Of course at this point, that's like saying the proper thing for the Soviet Union to do when it fell was to suddenly become capitalist. Doing the right thing here would require an (additional and probably worse) period of sickness because we've been doing the unhealthy thing for decades.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  'The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate' - What are you kidding me? Just six years ago, a lack of enforced rules - in other words, lax regulation - and a complete lack of regulation of derivatives led to a runaway housing bubble that practically destroyed the entire economy, killed thousands of people (through suicide/inability to afford medical bills) and lost 8.2 million people their homes. You can't let something which has all of our welfares wrapped up in it hinge on the momentary greed of a few people who have every incentive to take short cuts to greater success. If this "creative destruction" is acceptable to you, then I guess we have vastly different views of acceptability. Markets are great at solving lots of problems but they have blind spots. And one of them is the welfare of the people who are systemically connected, but not directly participating in the market. Human beings are not perfectly rational, and so neither are the markets that they make up. Until humans and markets are perfectly rational, we will need regulation to prevent gratuitous human suffering. And if like most economic libertarians you're going to come back at with me with the absurd "It was too much regulation, not too little" argument (which I assume you will), we have very little to discuss.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - pyre 12y ago
    I think that @javert would have a vastly different view if it was his/her welfare that was 'creatively' destroyed... As such, @javert is probably well-removed from needing to deal with such issues, so it's easy for those people to be a statistic.
- pyre 12y ago
  > The proper thing to do is let the financial system self-regulate. > Of course at this point, that's like saying the proper thing for the Soviet Union to do when it fell was to suddenly become capitalist. Doing the right thing here would require an (additional and probably worse) period of sickness because we've been doing the unhealthy thing for decades. Please explain to me exactly how the financial system will self-regulate. Also explain to me how the consequences of "creative destruction" will be borne by the people that are extracting the most value (i.e. "the 1%") from said system instead of the people that are just crushed beneath it?