[HN Gopher] Pelosi defends stock trading by lawmakers. 'We are a...
___________________________________________________________________
Pelosi defends stock trading by lawmakers. 'We are a free-market
economy'
Author : tiahura
Score : 523 points
Date : 2021-12-16 14:29 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.marketwatch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.marketwatch.com)
| arbuge wrote:
| I think she should simply resign at this point.
|
| Yes, we're an free-market economy, or at least an imperfect
| approximation of that.
|
| No, that doesn't mean insider trading is ok. And since lawmakers
| are privy to information that can materially move stocks, and is
| not always generally known to the public, they should definitely
| qualify as insiders.
| mitigating wrote:
| Just her? Not every other lawmaker?
| arbuge wrote:
| Perhaps there should be others (GOP Sen Richard Burr
| particularly comes to mind after last year's incident), but
| at this point it seems to me she should be the first to go.
| She's the speaker of the house. With greater power comes
| greater responsibility, to set a good example in this case,
| rather than to reinforce bad behavior. Changes comes from the
| top, and the buck stops there.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Shouldn't be that hard to solve, IMO. Congress members should be
| required to rebalance their portfolio into index funds for the
| duration of their term. Family members should be subject to
| insider trading regulation, and the congress member considered an
| insider.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Define family member. Also, everyone in the US is already
| subject to insider trading regulations.
| maxk42 wrote:
| Not quite true.
|
| Congress has been explicitly exempted from insider trading
| regulations.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| As far as I know, this was rectified in 2012 (or at least
| made explicit, some claim Congress was never exempt).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405297020371110457719
| 9...
|
| https://www.congressionalinstitute.org/2018/08/16/can-
| member...
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is a solved problem. Employees of RIAs have the same
| trading restrictions. The SEC's adopting release[1] of the
| RIA Code of Ethics requirements gives a pretty good overview
| of how it works in the "Personal Securities Trading" section.
| Each RIA firm has their own policy implementing the rule but
| here's an example of how family is typically defined from a
| random firm's policy I found via DDG:
|
| > "Immediate Family" generally means any relative by blood or
| marriage living in the individual's household, any domestic
| partner or other minor child residing in his or her household
| and, whether or not living in the individual's household, any
| other relative with respect to whose investments the
| individual has influence or control.
|
| [1]https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ia-2256.htm#P72_13634
| mitigating wrote:
| If that's the case then I would just tell my friend insider
| information that helps him then wait for him to tell me
| info as well.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| And I can steal my neighbour's bike from the common bike
| room, both could land you in jail if it's ever
| discovered.
|
| This is not some kind lf 'goctcha, i am so smart', all
| accountants, bank employees and traders are subject to
| these industry-standard restrictions.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I was bound by this when working for a Big 4 professional
| services firm -- it was ludicrous that I had far more
| restrictions placed upon myself than congress did for just
| being an employee of a firm that did audit and attest work
| (which was not work I participated in). At a bare minimum
| we should make them follow the rules that anyone else with
| access to manipulate financial markets has to follow.
| ludamad wrote:
| Would you consider leverage restrictions? A well placed SPY
| call option can still capture plenty of inside information at a
| congress level
| danuker wrote:
| That would still favor the companies in index funds (i.e. large
| ones who could go through an IPO) as opposed to small companies
| or self-employed people.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Shouldn't be that hard to solve
|
| You've given us a proposal, but how do you implement it? Surely
| a proposal doesn't solve anything, you have to implement it to
| _actually_ solve something. So how do you implement your
| proposal?
|
| Not so easy... first you need a bill to pass. It has to be put
| to a vote by Nancy Pelosi, who said she won't support your
| solution. So you need to get rid of her: either she retires or
| loses reelection (unlikely) or you get a Republican speaker.
|
| Would a Republican speaker put your bill to a vote? Certainly
| not after Nancy Pelosi cited "free market capitalism" as a
| reason for resisting restrictions. The Republican speaker can't
| be portrayed as being to the left of Pelosi, who has been
| interchangeably labeled a "liberal communist socialist democrat
| leftist".
|
| And then there is the vote itself. Even if you get it to a
| vote, you are asking a group of people to take away a benefit
| to themselves. They are literally voting on whether to make
| themselves poorer. Is that going to be an easy vote to whip?
| Not likely.
|
| And then if it does pass, then you have enforcement issues.
| There was just an issue of Congressman Collins getting
| convicted of insider trading for giving tips to his son. He was
| caught on tape. He pleaded guilty. 2 years he was sentenced. He
| should be serving his sentence right now. Instead he is a free
| man, the beneficiary of a Presidential Pardon for his crimes.
|
| So even if you pass you pass the hurdle of the speaker; even if
| you pass the hurdle of the vote; even if you enforce the law on
| the books through the criminal justice system with courts,
| judges, evidence, and a sentence; EVEN THEN the powers that be
| will find a way to remain unconstrained by your solution. "Laws
| are for thee, not for me."
|
| So yea, we can throw out "easy solutions" all day that are
| really just proposals that will do nothing to solve this
| problem. Because this is a problem of the powerful self-
| dealing, and you don't solve that through the system they use
| to deal themselves.
| teeray wrote:
| The more general problem is: "how do you pass a law that
| benefits society but is a detriment to its elected
| representatives?" It's a meta question too, because whatever
| mechanisms we come up with would be, by extension, beneficial
| to society and detrimental to politicians.
| msandford wrote:
| My feeling is that they should be able to bring any of their
| previous positions or investment into their terms, but not exit
| or otherwise change them except into index funds.
|
| So let's say that prior to being elected someone's heavy into
| telecoms for some reason. Keep the positions! Keep them as long
| as you want. If you want to sell, go ahead. If you want to buy
| back in? Sure, but index funds only.
|
| There's still some room for abuse there but it vastly reduces
| the opportunity for abuse.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It's a solved problem in Canada. Everything goes into a Blind
| Trust.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-blin...
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Pelosi's criticisms of Trump's egregious financial abuse of power
| in the office of the President of the United State looks a lot
| more hollow now.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I don't think they look hollow, there was financial abuse. The
| media narratives made it look like he was the only one which is
| blatantly false. Both Republicans and Democrats are crooks who
| have different agendas but share the same destructive traits.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It seems so obvious.
|
| I work for a publicly traded company. I am only allowed to
| purchase stock in the company during certain windows, and IIRC,
| only in certain amounts. I can't trade or play with options
| related to the stock at any other time.
|
| When I worked for a bank (in IT, but still) there was plenty of
| training on not making trades on non-public knowledge.
|
| ---
|
| On one hand, I understand how a blanket ban on stock trading
| would seem harsh, but it seems there is no alternative given the
| feckless enforcement of existing insider trading regs in
| Congress.
|
| They should all be offered a series of mutual fund options with
| different growth/risk targets, kind of like 401k packages, and
| that be that.
|
| Pelosi saying "it's a free market" is a non sequitur. It's
| angering and embarrassing that she is so incompetent or brazenly
| dismissive of real concerns.
|
| I really hope that we get just enough "clean" politicians in the
| near future to drive popular will towards more transparency and
| regulation on the topic.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I work for a publicly traded company. I am only allowed to
| purchase stock in the company during certain windows, and IIRC,
| only in certain amounts. I can't trade or play with options
| related to the stock at any other time.
|
| I assume you are an officer at the company in question? I've
| never heard of a general restriction on employees buying stock
| in their own publicly traded company, aside from specific
| employees in certain positions.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Both Facebook and Google have these restrictions for every
| single employee.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| So this is a restriction from the company itself, then, not
| a law?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I believe the law itself is sufficiently vaguely worded
| that the companies have opted for a blanket policy to
| avoid even a hint of impropriety.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Interesting, thanks. TIL. I have never run into such a
| policy. But I've never worked for Google or FB, either.
| Interviewing with The Goog next week, however, so there's
| a 0.01% chance that could change...
| nradov wrote:
| It's ironic how Pelosi uses free markets to justify her own slimy
| trading activities, while simultaneously pushing legislation that
| would shift us more towards a socialist economy. That takes real
| chutzpah.
| throwaway879080 wrote:
| corrupt to the core
| dekhn wrote:
| Is it reasonable to request lawmakers to not trade stocks simply
| because they are in a position to affect stocks? If we do
| disallow lawmakers from trading, won't that act as a disincentive
| to some possibly good politicians who also happen to be using the
| market?
|
| Currently members already have to report their positions in
| advance so it's very unlikely any congress member is actively
| trying to manipulate the market for their own benefit (it seems
| like in that case you'd just quit congress and be a successful
| business person?)
| cwkoss wrote:
| Congress should be able to own broad indexes and trade them
| very slowly. They shouldn't be allowed to buy huge options on
| companies based on nonpublic information.
| _sword wrote:
| On the sell side, you and your spouse are heavily regulated so
| that neither can hold individual stocks, can't touch anything
| where you may possibly have material non public info, have
| mandatory holding periods, and any mutual funds or ETFs must be
| sufficiently diversified. And that's only part of the trading
| regulations and requirements. I can't even buy a Dow Jones
| tracking ETF. The fact that Pelosi and the rest of congress can
| trade ahead of their own decisions is laughably corrupt. Make
| them have the same kinds of trading requirements a 1st year
| banker has.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _On the sell side, you and your spouse are heavily regulated
| so that neither can hold individual stocks_
|
| This is not uniformly true. There are various blackouts and
| pre-clearance requirements and monitoring. But not every bank
| bans individual stock trading.
| _sword wrote:
| All of the large investment banks do at this point as far as
| I am aware. The core point I aim to make, however, is that
| it's hilariously unfair that a 22 year old PowerPoint monkey
| with relatively little knowledge and almost no market
| influence has infinitely more conflict of interest oversight
| than members of congress.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _infinitely more conflict of interest oversight than
| members of congress_
|
| Last I checked, their every trade isn't made public in an
| online database.
| sabhiram wrote:
| The issue here is the futile attempt to tease apart power and
| money.
|
| Those with power, seek to acquire money for when they lose power.
| Those with money, seek to acquire power for when they lose money.
|
| If consultants at large firms are prohibited from trading
| specific shares, it does not make sense for folks who literally
| make the law to do so.
| gvv wrote:
| Two things can be true at once, yes it's a free-market economy
| and yes profiting from insider knowledge, especially as a
| lawmaker, should land you in jail.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Many people here are complaining, but i also think that's why
| they let the companies go without much regulation.
|
| Just enforce them to enclose their stock purchases the same day
| and make it illegal to trade based on knowledge like insiders.
|
| If they trade in insider information, this will be known when
| laws are made. Normally records are available of many things.
|
| No, the world is not perfect.
| imchillyb wrote:
| We are /NOT/ a free-market economy.
|
| There is no /freedom/ in our markets. There are plenty of items
| that are unavailable. There are plenty of restrictions on trade.
| There are massive tariffs on trade. There are limits on the
| amount of monies spent or earned.
|
| The concept of a free-market scares the politicians in America,
| and those politicians do everything in their power to prevent
| exactly that; a free-market.
| afpx wrote:
| Which countries would you consider being closest to free-
| market?
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Russia in the 90-ies: _everything_ was up to sale, including
| human lives, government itself (all three branches), all
| kinds of property imaginable, and enforcement or non-
| enforcement of contracts. They 're commonly named as "holy
| nineties" amongst the wealthy people who built their wealth
| (and managed to survive) during those years: no excessive
| bureaucracy, all problems could be solved (for the right
| price) with a single phone call to the right people. Paragon
| of freedom and efficiency!
|
| Of course, the rest of the population who also managed to
| survive the nineties remember them in much, much less rosy
| terms... and there were quite some number of those who did
| _not_ survive, but eh, why care about those losers? As the
| first Minister of Economy and Finances of Russia himself
| said, "we're living during the tectonic changes and reforms,
| and the death of those who were incapable to adapt to the
| market is an inevitable part of the process".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| By those criteria, no free market exists in any significant
| capacity, and you get into the sort of "Communism would work if
| people cooperated!" silliness territory.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > and you get into the sort of "Communism would work if
| people cooperated!" silliness territory.
|
| What are you on about?
|
| Lets run a quick thought test:
|
| Are you for or against people selling: - bio-weapons to kids
| on the street?
|
| - heroin?
|
| What about sending money to North Korea?
|
| What about... you get the point
|
| Free-Market means no restriction on market, the magical self-
| regulation will restrict undesired transactions somehow.
|
| What modern economies have are:
|
| Open, fair markets, overseen by governments to ensure its
| fair and open. They are not somehow communist because they
| regulate and ensure baby milk is free of heavy metals and
| paint has no lead in it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The point is that neither perfect communism nor perfect
| free market setups are possible. Everything is always going
| to fall somewhere in the middle of things; you'll find some
| countries with _less_ regulation in some areas, _more_ in
| others.
|
| As such, statements like "The concept of a free-market
| scares the politicians in America" as if it were achievable
| in the strict context the poster requires ("There is no
| /freedom/ in our markets") are a bit silly. Why would they
| be scared of something that literally can't exist?
|
| Proponents of communism similarly like to use the "well
| that wasn't _real_ communism " to evade critiques of the
| real-world implementations of it.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Get this walking zombie out of office. Either we need an age
| limit or term limits.... maybe both. I'm so tired of her and
| McConnell.
|
| They're so far disconnected from serving the people and the needs
| of this country it's a joke.
| chmod600 wrote:
| That's just a way to twist the issue into a political dig against
| laissez-faire people. It's not a real defense because she's too
| powerful to need a defense.
| [deleted]
| cestith wrote:
| Having insiders with information not available to the market is
| not a free market.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Having an outstanding interest in companies creates a conflict of
| interest: if you have 10 million in calls on Facebook you might
| think twice before blocking a Facebook acquisition.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Pelosi has long said she has no involvement in or prior
| knowledge of her husband's trading decisions and does not own any
| stock herself._ "
|
| But does share information from her official duties with him?
| tamaharbor wrote:
| With perks like this, there is no doubt that some would be
| willing to cheat and lie to remain in power.
| analog31 wrote:
| I definitely don't like the idea of insider trading by lawmakers,
| for all of the reasons that are obvious to everybody. On the
| other hand, if they put their money in a blind trust, the
| conflict is still there. My reasoning is that the blind trust
| will still want to put their money in the "best" investment, and
| the lawmakers can influence which investment is "best" through
| policy and legislation.
|
| The easiest example that I see is the continued long term growth
| of the stock and the real estate markets. (Disclosure, I'm
| invested in those markets too). It's pretty easy to imagine
| passing stock- and real estate-friendly legislation, which is
| great for me, but not necessarily great for society as a whole,
| and not necessarily done by any kind of majority consent.
|
| But at least in the case of a blind trust, while you can't
| eliminate conflict of interest altogether, at least it makes the
| conflict more transparent.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Better than nothing. It would stop corruption by specific
| companies and industry lobbyists. Election finance reform is
| needed, too. Representatives should represent people no matter
| how much or how little money those people have. No system is
| going to be perfect but there are some obvious departures from
| the ideal that can be reduced.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If Rand Paul were saying this nobody would care. But coming from
| her it reeks of "rules for thee but not for me".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Lots of confusion in this thread. Members of Congress cannot
| legally trade on insider information, and haven't been able to
| since 2012 [1].
|
| The law was amended in 2013 to limit public disclosure by some
| tens of thousands of senior government officials. But it did not
| remove the non-public information trading restrictions from
| anyone. And it retained the full force of the STOCK Act for
| members of Congress.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| publicexecution wrote:
| and yet they do anyways
| dundarious wrote:
| The joke "someone's trying to kill you? Don't be ridiculous,
| that's illegal" comes to mind. "Corruption" by any rational
| standard is largely legalized in the US, and even where it is
| prohibited, it is not enforced. For example, the 2020
| congressional insider trading scandal.
| cronix wrote:
| We put term limits on the Presidential branch, I see no reason
| why we shouldn't limit the terms someone in congress can serve,
| and for the same reasons.
|
| If we have a free market, why did we pass the 1978 Ethics in
| Government Act, which put forth that all high-ranking federal
| officials are required to disclose their financial holdings and
| recuse themselves from any government business in which they,
| their families or close associates have a financial interest?
| _All federal officials, that is, except the president, the vice
| president, members of Congress and federal judges?_ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/202
| publicexecution wrote:
| I want Pelosi to be executed on live tv.
| [deleted]
| nathias wrote:
| Nice let them eat cake moment.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This is so dumb. She is missing the whole point of whey folks are
| upset. Republican colleagues are making millions trading on
| information they know before the rest of us. And she's not
| immune. Her family has been documented making a mint from the
| markets. She should just put all her money in index funds and win
| and lose like the rest of the invested country. And her making
| such statements makes her and the dems no different than the
| republicans and that will hurt them at the polls but like she
| cares.
| Salgat wrote:
| Really makes you wonder what kind of utopia we'd be in if
| politicians acted fully in good faith.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Having congress not trade stocks does not inhibit the free market
| economy. In facts it makes it even more free by not allowing
| people in government with inside information to make money off of
| and manipulate the market to their liking. I've said it on so
| many of my other comments but no member of congress should be
| allowed to trade securities(or their immediate family members).
| blululu wrote:
| This is a pretty click bait title. Banning congress people and
| their families from trading any stock altogether is pretty
| extreme. There are laws against using material non public
| information in trades that are clearly being violated and these
| laws should be enforced and strengthened. An outright ban is a
| bit of a big imposition. Creating narrow trading windows, or
| requiring trades to be pre-planned are both reasonable
| approaches, but the article focuses instead on the most extreme
| form of restriction and ignores any of the more reasonable
| reforms.
| dcist wrote:
| It's not extreme. Being a politician should not be financially
| rewarding, period.
| blululu wrote:
| Agreed that being a politician should not be financially
| rewarding. There are lots of policy initiatives that can
| achieve this end. Using insider information is already
| illegal, but poorly enforced (probably the easiest step
| here). Implementing restricted trading windows or insisting
| that people plan their trades ~3 months in advance is also a
| reasonable policy that is common practice among senior
| executives at large corporations. Banning people from trading
| stocks outright is actually quite extreme in America. Basic
| things like saving for retirement or buying a home
| effectively require people to buy and sell stocks. Saying
| that someone can't own stocks just because their aunt is a
| congresswoman feels like it is going too far.
| nycjust4me wrote:
| She represents the total shit hole called San Francisco.
|
| Living in San Francisco right now is like living in East Germany.
|
| Fuck San Francisco and fuck every politician there.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Pelosi is vile, not only in her conduct but what she represents.
| The sooner she leaves office the better off we all are.
| clircle wrote:
| Saw this comment on Reddit, but why doesn't Vanguard or Fidelity
| create an index fund that tracks these traded commodities? If the
| information is truly valuable, then it would make sense to
| package it up and sell it.
| abeppu wrote:
| A number of people in this conversation are fixated on the idea
| that advanced disclosure allows the market to front-run the
| congressperson and therefore remove the advantage of inside
| information.
|
| But this still allows lawmakers the other corrupt path of trying
| to pick policies which benefit the companies or sectors in which
| they have holdings. Might there be federal efforts to ease
| housing shortages if members of congress didn't have investment
| properties?
|
| I think for politicians above a certain level, we should go full
| Rawls. When you leave office, a random citizen from your
| constituency is selected, your net worth is set to their current
| net worth, and for a period of k years after leaving office, your
| income is funded by the public to match the income of that
| constituent.
| lukemercado wrote:
| > I think for politicians above a certain level, we should go
| full Rawls. When you leave office, a random citizen from your
| constituency is selected, your net worth is set to their
| current net worth, and for a period of k years after leaving
| office, your income is funded by the public to match the income
| of that constituent.
|
| This is a novel idea to me. Are you referring to
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/? If so, could you
| elaborate a bit on the philosophical underpinnings of this
| idea? My meager googling did not raise anything substantive.
| abeppu wrote:
| Rawls wrote a bunch of stuff about fairness and justice, and
| I won't pretend to have read it all. But one idea he
| discussed is imagining oneself behind a "veil of ignorance"
| that conceals the particulars of one's attributes,
| circumstances, etc. In considering how society is structured,
| how resources are distributed, what the laws are etc, we
| should do so without attachment to our own individual
| utility.
|
| So imagine a universe where we were all thinking, rational,
| disembodied souls before we were born, and as disembodied
| souls we could debate and together choose how the society
| we're born into would work -- but we don't individually get
| to choose who we will be born as. You don't get to know what
| your race, your gender, your family's income, class, region,
| etc. How would you want society to be structured? What would
| you want laws and norms to look like? etc.
|
| My claim is roughly that the way to incentivize leaders to
| actually work for the wellbeing of their constituents is to
| artificially construct and impose such a veil of ignorance,
| so that leaders are pushed to improve the wellbeing of as
| many as possible.
| thrower123 wrote:
| This would be less of a severe issue if congress-critter was
| merely something you did for one or two terms, rather than a
| permanent career.
|
| The Roman cursus honorum had many flaws, but enforcing an up-or-
| out mentality that discouraged officials lurking in the same
| position for forty years was not one of them.
| nescioquid wrote:
| > enforcing an up-or-out mentality
|
| You win your first election as Quaestor, then you are a senator
| for life (provided you maintain the minimum property
| qualification of 2 million sesterces). But to win higher
| magistracies, there are fewer offices and the competition is
| more intense. Not exactly up-or-out, but I see what you mean.
| Especially in an honor-based society, no one wanted to be the
| perpetually junior senator.
|
| But yes, you would not find the same person monopolizing a
| magistracy for 40 years.
| cheaprentalyeti wrote:
| It's like Venezuela where the connected-to-the-government people
| could exchange their bolivars for dollars at a much more
| favorable rate than everyone else.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Also in Turkey and Argentina.
| jalane81 wrote:
| Tell that to Martha Stewart.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| if Trump had said this the internet would have gone batshit
| MR4D wrote:
| Cool !! So now she can free CEOs and billionaires from having to
| disclose their sales and bring them down to the congressional
| standard.
|
| /s
|
| I hate hypocrites - regardless of their party affiliation.
| jefftechentin wrote:
| People of California, what do you see in her.?.?.? Why keep
| electing?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I give most US politicians the benefit of the doubt. They are
| usually loathed, but I believe do want to make things better as
| opposed to enrich themselves.
|
| So they can start acting like it. Your job is bigger than
| yourself now. You are the highest of public servant. The cost of
| money-motivated grifters and immense distrust from the public is
| far greater than the cost of losing a few people who would be
| good politicians but need to live lavishly.
|
| Financial transparency above and beyond regular citizens, middle
| income, middle housing. That's a fair shake. How can you stay in
| touch with the average citizen when you have three lavish
| estates?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| The wellness of the nation is not the same as the wellness of the
| markets and it seems clear that leaders should be getting
| rewarded for one and not the other or a major incentive
| misalignment exists. Maybe it's time to not just prevent them
| from trading stocks, probably for a good while after they leave
| office too, but to also tie their retirement benefits to things
| like future literacy rates, poverty rates, and other general
| indicators of national wellness.
| [deleted]
| ur-whale wrote:
| Standard leftie: all for sharing, especially other people's
| money, but the buck stops at her money.
| scythe wrote:
| Fun fact: Nancy Pelosi beats the stock market. She does very well
| in options trading.
|
| https://www.fineprintdata.com/post/pelosistocks
|
| A recent example:
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nancy-pelosi-buys-tesla-calls...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The purchases could have been done by Pelosi or her husband
| Paul, who runs a venture capital firm.
|
| I mean, my _kids_ have beaten the stock market over the last
| two years, largely for the same reason; I put some of their
| allowance into Tesla shares with them.
| scythe wrote:
| Are your kids trading options?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We're not _quite_ there on the financial education, but
| they 're certainly benefiting from Tesla's rise.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Wouldn't this mean that it is NOT a free market? If she is
| somehow privy to information that I'm not and laws don't seem to
| be able to touch politicians, then I just don't see how this can
| be a free market.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Maybe a solution is they have to notify the public a few days
| before a trade. Pelosi to sell X shares of XYZ company at a price
| $Z or above.
| pibechorro wrote:
| As long as people like her are powerful we are not. The US has
| long stopped being a free market. Too big to fail guaranteed it.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A free market was probably around 1850 when you could pollute
| as much as you wanted and send children to work in mines. The
| word "free market" is basically nonsense. To most people "free
| market" means "I can do whatever I want but the state protects
| me from others doing thins I don't like"
| me_me_me wrote:
| USA was never pure free market, the whole principle of check
| and balances is at odds of free market ideology. If you dont
| regulate market you get raw sewage in your rivers the next day
| its allowed.
|
| Anyway, just imagine if the thin line of law that is currently
| barely stopping rich at the moment, just stopped applying all
| of the sudden...
|
| Count to ten... pooof...
|
| And we all hail our beloved King Bezos the first, and the
| return of feudalism.
| mcv wrote:
| Regulation isn't necessarily opposed to a free market, as
| long as the same rules apply to everybody. In fact,
| externalising your costs by polluting rivers could be
| considered anti-free market, because you're letting others
| pay for your costs. It's no different from theft.
|
| Insider trading, however, is anti-free market, because you're
| relying on an information disparity to gain an advantage.
| cpwright wrote:
| In general, an information disparity is good; it means you
| have done work to learn something and incorporate that into
| prices. If you are right, you deserve to be rewarded.
|
| Insider trading is when you steal the information from
| someone else (often your employer) to make those trades -
| misappropriating value for yourself that does not belong to
| you.
| folkhack wrote:
| > Regulation isn't necessarily opposed to a free market
|
| In fact, it's required for any market to exist in the first
| place. Without regulation the concept of ownership goes out
| the window. "Free markets" would look like anarchy... and
| exactly as you lay out in the river analogy it would be
| utter chaos with everyone acting in their best interest
| like "damn the consequences!" - it's human nature.
|
| Sorry if I'm coming off as abrupt here - I'm aggressively
| agreeing and building on your point... IMO the markets
| require regulation when all is said and done. People who
| point to a "free market" often do so to shield themselves
| from the same regulations/rules that are designed to keep
| the markets afloat just like Pelosi has done here. It's
| gotten to the point that the words "free market" are almost
| always a sign of a bad faith argument.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Regulation isn't necessarily opposed to a free market"
|
| Free market is like the shroudinger's cat, everyone has a
| different idea of where it is. In the other thread people
| were claiming that having a central bank is anti-free-
| market, but it's unclear how interest rate should be set
| and money supply be created and regulated.
| davidhyde wrote:
| If you work at an investment bank or hedge fund you typically
| have to apply for approval before trading personally (or someone
| connected to you like a spouse or partner). That applies for each
| and every trade you make. This is not an unfair request to make
| of your employees because it limits potential insider trading as
| well as conflict of interest trades. Not to mention the unfair
| advantage an employee could have by using expensive data feeds
| from the bank.
| chernevik wrote:
| Banks and funds have compliance departments which track which
| companies are clients/positions. You _might_ create a similar
| apparatus for Congress, but tracking which companies are
| subject to a particular law would be complicated and error-
| prone.
|
| Better to limit them to general positions like ETFs and mutual
| funds, as others have suggested.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| They shouldn't exactly _because_ it's a free market.
| samstave wrote:
| The political squatters have over stayed their welcome among the
| masses, but they are literally doing the bidding of the super
| wealthy, all Silicon Valley included.
|
| The pelosi, boxer and other California politicians have been
| raping opportunity out of the WMD scam for the last few decades
| with private rebuild contracts going to bechtel in the same way
| the coffers flow freely to defense families...
|
| Pelosi is a cancer, as are too many other politicians.
|
| We need age limits on Congress. Forced retirement and blocked
| from lobbying at 65
|
| How much has fauci made during the pandemic, what about the head
| of the FDA, what about Ahit Pai?
|
| All these people are corrupt scum.
|
| Their in-office-finances should be 100% public record, based on
| the history of illegal activity these positions constantly prove
| to commit.
| stevespang wrote:
| How 'bout Insider Trading - - PELOSI ?
| mcculley wrote:
| We still have tariffs on steel, right? Corn subsidies? The USDA
| Market Facilitation Program? Bailouts for corporations too big to
| fail? Welfare labeled "stimulus"?
|
| Maybe she means something else by "free-market".
| 3glkjlkjgr wrote:
| Pelosi should be arrested. She has repeatedly violated the mask
| mandate in San Francisco (and now California state-wide) multiple
| times with impunity.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| They're just unrepentent criminals at this point.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| But they aren't. They aren't breaking the law. Unless you want
| to call yourself a criminal.
| publicexecution wrote:
| Well, actually they _are_ breaking the law, dumbass.
| notch656a wrote:
| I agree we are a free-market economy. This means Pelosi has a
| mandate to eliminate all taxes, tariffs, subsidies, and business
| regulations as they distort the free market. Practice what you
| preach.
| Freskis wrote:
| This is one of the top stories on Reddit.
|
| Some of the top comments on the Reddit story are calling for her
| death. No moderation. No dissent.
|
| Reddit is going to get HAMMERED once it goes public.
| piaste wrote:
| I don't quite understand your comment.
|
| You seem upset at the sight of the unwashed masses hollering
| against the haughty elites, but at the same time you sound
| gleeful over the prospect of Reddit being punished for
| insufficiently protecting the feelings of said elite.
|
| Is that a correct reading?
| Freskis wrote:
| A top comment on one of the most popular websites in the
| world is calling for the death of a politician based on no
| evidence whatsoever. Perhaps this is normal to you, but not
| to me, or any of the advertisers who pay money to advertise
| on Reddit.
|
| If you think that it's normal to call for the death of a
| politician based on no evidence of a crime, then perhaps
| other lower-quality websites may be a better fit for you,
| rather than Hacker News?
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| It's normal in that Reddit has been like this for some
| time? It's not like this is new information for investors
| or advertisers.
| diveanon wrote:
| I think there is plenty of evidence that she and her
| husband have been profiting off of insider info for
| decades.
|
| I'll say it here too, the gerontocracy needs to die if we
| are going to fix the problems this country faces.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I don't really wish her death but I definitely would like old
| people like Biden, Pelosi and Clinton go away and not f..k up
| the country even more. Hopefully they will go away before they
| die but I am not so sure they have the sense to retire.
| stareblinkstare wrote:
| For ref:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/rh7anj/pelosi_rej...
| cwkoss wrote:
| Nancy Pelosi has done orders of magnitude more harm to our
| country than many people that have been given the death
| penalty.
|
| I don't wish for her death, but I certainly think we'd be
| better off if she was no longer in power. Additionally the lack
| of consequences for her corruption harms public trust in our
| electoral system.
| democratscumz wrote:
| Good!
|
| She does deserve death! FUCK THAT BITCH!
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| That assumes they're not correct
| coolspot wrote:
| Some subreddits were banned for such comments. Will reddit ban
| r/politics ? (I know the answer)
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Hell, /r/chapotraphouse was banned for allowing members to
| call for the death of _19th century slave owners_. Sitewide
| rule enforcement on R*ddit is pretty arbitrary and at the
| convenience of the admins.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That's not why chapotraphouse was banned. You can still
| find tons of links on shitredditsays pointing out members
| of that sub calling for the death of still-living people,
| or entire races of people. For example, see the not-very-
| subtly coded references to baseball, referring to the
| assassination of Scalise.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Yes, we are a free-market. But there are people, like company
| executives ( _and high-ranking politicians_ ) who have non-public
| information that does not belong to them. When congress uses
| insider knowledge, they are stealing from the ameria, and
| undermining any semblance of policy integrity.
|
| And for that reason, the SEC has 10b-5 plans, which can certainly
| be critiqued, but at least removes the low-hanging fruit like "we
| are getting acquired so I'll buy as many shares and out of the
| money options as I can".
|
| Iirc her husband was basically buying fairly far-out (~16-18
| months) calls at the onset of the pandemic, and they were
| expiring around the time of, was it an antitrust hearing? The
| timing itself was poor, but the expiration didn't seem
| diabolical.
|
| But it was just like, c'mon, I don't even like the anti-trust
| bent congress is on, but how are you thinking people are taking
| your goals in good faith when you have any explicit (and
| intrinsically _timed_ ) personal interest in not harming the
| businesses you are looking into anti-trust action against?
|
| The Fed trading ethics thing with Kaplan and Rosengren was also
| pretty bad. But imo, they made real changes. They restricted a
| lot of individual trading, and anything they can still trade in,
| has to be requested 45 days _in advance_. I think they understood
| the gravity of what that said about them, and took real steps to
| remedy.
|
| The STOCK Act otoh says Congress and employees have to report
| _within_ 45 days...
| erect_gacker5 wrote:
| No, you're not a "free-market", you're state-sponsored
| capitalism. It's all the rage lately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _STOCK Act otoh says Congress and employees have to report
| within 45 days_
|
| Why does advance disclosure prevent insider trading differently
| from post-trade disclosure? Both permit similar forms of
| enforcement.
| jedberg wrote:
| Advance disclosure prevents insider trading because it makes
| it unprofitable. If everyone knows you have insider
| information and what your sales plan is, it's no longer
| insider information because your sales plan telegraphs what
| you know, and now everyone else can trade on that information
| too.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| The argument is like jedberg describes, if you have to
| disclose your trades far ahead of time, does having inside
| information matter? Make them plan far enough ahead that it's
| ineffective.
|
| To me, the thing you are trying to curb is the short latency.
| You don't want, let's say...the head of the senate
| intelligence committee talking about how prepared america is
| for pandemics, and then turning around and selling a bunch
| equities. Or, calling his brother in law for less than a
| minute, directly after which he calls his broker.
|
| Imo, it's the difference between, "disclose your plans,
| providing an opportunity for questions and looking for
| ethical red flags" and, "seeing the transactions after the
| fact, after which the people always say, 'nah, nah my guy,
| you got it all wrong, I already planned to make these trades,
| or it had nothing to do with the non-public information I had
| access to ;)"
| throwawayboise wrote:
| In an era of HFT, 45 days might as well be 10 years.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _an era of HFT, 45 days might as well be 10 years_
|
| Sorry, I thought the problem was corruption. Not market
| makers getting run over. If it's the former, the delay is
| irrelevant. If it's the latter...why?
| mbesto wrote:
| > Yes, we are a free-market
|
| Honestly - no we (America) are not. A free market would have:
|
| - Let all of the major banks fail
|
| - No (or limited) Federal Reserve
|
| - Disallowed the various regulatory capture (Foxconn's building
| in WI, Intuit's stronghold on pay taxes, etc. etc.)
|
| - AT&T wouldn't have been broken up
|
| - etc. etc.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A free market would also have: - Child labor - Terrible
| workplace safety (see steel mills in the 1800s) - Polluted
| rivers - Monopolistic companies that buy up competition
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| Also, various industries would never be subsidised;
| automotive production in the US would have disappeared
| decades ago in a truly free market.
| nickff wrote:
| It might have been re-organized with a different cost-
| structure and different product portfolio, though I agree
| that the 'big three' would not exist in their current form.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I agree that we don't have a free market, but how do you get
| to "AT&T wouldn't have been broken up" as evidence of that?
| It's exactly the opposite.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| In this hypothetical laissez-faire USA, AT&T would not have
| been granted a monopoly to begin with (what allowed the
| company to metastasize into Ma Bell) in addition to not
| having been broken up so long as any monopoly AT&T achieved
| (or failed to achieve) was accomplished on its own merits.
| Thus the previous post is technically correct about the
| outcome, but probably for the wrong reasons (i.e. failing
| to account that Ma Bell itself was not a product of the
| free market)
| mbesto wrote:
| I'm the parent - I agreed with pretty much everything you
| said.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| I am happy to hear her say that the US is a free market economy.
|
| It's dangerous when members of the political left try to out-
| socialist each other in a race to the bottom, so it's refreshing
| to hear a statement that rejects that virtue-signalling dynamic.
|
| But having restrictions on stock trading, that people voluntarily
| agree to, as a condition for being allowed to hold office, is
| perfectly consistent with a free market economy. Holding public
| office is a privilege, not a right.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| That they can trade individual equities is absolutely ridiculous.
| I feel that they shouldn't even be able to trade ETF's or mutual
| funds.
| publicexecution wrote:
| San Francisco is a total shit hole.
|
| I hope the Chinese bomb it to fuck and back.
| [deleted]
| Bostonian wrote:
| Owning individual stocks encourages lawmakers to think about how
| their legislation affects businesses, which is a good thing. I
| think stock trades should be disclosed online the same evening
| that they are placed, so that the information that senators and
| congressman are acting on is quickly disseminated.
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| Right. Lawmakers should follow the regular insider trading
| rules. They should be considered insiders for all their trades.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd do it the other way around, I expect senators to abstain
| if they even have a whiff of conflict of interest.
| jstrodd wrote:
| > how their legislation affects businesses
|
| Especially the businesses they own shares of...
| KoftaBob wrote:
| You could say the exact same thing about decision makers at a
| public company, and yet they're barred from trading their
| company stock on information that wasn't public at the time of
| the trade.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I think stock trades should be disclosed online the same
| evening that they are placed_
|
| That's not the normal insider trading rule. The normal insider
| trading rule is that you cannot trade on inside information at
| all.
|
| _> so that the information that senators and congressman are
| acting on is quickly disseminated._
|
| The way to do that is to disseminate the information _before_
| making any trades, so everyone has an opportunity to decide
| whether they want to trade on it.
| codingdave wrote:
| > you cannot trade on inside information at all.
|
| Yes, and just for the sake of clarity, "inside" also means
| non-public. Once it is announced, it is no longer insider
| info and you can trade on it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >" so that the information that senators and congressman are
| acting on is quickly disseminated."
|
| No matter how quickly this information gets out, they still
| have first mover advantage. There is simply no way to compete
| with that.
| 8note wrote:
| Publish intention to trade X hours or days before a
| transaction is agreed upon?
| joenot443 wrote:
| There was a Twitter account which tracked Pelosi and her
| husband's stock trades which has since been banned. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theblaze.com/news/twitter-bans-popular-
| accounts-... (Apologies for the tabloidy source)
| danuker wrote:
| Where can I keep track of lawmaker stock market trades now?
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| IIRC Quiver Quant does that for you.
| mdorazio wrote:
| There are a few sites. For example:
| https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/senatetrading
| shrubble wrote:
| 'When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a
| society, over the course of time they create for themselves a
| legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies
| it.'
|
| Quote from Frederic Bastiat...
| cryptonector wrote:
| Employees of many companies, especially financial companies, are
| subject to obnoxious restrictions on trading to protect their
| employers and their employers' customers from insider trading and
| front running.
|
| Congress? They can do what they want w/o any restrictions? When
| their actions can and do move markets?? That's nuts.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| This is Pelosi's "and yet she persisted".
| abbassi wrote:
| It was always like this. Fairness in class society is a illusion!
| mantas wrote:
| Assuming that ,,classless" society would be fair..
| isoblvck wrote:
| are we ? awful lot of rent seeking and cronyism in this "free
| market" outside of a few fringe auctions there has never ever
| been a competitive market ever.
| 19f191ty wrote:
| Sure, but if the regulators of that economy have a built in
| conflict of interest then that free market can't be sustained for
| long.
| cwkoss wrote:
| The insidious thing about allowing congress to insider trade is
| that it creates a loophole to bypass campaign finance laws and
| enables corruption.
|
| It would be illegal for a company to pay $1M to Pelosi in a quid
| pro quo.
|
| It's legal for a company to give a stock tip worth $1m to Pelosi
| as gratuity for favorable legislation.
|
| Pelosi doesn't want to remove this mechanism because it's how she
| solicits bribes and has consolidated her power.
| Freskis wrote:
| Is there any published evidence of Pelosi accepting bribes, or
| are you posting stuff you read on Reddit and Facebook? Hacker
| News generally has a higher level of discourse, it's not really
| a conspiracy/Qanon type website.
| cwkoss wrote:
| The Pelosi's net worth has been consistently outperforming
| the market for decades.
|
| I think it it pretty naive to assume that's due to her
| husband being a great trader/very lucky - she's passing
| information to him for their financial benefit.
| democratscumz wrote:
| San Francisco is a complete shithole.
| 0xI337 wrote:
| Oh, I see... a free market economy is good when it benefits the
| aristocrats, bad when it can be used for political talking points
| to garner votes. Got it.
| motohagiography wrote:
| There was a quip about this along the lines of legislators
| playing the market was like letting referees make bets on their
| own games, even while they were being played.
|
| In the case of legislators, it's something to tolerate until it
| gets out of hand, but when their returns are better than
| professional hedge funds, it undermines the legitimacy of the
| institution they're employed to operate on our behalf.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Democrats, as usually, seem uninterested in doing much or holding
| onto what power they've got.
| diveanon wrote:
| Why does SF keep electing this corrupt hag?
|
| Term limits need to be enacted. Corrupt officials like her and
| Mitch are an existential threat to this country.
| thrwy_918 wrote:
| "We are a free-market economy" is simply not a defense of
| congress members being able to trade individual stocks with no
| restrictions. Free-market economies still take measures against
| insider trading, still place limits on how and when high-ranking
| executives can trade company stock. Placing restrictions on how
| congress members can trade, when they have access to material
| non-public information, is totally compatible with a free-market
| economy.
|
| This is not a defense, it's a dismissal.
| dsizzle wrote:
| They do have to report their positions. Not sure if that's a
| "restriction" per se, but that is something that insiders have
| to do as well, and it's something retail traders do not have to
| do.
|
| If they are using insider information so effectively, anyone is
| free to copy their moves, no?
|
| EDIT: That they only report 45 days after the fact is indeed a
| significant difference from company insiders and severely
| limits how well someone could profit by following along.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| How quickly do they have to report their investment activity?
| If it's not immediate, then no, anyone is not free to copy
| their moves.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Their moves are known ex post facto.
| voisin wrote:
| Not sure about congress but for corporate insiders and major
| investors the reporting is quarterly so likely not as useful
| if trading on inside info (which tends to disseminate
| faster).
| hef19898 wrote:
| Having worked for a couple of publicly US-listed companies,
| when you have access to material data you had to adhere to
| strictly defined trade windows, among a load of other things.
| Being in Supply Chain, with obvious access to forecasts and
| inventories, I always fall under insider trading rules. Why
| law makers would be exempt is beyond me.
| nradov wrote:
| Law makers are exempt because they made themselves exempt,
| simple as that.
| dsizzle wrote:
| Not simply "exempt", unless you're referring specifically
| to the trade window part. There is in fact a law making
| it illegal to trade on insider information.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act Arguably it did
| not go far enough.
|
| I just don't think Congress has much in the way of
| insider information most of the time. Antitrust
| litigation would be one example where they do, but what
| else? Company insiders by contrast almost by definition
| have insider information.
| hef19898 wrote:
| One could make the case that the ability to influence the
| _market_ itself is even more powerful than just knowing
| some inside data. And we are not even talking about
| things like defense contracts.
| dsizzle wrote:
| If some Congressperson went short the market and then
| tanked the market though some statement that would indeed
| be very bad! Has anything like that ever happened? That
| would presumably nuke that person's reputation with costs
| far greater than whatever financial gains could be had.
|
| If they're long the market and then boosting the
| market... I mean, isn't that what we want? You'd have to
| go further than a blind trust even and ban owning
| equities at all.
| mcv wrote:
| They should recuse themselves from any vote involving an
| industry that they have a more than trivial amount of
| stock in. Do you expect someone to restrict Big Tech when
| they have Facebook and Google stock?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Absolutely not, we are talking about politicians here. I
| like the idea of divesting into index funds during time
| in parliament / service.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Of course they are. I guess that's one of the few cases
| on which _all_ law makers can agree. Doesn 't mean they
| should be exempt.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They should have to report their positions well _in advance_.
|
| If I want to buy/sell Boeing stock and I'm a Senator, I
| should have to publicly file that intention three months in
| advance, and not be able to undo it. Those filings should
| immediately be public in a data feed.
|
| I'd expect to see a "Congressional stock purchases index
| fund" arise, and it'd be fascinating to see how it performed.
|
| Stuff like https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/11/politics/rand-paul-
| wife-stock... - "oops, forgot to disclose my stock moves for
| over a year!" - should be punishable by loss of trading
| ability and confiscation of the assets (not just profits)
| involved.
| dnissley wrote:
| How about just reporting trades within a day or two of when
| they occur? As opposed to reporting months after the fact?
| Just publicize the order flow. This way there's no
| weaseling out of the fact that yes you did make such and
| such a trade literally a day before some government
| announcement.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| You mean a day or two in advance? Or post trade? Post
| trade is not good, but pre trade should still be able to
| quell the insider advantage.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| With today's technology, I do not see why trades cannot
| be reported immediately.
| anubiskhan wrote:
| "We will put together a panel to put together a committee
| to review these technologies. Upon sufficiently reviewing
| said technologies we will institute new rules. Current
| target is by 2050"
| gruez wrote:
| because if you have to report it ahead of time, it
| neutralizes any advantage you might have from the insider
| information.
| dsizzle wrote:
| True, in advance would be better.
|
| The "Congressional stock purchases index fund" would
| underperform though https://www.investopedia.com/tiktokers-
| track-lawmakers-perso...
|
| > Academic research revealed that senators' stock purchases
| underperformed the benchmark during six-month intervals by
| 17 basis points between 2012 and March 2020
| ceejayoz wrote:
| All sorts of trading strategies you could try out on a
| full, in-advance data feed, though.
|
| Only follow the trades of those in leadership, give
| special attention to transactions involving defense
| contractors by members of the Committee on Armed
| Services, etc.
|
| I don't doubt that Congress has its share of confident
| morons to skew the numbers downwards, but you might be
| able to identify people who _somehow_ manage to make
| better moves.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Nice idea, but for this to work, you'd also have require
| that previously announced intended trades MUST be followed
| through within a given window. Without out, this is way to
| game stocks without spending anything at all.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, that's why I said "not be able to undo it".
| bena wrote:
| No. Three months in advance is just as stupid as a year
| past. It gives people opportunity to manipulate prices.
|
| "Day of" should be the rule. Basically, have them trade in
| the public eye. You could subscribe to congressional stock
| feeds to see what they're personally buying and selling as
| it happens.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Three months in advance without the ability to cancel it
| subjects them to risk if they're trying to trade on
| insider info; the info could leak, change, be affected by
| something unexpected, etc.
|
| Letting them do "day of" doesn't really help; if you know
| Boeing's gonna get the contract at 3:00pm you could just
| do the buy at 2:59pm. No one has time to react.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They do have to report their positions
|
| Yeah... 45 days _after_ the trade (per
| https://www.investopedia.com/tiktokers-track-lawmakers-
| perso...). Not to mention that both dominant parties don't
| take their responsibilities seriously
| (https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-staff-violated-
| stoc...), and that information can be filed on paper so
| sleuths have a _much_ harder time digging through the data to
| spot suspicious trades
| (https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/04/action-alert-
| stock-...).
|
| An effective law would require all elected representatives to
| identify themselves and their close relatives (i.e. parents,
| siblings and children) as such to their banks and brokers,
| with the banks and brokers having to maintain an instant feed
| exposing all trades executed on the accounts of these people.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| As a software developer at a law firm, I had to have all of
| my stock trades pre-approved by the firm just in case there
| was a conflict, regardless of if I had any actual access to
| or knowledge of material relevant to the company stock's
| being traded. Since I invest mostly in indexes, it wasn't
| much of an issue for me but I had a coworker who had several
| of his trades blocked without explanation other than there
| was a conflict. Funny how software developers with no actual
| access to insider information, just the potential for access,
| are more restricted than members of Congress who have actual
| access to such information.
| andybp85 wrote:
| similar situation here, I'm a dev for a major business news
| company. her comments are brazen at best.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this rings true for me -- restrictions are placed on those
| that cannot defend themselves.. all of financial reporting
| is heading in the wrong direction, due in no small part to
| the operators of the system, not Mr and Miss Main Street
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to
| wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but
| does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds
| but does not protect.
| biztos wrote:
| Is trading an index fund that much better, when you are
| effectively The Government and can _make_ decisions, let alone
| know about them in advance, that will affect entire markets?
| dmt0 wrote:
| There's a good example right in front of our eyes right now.
| In order for inflation to get back to normal, the index has
| to drop around 20%. A drop would be pretty much inevitable as
| the liquidity would have to be pulled out. Powell has all his
| reported holdings in the index. People who influence his
| decisions are likely also very much invested in the index. Is
| anybody gonna do the right thing?
| Accujack wrote:
| This is Nancy Pelosi saying "Members of congress make lots of
| money that way, and we like money, so we're not going to stop
| making money."
|
| Like most of government, they won't take their hand out of the
| cash drawer until someone threatens to put cuffs on it.
| hermitdev wrote:
| > This is not a defense, it's a dismissal.
|
| You really hit the nail on the head here. Members of Congress
| (and their staff) should either simply be held to the already
| existing rules on insider trading. They should not be able to
| act upon material non public information. They should be
| subject to trading windows and restrictions. They should not be
| able to vote on any legislation affecting held securities.
| Don't want to be subject to the rules? Set up a blind trust
| like the rest of us would have to.
|
| If Congress is going to be held to a different standard than
| the rest of us, it should be a _higher_ standard, not a more
| lax one.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Members of Congress (and their staff) should either simply
| be held to the already existing rules on insider trading.
| They should not be able to act upon material non public
| information._
|
| This is the law, and has been since 2012 [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| hermitdev wrote:
| > This is the law, and has been since 2012
|
| It was the law for approximately 1 year.
|
| I suggest you read the amendment [0] to the STOCK Act that
| was quietly passed the following year, 2013. It largely
| rendered the STOCK Act useless.
|
| [0] (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20140419032033/http:/
| /www.gpo.go...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It largely rendered the STOCK Act useless_
|
| This is false.
|
| The bill [1] makes it harder to access records for _e.g._
| Congressional staffers [2]. But insider trading
| restrictions for everyone remain. And the disclosure
| requirements for members of Congress are virtually
| untouched.
|
| [1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-113s716cps/
| pdf/BIL...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/1
| 6/17749...
| scythe wrote:
| >Holman showed me how it works. You have to enter your
| name and address into a computer, and then you can
| search. But you have to know the name of the person you
| are searching for. If he or she has filed a financial
| disclosure form, it will come up as a PDF, which you can
| print at a cost of 10 cents a page.
|
| >"The database itself is almost meaningless," says
| Holman. He says the only option for those who want to get
| a comprehensive look at what some 2,900 staffers have
| filed is to review the cases one by one. "And that's just
| too big a job for anybody to do."
|
| >The STOCK Act was supposed to make this task
| significantly easier. Records for members of Congress,
| the executive branch and their staffs were supposed to be
| posted online in a searchable, sortable and downloadable
| format.
|
| >If you wanted to see who traded health care stock just
| before a committee acted on a health care bill, it would
| be easy. No trips to the basement required.
|
| Taking the database offline due to identity theft
| concerns is understandable.
|
| What isn't defensible is making it impossible to query
| the records in a useful way even onsite. SQL was 43 years
| old in 2013. It's perhaps unobvious to a nontechnical
| person, but the average reader of _Hacker News_ should
| immediately recognize that it isn 't normal to be unable
| to search a database of textual records, whose total size
| is probably less than 10 TB.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _making it impossible to query the records in a useful
| way even onsite_
|
| I agree. But this doesn't apply to members of Congress.
| Their trades are available online [1].
|
| [1] https://www.smartinsider.com/politicians/
| umvi wrote:
| Is the law actually enforced though? It seems like every
| other month we see evidence of congress members selling off
| a ton of stock mere days before some critical piece of
| information goes public that makes the stock value drop.
| dntrkv wrote:
| With 538 members of our government bodies making trades
| at "random", with typical trading intervals, it doesn't
| seem so outrageous that a few times a year there will be
| a trade that looks to be made on insider information.
|
| I'm not saying it never happens, but I think it's
| difficult to separate "insider trading" from "getting
| lucky" when you're talking about 538 generally well-off,
| active traders.
|
| It's like when a CEO offloads stock before it drops and
| everyone loses their minds. But if you dig in to the
| story, the CEO is just selling stock on a regular
| schedule.
| satronaut wrote:
| looks like we found nancy pelosi's hacker news account
| sneak wrote:
| > _They should not be able to act upon material non public
| information._
|
| That's not what insider trading is, though. Insiders are,
| well, inside.
|
| If you come across non-public information as an outsider, you
| are of course free to trade on it. Congresspeople are,
| theoretically, at odds with companies (as they impose
| regulation restraining those companies) and it's hard to view
| them as having a duty of any kind to the company itself.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| That's a nice idea, but how do you out legislate a
| legislator? Has that ever worked out before in history?
| devmunchies wrote:
| of course it's been done. everyone has a price or a fear.
| mathattack wrote:
| In our free market economy execs can't trade on inside
| information or they would go to jail. It's legal for congress
| to trade in inside information. She's a sleazebag for blowing
| this off.
| javert wrote:
| In a pure free market, trading by insiders is legal. It used to
| be that way in the US.
|
| Also, keep in mind that regulation creates insiders of its own.
| Regulation always degenerates into a weapon of the corrupt.
| analognoise wrote:
| Woah, I don't know about that. I like clean air regulations,
| clean water, and regulations against children working.
|
| Without regulation we would have a real hellscape.
|
| It turns out you can't trust "the market" to do the right
| thing - ever.
| javert wrote:
| Do you disagree with something I said in my comment? I
| cannot see that you do.
|
| Also, frankly, I don't appreciate the sass. It isn't
| necessary.
| analognoise wrote:
| I was responding to "Regulation always degenerates into a
| weapon of the corrupt."
|
| That's an easy target to sass, because it's such an easy
| target. Did I reply to wrong comment or something? Maybe
| it's because I'm on mobile. Apologies if I replied to the
| wrong person.
| Salgat wrote:
| The problem is that an unregulated free-market economy
| guarantees monopolies to form, which ironically allows them
| to use tactics that prevent fair competition. This is why
| mixed-economies are most efficient, as they take advantage of
| capitalism while preventing some of the edge cases where
| capitalism falls apart.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In a pure free market, trading slaves and snake oil is legal.
| It used to be that way in the US.
| javert wrote:
| That's not true. In a free market, the initiation of force
| is barred by the government, so there is no slavery.
|
| There is no point in arguing against a false representation
| of someone's view. This is childish and intellectually
| unhygenic. It's noise.
|
| Snake oil is always legal. It's legal now.
| onefuncman wrote:
| It's actually not. Any product making medical claims is
| regulated by the FTC under deceptive advertising.
| https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/statutes/federal-trade-
| commi...
| javert wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
|
| By definition, it's impossible to make all snake oil
| illegal. Think about all the crypto scams. They count.
| Even if crypto were outlawed, people will always come up
| with new "snake oil."
|
| This is off topic. Let's drop it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "don't appreciate this kind of cheap pedantry. Does it
| feel good"
|
| I think this is extremely unfair, as in your own pedantry
| seems fine, where you are correct only for very spesific
| and us-centric definition of 'force' and 'snakeoil'.
|
| You free market people can't even agree if patents and
| copyright are part of free market. I had one of you tell
| me that endentured servitude was part of freedom of
| contract.
|
| You seem to think we should leave snake oil salesmen
| alone, so it seems free market includes freedom to
| defraud the customer. Does it also include freedom to
| defraud the company?
|
| This 'free market' is a spherical cow and would collapse
| into anarchy from pissed off people shooting each-other,
| it's no more viable than communism is.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith."
|
| Assuming good faith keeps discussion here at a high
| level. Let's not descend to strawmen. If you disagree
| with javert but do not wish to engage the argument, you
| do not need to respond.
| gruez wrote:
| > In a pure free market, trading by insiders is legal.
|
| Not really. Why can't companies make "no insider trading" as
| a condition to employment?
| javert wrote:
| They can.
|
| Do you not understand the difference between a rule for
| employees, and the law?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I mean she's worth over $100 million and her husband is a
| professional investor, it's not surprising they'd want to keep
| restrictions off of themselves. It's shameful, but it's not
| surprising.
|
| A while back there was some noise around potential favorable
| treatment she gave Visa around the time of their IPO. [1]
| Congresspeople really should be forced to stop all trading
| activity while serving in office, aside from maybe putting
| things in index funds. And have term limits.
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-details-on-visas-attempt-
| to...
| mc32 wrote:
| And shameless given her rhetoric around the presidential
| emoluments clause, which is valid, but then apparently for
| Congress people this concern is dismissed...
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Well, the former is literally in the Constitution and the
| later is not, so ...
| rhino369 wrote:
| And the emoluments clause doesn't say POTUS cannot own
| interest in foreign companies. That is a creative re-
| interpretation invented in 2016.
| [deleted]
| ithinkso wrote:
| Constitution can be amended but the Congress would have
| to amend it against their own private interest so of
| course it will not happen (but should)... the point
| you're making is moot though
| mikysco wrote:
| Yes but the principal is the same, no? Somebody in a
| position of power who has strong influence over decisions
| that happen outside the context of the free market
| economy should be restricted from participating in those
| investable opportunities.
|
| Nobody is saying what she is doing is explicitly illegal.
| But it's abundantly unethical and, imo, a clear abuse of
| power. Her tone deaf response in this story only adds
| fuel to the controversy.
| mc32 wrote:
| Exactly. We have the current example of Senator Wyden who
| blocked the China Forced Labor bill who received ~$60k in
| cash from Nike... how is that not quid pro quo?
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think you oversimplify the situation. That's $60k in
| public campaign donations by executive employees of Nike.
| Which is based in Oregon, the state that Wyden
| represents.
|
| Also, $60k isn't that much, considering Wyden usually
| raises between $4 and $8 million during a reelection
| year.
|
| My guess is that he would be more swayed by the fact that
| Nike is one of the largest employers in Oregon.
|
| Like it or hate it, this is the system we have, I don't
| see any evidence that Wyden is being bought off any more
| than any other Senator that accepts campaign donations
| from special interests (which is all of them).
| titzer wrote:
| Foreign leaders staying in the hotel chain of the sitting
| President is pretty blatant corruption. It was even in
| "the transcript" if anyone remembers back that far.
| Pepperidge Farm remembers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Foreign leaders staying in the hotel chain of the
| sitting President is pretty blatant corruption.
|
| That's about the foreign emoluments clause (which already
| applies to other public officials including Congress),
| not the Presidential (domestic) emoluments clause, which
| is about the President getting money or other material
| benefit other than those legally due to his office from
| the federal or state government (which was also an issue
| with Trump's DC hotel, for many reasons, just not
| "foreign leaders staying there".)
| wk_end wrote:
| Who are you arguing with? No one is defending Trump here.
| Just because Trump was corrupt doesn't mean that it's OK
| for his opponents - who've explicitly called out his
| corruption - to be corrupt.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The emoluments clause is explicitly defined in the
| constitution
| dcposch wrote:
| One of the more toxic ideas floating around our culture is
| this idea of "net worth" as a scoreboard.
|
| This woman is 82 years old and a leader of a nominally left-
| wing party.
|
| So given the choice between: 1. taking a principled stand
| against the use of political access for financial gain, and
| dying in a few years with a NW of $100m 2. defending insider
| trading, and dying in a few years with a NW for $150m
|
| It's worth asking what cultural programming would make
| someone even consider #2. It's not the usual reasons people
| want more money. There is no hedonic utility, no extra
| financial independence, no added social status that comes
| with #2.
|
| I have no problem with accumulating wealth as a means to an
| end. But if you're willing to compromise your legacy to run
| that score up a little higher, you're an npc & you've lost
| the plot.
| shams93 wrote:
| Yeah what happens is because we have no term limits these
| Senators stay in office for 100 years and amass huge amounts
| of insider info, its an incredibly debased system at this
| point.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Senators used to be representatives of the States,
| appointed by the States' legislatures. We should return to
| that.
|
| I'm ambivalent on term limits for House members like
| Pelosi, though. They are representatives for the people of
| the States, and as such the people they represent have the
| right and ability to kick them out, or not. There is also
| the argument that would you rather have a dog that knows
| where the bones are buried, or a dog that digs up the whole
| yard?
|
| That said, members of Congress should have severe
| restrictions on investing for themselves and their
| immediate family. They either need to police it themselves,
| or there needs to be some kind of law that covers it. Not
| that that is going to happen, as we have the ultimate in
| foxes guarding the henhouse in our government these days,
| but it would make for a powerful populist position if
| anybody had the courage to push it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Senators used to be representatives of the States,
| appointed by the States' legislatures. We should return
| to that.
|
| That might be tolerable, right after we reduce the powers
| of the Senate to those of the British House of Lords,
| which it's original theory of representation is as
| outdated and inconsistent with representative democracy
| as, and transfer it's para-executive functions to the
| House.
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| Tbf it's a tangibly more meaningful problem with people who
| are actually Senators, aren't up for reelection every 2
| years, and _are_ in a chamber that 's disproportionately
| weighted toward backwaters by design (and not just as a
| function of the redistricting process).
|
| Pelosi is a Representative, so none of those things are
| true here.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Term limits shift power away from the representatives that
| the public has democratically chosen and instead empowers
| those bureaucrats who serve in government for 40 or 50
| years. Please see:
|
| "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce
| Responsive Government"
|
| by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-
| Responsi...
|
| If you want democratically elected representatives to be
| able to gain power over the machinery of government, then
| you should advocate for longer terms, without limits. If
| every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get better
| government.
| Wistar wrote:
| Well, it'd certainly reduce the amount of time spent by
| politicians on getting re-elected.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Which could be a good thing. See the book "10% Less
| Democracy":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-
| Elites/dp/15...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Right now we get that with the huge advantage incumbents
| have over any challengers.
| lkrubner wrote:
| If legislators need long terms to provide good
| government, but they have unfair advantages at re-
| election, then the solution would be very long terms that
| are also single term. Perhaps a legislator is elected for
| 18 years (the amount of time that the top judges serve in
| Britain), but is only allowed to serve one term. So there
| are no re-elections. The legislator has one long term to
| do some good, and then they are gone.
|
| Some people dislike the idea of legislators serving long
| terms. I've always wondered why, exactly, we are
| comfortable with judges serving long terms, but not
| legislators.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you want democratically elected representatives to
| be able to gain power over the machinery of government,
| then you should advocate for longer terms, without limits
|
| Sure, but long terms make the democratically _elected_
| representatives are less representative of the public
| will because of lack of immediate accountability.
|
| What would be better is current terms, absence of term
| limits, and candidate-centered proportional--e.g., by
| single transferrable vote (STV)--elections in multimember
| districts (say, up to 5 member districts for the House,
| two-member for the Senate by putting those from the same
| state in the same class and electing them together), so
| that typically there is some choice at the general
| election _within_ parties (e.g., a party with an
| incumbent but not all the seats available would usually
| be incentivized to run at least one more candidate to
| contest for a potential additional seat) and more viable
| parties, so that you have both accountability and
| representatives that are durable in office if they retain
| popular support.
|
| > If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we would get
| better government.
|
| If every Senator was elected for 15 years, we get
| government even more detached from the popular will, both
| legislatively, executively (because of the Senates veto
| of top executive appointments), and in judicial
| selection.
|
| And the reduced accountability would supercharge
| corruption, too.
| lkrubner wrote:
| " _we get government even more detached from the popular
| will_ "
|
| Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels present an
| abundance of evidence that there is no popular will. The
| public does not understand the issues. The voters do not
| know what they want. Achen and Bartels also make the
| interesting argument that when there is more than one
| issue (more than one dimension) it becomes difficult to
| build a 51% coalition that also has 51% support on every
| issue, and where there are, say, 100 issues, it becomes
| almost mathematically impossible to build a 51% coalition
| that also holds the popular position on every issue. Put
| differently, to win elections, politicians must advocate
| for some deeply unpopular issues. This is the most
| important thing to understand if we are going to
| understand "Why elections do not bring about responsive
| government." (the subtitle of the book).
| lkrubner wrote:
| Of course, it would be possible to solve this particular
| problem (multi-issue voting lacking a 51% equilibrium) if
| voters had one vote for every issue. Not that there is
| any way to know how many issues a voter might regard as
| important, but giving voters more than one vote, and
| allowing the election of more than one candidate, does
| solve some of the mathematical problems that Achen and
| Bartels raise.
|
| On the other issue, that the public is ignorant of most
| issues, remains a real concern.
| mech422 wrote:
| If Senators served 15 year terms, without limits...
|
| We'd be right back where we are now - people server 30+
| years, so entrenched in serving their own good and not
| the public good.
| lkrubner wrote:
| I'd ask you to consider the possibility that it doesn't
| matter how long an individual serves, what does matter is
| whether that person's party can lose power. It's an
| argument explored by Achen and Bartels, and I wrote about
| it here:
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-
| part...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > what does matter is whether that person's party can
| lose power.
|
| With 15 year terms, that can't happen on any reasonable
| timetable, either. If you maintained the three-class
| system, you'd have 1/3 of the Senate elected every five
| years. If you kept roughly equal sets every two years
| you'd have 2/15 (13-14 out of 100) every 2 years.
| lkrubner wrote:
| The risk of losing power could potentially happen every
| month, if you have elections every month. Electing 3
| people a month for 15 years would give a legislature of
| 540 people, the size of the combined houses of the USA
| Congress and close in size to the British parliament. I'd
| suggest every voter gets 2 votes and then the top 3 vote-
| getters are then elected. Of course, when one side has a
| large lead, it means they are safe for a few months (if
| you've got 30 person lead, then you know you are safe for
| at least 10 months). And also, such a system suggests the
| whole polity voting for national figures, without
| representation of specific geographic regions. As with
| software, it is a set of tradeoffs about what kind of
| system one wants to has. The important thing to realize
| is that most of the current problems with democracy can
| be fixed, by adapting a different architecture, which
| would have different starting premises. The goal would be
| to have a government that functions well and which has
| mechanisms of accountability that limit corruption and
| abuse.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Perhaps having career bureaucrats isn't exactly the best
| thing, either. Many people complain about the lack of
| term limits for congress but most don't seem to have a
| problem with the byzantine bureaucracy that practically
| necessitates having these career bureaucrats, who are
| often the ones implementing _real_ policy. (I.e. the
| administrative state).
| lkrubner wrote:
| The advice I give to startup CEOs, regarding their
| business, is exactly the same advice that I would give to
| every citizen regarding their government:
|
| " _Take, for instance, money. A small team of highly
| ethical individuals can generally trust one another to
| safeguard money in an appropriate way. Many small
| churches and family businesses are run this way, with
| loose controls over who can deposit or spend. However, as
| a company grows, the chance you 'll hire an unethical
| individual also grows. At a certain scale it is almost
| certain that a worker will steal some money, if they have
| the chance to do so. So a company must impose rules about
| handling money, and there needs to be a process for
| paying bills, with someone authorized to write checks and
| use the company credit cards. This is the beginning of
| your financial bureaucracy, and the tight limit on who
| holds the authority to spend is the beginning of
| hierarchy in this area._"
|
| " _Is this a bad thing? Again, you 'll confuse yourself
| if you think about this in terms of good or bad. Just
| focus on your goals. What strengths do you want to build
| into your organization?_"
|
| " _Nowadays, there is a widespread idea that bureaucracy
| makes an organization rigid. But consider the ways that a
| well-designed bureaucracy for money control can make your
| organization more flexible. If you decide to keep your
| money control bureaucracy small then you 'll also need to
| keep your purchasing process simple, perhaps by
| centralizing all purchasing decisions in the hands of the
| CEO or CFO. That one individual then becomes a choke
| point that limits progress - nothing can get done until
| they find time to pay some bills and buy some necessary
| materials or services. And there is an obvious limit on
| how much the company can grow when the authority to pay a
| bill is so limited. But even when the money handling
| bureaucracy grows to three or four people, that's still
| not enough to oversee complex spending patterns, so your
| company will still be forced to follow simple and
| inflexible rules. By contrast, what if you wanted to
| decentralize the power to make purchases? What if you
| wanted to empower each team with the ability to make
| whatever purchases they felt they needed, up to some
| reasonable limit? That would make your organization much
| more flexible, but it also makes it more difficult to
| track the money, and therefore it requires a larger
| bureaucracy for tracking each dollar. My point is, the
| larger bureaucracy can actually help enable some kinds of
| decentralized decision making, and thus improve the
| agility of the organization. A growing bureaucracy does
| not automatically equal growing inflexibility, rather,
| the whole point is to try to maintain flexibility at
| scale._"
|
| An excerpt from:
|
| "Don't make a fetish of having flat organization"
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/dont-make-a-fetish-of-
| havin...
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| That's an interesting idea and it makes a certain kind of
| sense, but I would hate to be 17 though when my senator
| gets elected and be stuck with someone I hate an didn't
| vote for until I'm 32.
| lkrubner wrote:
| That's just it though, once we start considering how to
| fix one issue, we realize that a particular design
| decision is part of a wider architecture, and it's
| impossible to change the one design decision without
| undermining the whole architecture. It's like software,
| in a sense, that if you try to quickly patch a system,
| with no regard for the assumptions of the system, you
| will end up with tech debt. That implies that actually
| fixing the problems with our democracy requires a hard
| re-think of certain fundamentals. If you're at all
| interested, I plan to spend the next year writing about
| this issue:
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/what-i-hope-to-prove
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's just it though, once we start considering how to
| fix one issue, we realize that a particular design
| decision is part of a wider architecture, and it's
| impossible to change the one design decision without
| undermining the whole architecture
|
| 'Sokay, the architecture is fundamentally flawed, in part
| because it was designed when less was known about the
| pragmatics of representative democracy because of less
| extensive experience and no systematic research and
| analysis, but also because in some parts it was designed
| with bad purpose (notably, entrenching chattel slavery.)
|
| Undermining the whole architecture _ought to be the
| goal_.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Designing a new architecture should also be a goal,
| otherwise we will end up in that limbo where the old
| system has been destroyed but the new system has not yet
| been built. From what I've read in history books, such
| transitions are uncomfortable.
| njarboe wrote:
| Maybe term limits for all government employees. 10 years
| and you are out. Of course then you would likely end up
| with tons of former government employees working as
| contractors to the government. Ban that next? This is a
| hard problem to solve with rules and laws instead of
| culture.
| lkrubner wrote:
| If we want good government, then we need civil servants
| who are willing to work their whole careers in
| government. If we want good military officers then we
| need people who will devote their whole life to the
| military. If we want good park maintenance we should hope
| for people who are willing to live their whole lives as
| park rangers. If we want accurate budget projections, we
| need accountants and economists who are willing to commit
| their whole lives to understanding the relationship
| between government policy, taxes, and the results on the
| budget.
|
| Term limits won't get us there. We need to go in the
| other direction.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| 40 to 50 years is still greater than 15 though isn't it?
| lkrubner wrote:
| True, though the ratio of 15 to 45 is better than the
| ratio of 2 to 45. I'm assuming there is some law of
| diminishing returns here, that hasn't set in at 2 or 4
| years, but has set in by 15 years. In other words, a
| politician who has to run for office every 2 years is
| powerless in the face of civil servants, whereas a
| political who runs for office every 15 years definitely
| has the time needed to force a showdown with civil
| servants, whenever civil servants are acting in a rogue
| manner.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > True, though the ratio of 15 to 45 is better than the
| ratio of 2 to 45.
|
| Senate terms are 6 years, not 2.
| bumby wrote:
| Are we still talking about Pelosi? She's not a Senator
| mcguire wrote:
| Is this based on real data, or is it just theoretical?
|
| Electing Senators for life is essentially what we have
| now, and that seems to be working spectacularly.
| lkrubner wrote:
| The research on this has built up over the last 120 years
| and Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels survey most
| of that, starting with the critics of Progressive Era
| reforms, and moving up to modern studies of situations
| where the public has made poor choices because the voters
| do not understand the issues.
| hobs wrote:
| The claim is that civil servants are the bad guys and yet
| somehow people we make into civil servants would somehow
| "fight for us" - its the same line of bullshit that
| politicians have been hawking for decades in America.
|
| I'm an outsider! They yell, as they have private meetings
| for billions.
|
| Pelosi has been in office for 18 terms... so how hasn't
| she been able to "fix the system"?
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Because one individual rep has limited power? This is a
| positive thing and not a negative
| tharne wrote:
| Pelosi is the Speaker, not some backbencher with one
| vote. She has enormous power, perhaps only second to the
| President.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| No, the claim is that civil servants are not directly
| responsible to the constituency. Like it or not,
| Representatives are elected every two years by their
| constituents. Representatives get to do what they want as
| long as their constituency is ok with it (within the
| bounds of their own body's rules, which they get to vote
| on)
| bumby wrote:
| That implies what, though? That the people get the
| government they deserve due to their unwillingness to
| learn and vote people out of office?
| tacocataco wrote:
| How about a electoral system that isn't First Past the
| Post?
|
| Give the voters the ability to pick more than two options.
| syki wrote:
| What does one have to do with the other? Do you have valid
| reasons for thinking corruption of Senators or
| Representatives would be less with term limits? I think the
| level of corruption would not change with term limits and
| there are some negatives with term limits. I don't see how
| it would help.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| With limits on how long they can hold the office, there
| will be a much shorter time span in which they can
| collect and act on inside information. There will also be
| a much shorter time span in which they can form
| relationships with these companies that could lead to the
| collection of inside information.
|
| In my opinion it's not a solution but it is another way
| to limit the amount of this kind of trading.
| syki wrote:
| Yes, it might limit this type of trading but the
| corruption will just be another type.
| mech422 wrote:
| >> Do you have valid reasons for thinking corruption of
| Senators or Representatives would be less with term
| limits?
|
| I like to think people's terms limit would be reached
| before they get jaded and cynical.. At the very least, it
| would reduce the number of years (and hence the total
| amount of money) lobbyists, etc. would be focused on
| them. Someone that might think $100K in lobbyist money
| isn't worth the risk of repercussions, might think $1M
| (over time) is.
| syki wrote:
| I believe otherwise. A term limited politician will look
| for ways to secure their future. I think with term limits
| we'd end up with even more legislation effectively
| written by lobbyists. Think Robert Rubin type corruption
| on an even wider scale than it is today.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Lots of already cynical people go into politics.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Pelosi has been in congress since the 80s. I do not think
| congress-critters will support higher ethical standards
| that prohibit them from profiting off of insider
| information if they think that means putting themselves
| in a straight-jacket for the rest of their lives. The
| ability to profit off insider information is probably a
| reason some of our congress-critters stay in office
| rather than retiring and pursuing goals elsewhere.
|
| Through the 80s and 90s, I recall politicians and talking
| heads using the phrase "...even the appearance of
| impropriety". I'm tempted to conclude there's something
| telling about the way this quaint phrase seems to have
| disappeared.
|
| EDIT: not saying term limits are the answer, just that I
| can see the relationship suggested.
| syki wrote:
| My contention is that we have very corrupt politicians
| leading the country. That corruption will not go away
| with the imposition of term limits. It's a bad response
| to the problem of corruption. I don't know what would
| solve the problem but strongly feel term limits is not
| the solution. I know you aren't saying that term limits
| are the answer; I'm clarifying my position.
|
| I do agree that politicians aren't even trying to avoid
| the appearance of impropriety. Their response seems to be
| that in the absence of absolute proof of impropriety then
| any appearance of it is ok.
| felistoria wrote:
| The solution is the require everyone that holds high
| office to put all their investments in a blind trust when
| they take the oath of office.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Can you elaborate why term limits wouldn't at least help
| the problem?
| syki wrote:
| A term limited politician will want to secure their
| future and will go into the job with the knowledge that
| their time is limited no matter how well they do the job.
| They'll seek compensation. The corruption will morph to
| adapt to the new reality of term limitations but the
| amount of corruption will not decrease.
| nescioquid wrote:
| FWIW, I agree with you. For a brief time in the 90s, the
| topic was au courant, and my opinion was that is was a
| smoke-screen against campaign finance reform.
| clairity wrote:
| rather than worrying specifically about term limits, i
| think the general solution to political corruption is much
| more democracy, not less. make it _very, very_ expensive
| for money to corrupt power, and make it hard to stay in
| power without maintaining fairness and integrity in the
| political system.
|
| instead of 100 senators, let's have 100 per state [0].
| instead of 1 representative per 750,000, let's go back to
| the original 1 per 30,000, giving us 11,000
| representatives. let's have 99 supreme court justices,
| rather than 9. let's elect all the cabinet positions
| directly and separately. instead of multi-year terms, let's
| vote every single year for each representative office, and
| make election day a mandatory-paid holiday for everyone (to
| give folks time to research and consider their votes).
| let's convert many more administrative positions to elected
| offices. repeal citizen's united, which flooded political
| campaigns with unlimited amounts of corporate money (giving
| the wealthy even more disproportionate voice on top of
| their already disproportionate voice).
|
| it's be messy at times, but we don't get good civics and
| good governance without the people being given more time
| and space to think about governance in depth.
|
| [0]: alternatively, we could divide up states into smaller
| entities, which would be even better for decentralizing
| power (and limiting corruption), but that's much harder to
| do.
| jvalencia wrote:
| While I rather like this idea, there's something to the
| fact that we need a check/balance. What you don't want is
| to have a mob make bad policy, which I think is what
| would happen in this case.
|
| This is precisely why individual states can stand up to
| the federal government -- people in California could make
| policies that devastate Maryland, for example. Not
| because they want to, but because they lack context ---
| even reasonable authority.
| clairity wrote:
| that scenario is unlikely in the proposed scenario, since
| the powers of the federal government is limited insofar
| as targeting like that is expressly prohibited. indirect
| targeting (crafting the specifics of a bill to exclude
| all but the target) is more prevalent amongst a smaller
| number of insiders working in dark corners of
| legislation. having many more people involved, and a more
| democratically-involved populace, provides sunshine on
| dubious shit like that.
| bbulkow wrote:
| California state offices have term limits, i voted for
| them, and they are terrible. No one can make a living as a
| legislator, so we have beginners and they are getting steam
| rolled by lobbyists. There is now a revolving path of
| moving from one office to the next to make a living. It is
| crazy.
| bumby wrote:
| I think many people don't think "politician" should be a
| career option.
|
| However, there are some states that don't pay their
| legislators at all and that comes with its own problems.
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Feinstein is worth even more, her husband is a billionaire
| based off Chinese trade deals. People need to realize
| politicians on both sides of the aisle sold them out to get
| rich
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _People need to realize politicians on both sides of the
| aisle sold them out to get rich_
|
| Yes, there are centrist neo-liberals in both parties. They
| don't want Bernie Sanders types or Donald Trump types to be
| elected.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| Her husband also made a quick $5 million off of Alphabet
| stock conveniently before the house considered anti-trust
| bills aimed at big tech.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/07/08/inside-n.
| ..
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > I mean she's worth over $100 million...
|
| I don't get it. Is it just sport at this point?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Once you're worth a certain amount the most sensible places
| to store your money are places that use it to generate more
| money.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| True. But I meant it more in the context of the
| discussion. Her implication is that she wishes to
| continue trading stocks instead of parking her money
| someplace safe while in office. Why? What is the point?
| Does she not have enough? Is it sport? I'm not saying
| people should not get wealthy, but she could park it and
| easily still get $10M a year.
| [deleted]
| exabrial wrote:
| Her husband is a professional investor who somehow manages to
| buy very deep options on troubled corporations right before
| the legislative branch hands them a bunch of money, sending
| their stock price soaring.
|
| California can't be bothered not to elect this evil person
| that is the absolute epitome of corruption.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Is there evidence of this? Anytime I have seen the details,
| in context, of Pelosi trades, they seem very unconvincing.
|
| When someone does a lot of trading, it is easy to cherry
| pick the successful trades or apparently conflicted trades
| while ignoring the whole picture, and scope of the
| portfolio.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Is there evidence of this?_
|
| Is this the right question? Insider trading is incredibly
| hard to prove as it is. But we _know_ that Pelosi is
| privy to insider information. She 's an 82 year old
| centimillionaire, does she really need to be day-trading
| options?
| docmars wrote:
| Not to mention it's commonsensical at this point -- we
| can let the courts decide, but there is enough reason to
| suspect something dubious is afoot, given her lack of
| integrity as a person from moral and ethical standpoints.
| merpnderp wrote:
| I think her husband has beaten Warren Buffet by nearly
| double. No one is consistently that good.
| thenightcrawler wrote:
| I think her husband has beat the s%P the last year, I"m
| not sure long term.
| mattferderer wrote:
| From what I've seen in headlines he buys a lot of big
| tech call options dated a year out or more. Since big
| tech has done well over the past decade, he probably has
| beat S&P by buying calls. As long as big tech stocks go
| up 10% a yr, he'll do well with that strategy.
|
| According to this they invest heavy in mostly big tech,
| probably similar to a lot of people here https://housesto
| ckwatcher.com/summary_by_rep/Hon.%20Nancy%20...
|
| I think the public should be given notice immediately
| when Congress members purchase or sell shares/options. I
| think they should also have to hold on to shares/options
| for a certain length of time. I think this could solve
| most problems.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| There was a twitter account that was called "Nancy
| Pelosi's Stock Tracker" but since Jack left, the new CEO
| seems to have shut the account down. I have no idea why
| it was shutdown though.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Ah yes, CEOs are in charge of banning individual accounts
| 12edline wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're joking but Jack Dorsey was
| absolutely the final decision maker in many high profile
| account bans
| docmars wrote:
| Irrelevant. Why did Twitter ban an account reporting
| objective details on a public figure's actions and/or
| corruption?
|
| (The 3rd most powerful person in our elite ruling class,
| mind you)
| carnitine wrote:
| So have plenty of people?
| docmars wrote:
| +1 to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29583254
|
| This dead reply could not be more sound, and plausible. It
| was downvoted due to a dogpile of political disagreements,
| sadly. I am beyond excited to say "we told you so" when the
| populace is ready to acknowledge it, and gets beyond its
| hatred founded on veritable lies about a single man.
|
| While we're talking about Pelosi, it was rather funny to
| see how she has reacted to the Mark Meadows texts recently,
| which single-handedly disprove the Left's January 6 claims
| of Trump's involvement, a baseless conspiracy theory from
| start to finish.
|
| I truly can't wait until we no longer tolerate fabricated
| political scandals ruining the fabric of society by
| deceiving people to act their ugliest towards otherwise
| average people.
|
| Raw evidence or blind willful ignorance, take your pick --
| from a centrist's perspective:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoiqEVG55N0
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Oh come on. Have you seen the people who have primaried
| her? While their politics may or may not be better, they
| have been problematic personal and professional lives.
| bronzeage wrote:
| "elect". There's rampant election fraud. Elections are
| total fraud all over the US, Trump's election gave so much
| evidence, but so called "liberals" just ignore it. Even tho
| it hurts them just as well and they get corrupt candidates
| from it. Bernie was also cheated out. The magnitude of
| fraud shown at 2020 presidential election was huge, you can
| easily control congress with a fraction of that fraud, and
| that was probably happening for years. Congress approval
| rating tells you all you need to know about how functioning
| are your elections.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > California can't be bothered not to elect this evil
| person
|
| Except in the tiniest (by population) states, states at
| large do not elect members to the House, despite the fact
| that they are frequently identified by party and state.
|
| California is the _maximum_ example of the error of this
| kind of description.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| OK. San Francisco, the fourth largest city in California,
| can't be bothered not to elect this evil person. Happy?
| snerbles wrote:
| A significant fraction of HN's readership resides in that
| district as well.
| ModernMech wrote:
| It it really shameful though? As you said, it's not
| surprising. And it's not surprising because this kind of
| thing is so common in positions of power. It's so common that
| I have started to admit to myself, after wrestling with the
| shame, that this is one of the key organizing principles of
| our society; that the primary purpose of attaining power is
| to leverage it to benefit yourself personally. If seemingly
| everyone agrees on this principle, left and right, then where
| does the shame come in? Why _shouldn't_ I seek power to
| enrich myself and my friends? Everyone else is doing it. No
| one gets punished for doing it. That's the way we have
| decided that our society works.
|
| Society is worse off for it, probably, sure. But if our
| society doesn't care about our society, why should I? Is that
| shameful? I used to think so but I'm not really that
| convinced anymore.
| squidproquo wrote:
| You will probably score very high on this test:
| https://www.psychopathtest.com/
| brnaftr183 wrote:
| Well, you're right.
|
| See, we more or less structured the US on the Hobbesian
| state of nature, wherein we're all supposed to be greedy,
| self-centered, and violent. This was rife with induction
| and failed to account for a litany of examples that simply
| weren't present. It's old hat that never got scraped off,
| but now it's baked into _literally_ everything we do.
|
| But because the fundament of our system is developed on
| that conception of humanity, it contributes to the
| conditioning of the people laboring under it. My favorite
| thought experiment: My ex used to accuse me of cheating,
| I'd have to explain myself, she'd go through my phone, we'd
| argue; at that point, being punished for the crime, I had
| may as well cheat to reap the benefits of my just desserts.
| The Hobbesian affair is a slight alteration in the logical
| apparatus there - you're not being greedy so you won't be
| rewarded.
|
| I'll credit the system this: I suspect a more "social" (via
| Rousseau) view would have immense difficulty in defense
| against the Hobbesian man. We're by nature, and the dint of
| our calling as humans (cooperative apes) intrinsically
| trusting. Granted, there are some conditionals, and some
| conditioning that as we grow wise, a skepticism emerges. To
| me that says a system that doesn't employ the Hobbesian
| mode, is highly susceptible to it. If your institutions
| are, historically, pristine in execution for a long period
| the social expectation would eventually gravitate to
| certainty. When some bad actor is seated, a little
| sophistry could go a long way in creating a system of
| exploitation. Something like that...
|
| Most people, I think, and this is borne out by my own
| experience - just want left alone to their lives. The
| chains aren't uncomfortable until you find their limits,
| and as long as you don't reach that you're hardly aware of
| them after spending a life captive in their grasp. This
| coupled with intrinsic trust, and the world's inundations,
| add liberally debt and the construction of the social
| standard of "good" and "success" and you've managed to
| culminate a great ethical slavery.
|
| Ultimately though, whether we're fighting fire with fire,
| the fact remains that we're pressing people to do exactly
| as you did. Offering a free ascension on a staircase made
| of the backs of mankind, blaming those who fail to acede to
| it on a moral basis, and complaining about the living who
| one tromps upon.
|
| As to organizing, that's a joke. We've really not trialed
| any other approach at scale sans Marxism, itself a joke.
| And collectivization of small elements hardly marks a real
| difference when it's plainly easy to exploit.
| frazbin wrote:
| you've spent too much time in the 18th century and have
| fallen into the trap of making vast hand-wavy claims
| about humanity without a shred of evidence. Stop it.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Most people, I think, and this is borne out by my own
| experience - just want left alone to their lives.
|
| I really found your entire comment very insightful. To
| the above quote, most people do want to be left alone,
| the rest want to tell those people what to do.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is the sort of comment that's suited to a different
| forum. HN users will react in an emotional manner so the
| detail of your comment will not receive attention. You
| might as well have said "I think I should exploit people"
| because the responses will treat it that way.
|
| Just a heads up.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| It would be shameful if anyone felt shame anymore. We do
| live in a post-shame society.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| > Why shouldn't I seek power to enrich myself and my
| friends?
|
| > Society is worse off for it, probably, sure.
|
| You answered your own question. You are directly and
| knowingly contributing to the worsening of society and you
| should feel ashamed for it. If anything you should feel
| shame for your lack of self awareness here
| ModernMech wrote:
| > You answered your own question. You are directly and
| knowingly contributing to the worsening of society and
| you should feel ashamed for it.
|
| That doesn't really answer the question though. If
| knowingly making society worse were the standard for
| feeling shame, I think I'd be too depressed and shame-
| ridden to even get out of bed. I mean, you want to talk
| about damaging society: every single day I get into my
| car and burn fossil fuels on my commute to/from work,
| which is essentially slowly killing the planet. I know
| it's bad for society, but I do it anyway. Knowingly. On
| purpose. Can you imagine how psychopathic I am to treat
| society with such casual disregard?
|
| As another poster put it: "To feel shame is an emotional
| reaction to violating standards of morality."
|
| What I'm saying is an actor in American society is
| beholden to the standards of morality as defined by the
| leaders of its community, voted into office by the people
| in its community. It's been shown for a while now that
| this behavior is accepted, expected, and tolerated. It's
| not only unpunished when caught, but rewarded. This _is_
| the standard of morality in my community. If shame is
| tied to a standard of morality, which is orthogonal as to
| whether it helps or harms society, then there is no basis
| for shame for this behavior.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| First I wanted to say I'm not trying to guilt trip you or
| anything, I admit I wrote my response quickly and didn't
| think it would attract this much attention. So just
| wanted to let you know I value your views and am not
| trying to put you down!
|
| > That doesn't really answer the question though. If
| knowingly making society worse were the standard for
| feeling shame, I think I'd be too depressed and shame-
| ridden to even get out of bed. I mean, you want to talk
| about damaging society: every single day I get into my
| car and burn fossil fuels on my commute to/from work,
| which is essentially slowly killing the planet. I know
| it's bad for society, but I do it anyway. Knowingly. On
| purpose. Can you imagine how psychopathic I am to treat
| society with such casual disregard?
|
| I think you bring up a good idea here. I recently came
| across a lecture by Jaron Lanier that discusses this kind
| of thinking and how to reason about it.
|
| > I came up with an image to help me think about who the
| beneficiary is of our activities, whether we're engineers
| or writers or anything else, and I called this the
| 'circle of empaty'.... Those who are inside the circle
| are the beneficiaries of what you do, and anything inside
| the circle deserves your empathy. Things outside the
| circle perhaps don't deserve your antagonism but on the
| other hand they're not the beneficiaries of what you do.
| So I hope that people believe that all human beings
| should be inside the circle. That's not always the case;
| there are racists and homophobes and many other varieties
| of ideological people who would like to put _some_ human
| beings outside the circle, but I think decent people can
| agree that humans belong inside... Typically liberals
| wish to make the circle larger and conservatives wish to
| make the circle smaller... If you make the circle too
| small you become cruel and destructive... and if you make
| the circle too big so that all living things are inside
| the circle you can't live because your body kills
| bacteria all the time, you essentially become incompetent
|
| https://youtu.be/rGqiswuJuQI
|
| I would recommend listening to at least the beginning of
| the talk where he goes over this idea because I think a
| similar approach can help with regards to contributing to
| environmental issues and such. For instance we can reason
| that it would be actually more harmful to us as a society
| to morally judge people who drive to the grocery store to
| buy themselves food so they can eat, because if people
| don't do that they can surely end up in a situation where
| they are sick and unhealthy.
|
| On the other hand lets look at the situation we see here
| and ask: Would it be more harmful for society to continue
| to allow a small group of people who can effectively
| change the rules of a society be able to profit
| financially from these changes? I think again in this
| case, yes it would be more harmful!
|
| We have to think about how things can get out of hand if
| we do not have the right checks and balances. Like Jaron
| mentions in his lecture, conservatism and the shrinking
| of the circle can go out of control like we saw with
| Germany after the first World War. We should aim to have
| _all of society_ within this circle of empathy, and not
| just _me and my family and friends_. If we can legally
| disincentivize people in power from shrinking their
| circle of empathy in these areas I think it is a net
| benefit for us as a society and sets a foundation for
| what we should find morally worth our empathy.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > you should feel ashamed for it. If anything you should
| feel shame
|
| Trying to guilt-trip or shame people on HN for their
| views is absolutely against the HN guidelines[1] - "Be
| kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation"
| "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive"
| "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument" and so
| on.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I can admit, the initial wording can sound like I am
| trying to guilt trip. I'll try to be better about that in
| the future. But to elaborate more I am trying to respond
| to the question "Is it shameful though?"
| lgrialn wrote:
| You guys are probably aware that what you end up with is
| a safe space for nazis.
| kbelder wrote:
| Like free speech; the extreme are protected by the rules
| that protect us all. That's a good thing.
| yomly wrote:
| >If anything you should feel shame for your lack of self
| awareness here
|
| This is no place for these kinds of statements. Parent
| posed a question that can 100% be read charitably. In a
| system where all incentives promote individualism and
| self-interest, why _should_ we care about others indeed.
|
| To care about others is _socialism_. Or _collectivism_.
| Identity politics is probably part of the issue here, but
| I 'm more interested in what other smarter people than me
| have to say, free from being shamed.
| hobs wrote:
| You chide someone while literally demonstrating
| sociopathic behavior. I dont think you are in the right.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| To not care about others is _psychopathy_. They typically
| don 't care what others think save for how it impacts
| their ability to do what they want and this is generally
| seen as a social net negative. Systems that incentivize
| psychopathy deserve to be dismantled.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Caring about others is normally called "empathy," not
| socialism.
|
| A trivial example of this would be any example of someone
| caring about someone else for non-selfish reasons prior
| to humans inventing socialism. Take your pick.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| The parent asked if it was shameful to think that way and
| I responded, yes it is. I'm not going around looking to
| fling insults, I think it is important to take feedback
| constructively and being honest is important to
| constructive criticism.
| kolbe wrote:
| > and you should feel ashamed for it
|
| But why? Telling someone they should be "ashamed of
| [their] own lack of self-awareness" sounds like you don't
| know how to answer the question, so you just hurl insults
| instead.
|
| History has shown over and over and over that relying on
| people to be benevolent when they have outsized power is
| foolish. That they almost never have this "shame" you
| think everyone should have. I find this to be far more
| foolish: consolidating power into someone's hands with
| the assumption that they will rely on shame or pride to
| guide them towards using the power for good. We should
| all acknowledge humans are tribalist and self-interested,
| and limit the amount of power they can have to exploit.
| The way I see it, if you give them the power and they
| "misuse" it, that's as much your fault as theirs.
| munk-a wrote:
| The person this article is about (Nancy Pelosi) is
| currently speaker of the house - the single most powerful
| person in the house and the person who, annually, sets
| rules on house procedure to outline what actions are
| appropriate and not. She has the power to unilaterally
| end this practice and chooses not to.
|
| Additionally - we're talking about a pool of 435 people
| here - not thousands or millions. Individual house reps
| standing up and personally pledging to trade individual
| stocks does happen and usually gets accolades in the
| news. This is a case where the scale is so small that you
| acting benevolently against society has the power to sway
| society to act better.
|
| So I think this particular scenario is a lot different
| than being a good person who properly separates their
| recycling (if that's a thing where you are) among the
| millions who can't be assed and a system that has no real
| expectation that you will.
| kolbe wrote:
| Huh. And yet Pelosi chooses to enrich herself instead of
| benefiting society. Which moral framework does this fit
| more neatly into?
|
| Maybe what you think of as morality is actually just a
| set of dictum from powerful people that helps them enrich
| themselves at the expense of you. There's absolutely no
| cosmic or objective moral basis for our insider trading
| laws one way or the other. It just so happens that they
| conveniently enrich the people who make the laws at the
| expense of everyone else. Again, what moral framework
| does this fit into? People acting selfishly, or people
| acting in the interest of some nebulously defined
| "society?"
| munk-a wrote:
| I think this is a fair argument but one I don't really
| subscribe to myself. A strong argument in favor of this
| behavior being morally justified is that Nancy Pelosi is
| doing it and hasn't been voted out - but I think a strong
| argument against it is that people are complaining about
| it vocally. At the end of the day if we allow it to
| happen it's going to happen and if we disallow it we stop
| it - whether that allowance or denial aligns with
| "societal morals" is a pretty murky question with a lot
| of people having different opinions.
|
| My personal opinion is that this is immoral - and we're
| having this discussion because someone thought it was so
| immoral that they were motivated to write an article
| about how much they dislike it - but people write all
| sorts of articles so that's not a proof at the end of the
| day... Really, there are some things we can mostly (not
| all) agree are immoral like murder and rape - but even
| that isn't universally held (or agreed on to the same
| limit) because, well, some people do it. So yes -
| societal morals are pretty vague to define and I'm sure
| there are some people that feel fervently that House reps
| trading individual stocks is highly beneficial to society
| - but I feel like the majority of folks are on the other
| side on this one.
| kolbe wrote:
| But you're now relying on the notion that a majority of a
| subset of people's opinions define moral good and bad.
| This has never really been true, at least in terms of
| majorities making objectively good decisions (moral ones
| are a little harder to gauge). The US is filled with
| examples of where the majority was probably wrong,
| starting with the original War of Independence.
|
| I don't think you'll find many fully informed people who
| thinks that house reps trading on insider info is good
| (myself included), unless they're personally
| beneficiaries of that system.
|
| But this discussion isn't really about that. The original
| guy asked "why shouldn't she do this?" She can do it. She
| benefits from doing it. No one will stop her. Why is it
| immoral for her to do it? Which is a totally different
| thing from "the majority of informed people don't want
| her to do it." To that end, she is behaving exactly as
| should be expected of her given the amount of power she
| has.
|
| The only way as far as I know to get people to not make
| decisions that are bad for the world but good for them is
| to not let them have the power to make that decision. The
| US government has become an atrocity of corrupt and
| consolidated power. That's the problem, IMO. And so long
| as its leaders can spy freely on Americans, can take 40%
| of their income, can deny them rights, etc, then this is
| what happens.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Power is given by the people. If we can culturally all
| accept that enriching oneself at the expense of many
| others is morally wrong then that's the moral framework
| we should judge by. Life is _not_ a zero sum game, and it
| doesn't _have_ to be thought of that way. We can choose
| to try to do good for the most amount of people, instead
| of allowing the most amount of good to go to the least
| amount people (least here meaning smallest population, I
| suppose 1% is another way to read)
| kolbe wrote:
| > Power is given by the people.
|
| Kinda? I know that's the supposed cliche, but it doesn't
| really ring true. The "people's" will as defined by some
| collective subset of the population has certainly been a
| powerful influence at times, but it's far from a concept
| that is simply "given by the people." I don't think Pol
| Pot's power was given by the people. Hitler's wasn't. Xi
| Jinping's isn't.
|
| And even Nancy Pelosi's isn't given in the way you imply.
| Through a strong network of bribing and brainwashing, our
| entire political system leaves us with the choice of
| empowering corrupt militaristic theocrats or a party that
| mostly uses tax dollars to bribe voters. I think a very
| good response to this situation is "I don't like what
| Pelosi is doing, but I would really hate what a
| republican would do in her place." And that doesn't
| sounds like people have much power at all.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >She has the power to unilaterally end this practice and
| chooses not to.
|
| Would such a restriction be constitutional?
|
| How would it be enforced?
|
| Who would investigate impropriety?
| munk-a wrote:
| 1. I believe so as the house has a pretty wide latitude
| to set procedural and behavioral rules for members - this
| could run into issues if it forced any house members into
| legitimate hardship or violated religious freedoms.
|
| 2. The House Committee on Ethics[1] can recommend a few
| remedies including Censure and Expulsion - whether these
| are actually enacted is decided by a general floor vote
| by the whole House of Representatives.
|
| 3. The same body - the House Committee on Ethics would
| instigate an investigation into any suspected wrong-
| doings.
|
| The House essentially has an internal police force - but
| whatever the Ethics Committee finds is then brought to a
| general house floor vote to decide on punishment. If the
| populace suspected the house was acting immorally the
| remedy is to change the representatives - these
| investigations are supposed to root out extreme
| violations of generally agreed norms in the short term,
| but a sea change requires the election of house members
| that will advocate for the new norms.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Comm
| ittee_...
| ModernMech wrote:
| > If the populace suspected the house was acting
| immorally the remedy is to change the representatives -
| these investigations are supposed to root out extreme
| violations of generally agreed norms in the short term,
| but a sea change requires the election of house members
| that will advocate for the new norms.
|
| This is my whole point. The Congress knows this is an
| issue. The House Committee on Ethics knows this is an
| issue. The people know this is an issue. The members of
| Congress who have not moved on this issue were just
| reelected by the people, and have now telegraphed that
| they will not solve this issue in the future. It will not
| be solved, yet these representatives will be reelected by
| the people again and again. The House Committee on Ethics
| will not investigate. If you engage in this behavior you
| get richer and nothing bad happens to you. If you don't
| engage in this behavior, you are leaving money on the
| table and the only person you hurt is yourself and a
| nebulous, distributed entity we call "society". Our
| former President even pardoned a Congressman for the very
| crime of using his privileged position to facilitate
| insider trading for his family! The power of the pardon
| is one of the most solemn expressions of the values a
| society holds. Taken as a whole, this tells me that
| actually, American society does not consider this to be a
| problem. So if shame is an emotion derived from the
| violation of societal norms, I am only asking why this
| should be shameful? Insider trading is in accordance with
| societal norms.
| munk-a wrote:
| I wouldn't expect the election to immediately boot all
| the congressfolk out who engage in this activity - and it
| is a tacitly accepted activity... greed is (much to the
| detriment of society) generally considered a virtue in
| America. However, we have seen several upcoming
| politicians specifically pledge not to engage in this
| behavior and get big boosts from their declarations. I
| think that society is in a place where this behavior is
| generally considered unacceptable but that it will take a
| while for that to catch up with congressfolk. I think it
| is perfectly rational for the behavior to be shamed
| since, while people aren't overthrowing the government
| over it - there is a general disapproval of the action.
|
| > If you don't engage in this behavior, you are leaving
| money on the table and the only person you hurt is
| yourself and a nebulous, distributed entity we call
| "society".
|
| I disagree with this statement because I think it is
| putting too much necessity on maximizing personal gain -
| there are plenty of reasons not to engage in insider
| trading and refusing to do so doesn't "hurt" you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the person who, annually, sets rules on house procedure
|
| Wrong.
|
| The Speaker doesn't set rules on house procedure, the
| House as a whole does.
|
| > She has the power to unilaterally end this practice and
| chooses not to.
|
| No, she doesn't. Neither does the House alone, since at
| the federal level, "lawmakers" includes the Senate.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| To feel shame is an emotional reaction to violating
| standards of morality. If you have no morality, you have no
| shame.
| ModernMech wrote:
| But who set this standard of morality? Society, right?
| What I'm saying is this shame imposed from society worked
| before. But as I look around, I don't see that the
| prevailing moral standard is that we must all work for
| the betterment of society. Society doesn't even feel this
| is a worthy thing. I don't agree that there is a moral
| imperative in American society to work for the betterment
| of everyone.
| pintxo wrote:
| That's head on. People adjust their behaviour to the one
| they see in their peers, including public figures.
|
| This is quite likely a slow moving change going on
| unnoticed for decades, until it crosses a threshold were it
| starts to become quite visible. And possibly a major danger
| to society as we know it.
|
| The big question is are we before or after the threshold,
| and can we reverse the process anyway?
| echelon wrote:
| You've summarized a human pattern that I sort of
| intuitively guessed at, but didn't really synthesize and
| integrate.
|
| All power seems to behave like this. Republicans,
| Democrats, Communists, corporate titans, office
| politickers.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Ask not what your country can do for you, ask how you can
| get just enough power to amass and horde wealth while
| masquerading it on behalf of the benefit of your
| countryfolk.
|
| I am not American but I do live in a country that has a
| government. It's curious to see stories of people going
| from <citizen grunt> to <elected official> and then using
| their power and insight for personal gain, while never
| capitalizing on opportunity to force the changes that
| were campaigned on, when presented with unique chances to
| force the issue to be resolved.
|
| There's such a focus on "getting it right, the first
| time" instead of "anything will be better than nothing,
| and we can re-iterate on this in the future".
|
| An issue with government is much like the issues you face
| at work every day; too much focus on introducing "new",
| and seemingly never enough time to evaluate and improve
| "existing".
| carapace wrote:
| What you're saying is part of a long and broad
| conversation. Read Machiavelli.
|
| > The general theme of "The Prince" is of accepting that
| the aims of princes - such as glory and survival - can
| justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
|
| Most people think Machiavelli was a jerk.
|
| - - - -
|
| Really the question to ask yourself isn't "Why shouldn't I
| seek power to enrich myself and my friends?", the question
| is "What is the best method to achieve _happiness_ for
| myself and my friends? "
| pfkurtz wrote:
| Yes, making society worse off, knowingly: that means
| harming others: yes, be ashamed.
|
| If you're no longer convinced of that, it's because you are
| looking for justifications for defect in the prisoner's
| dilemma, rather than cooperate.
| the_optimist wrote:
| This isn't mere power seeking. This violates the principle
| of 'equality under the law,' since the law has this
| specific exclusion. The problem isn't that Pelosi is
| exploiting the loophole, it's that Pelosi both _controls_
| AND exploits the loophole. Royalty isn't exercising
| 'freedom' when they exploit advantages over the citizenry.
| ModernMech wrote:
| They aren't royalty though. They are elected
| representatives. If elected representatives behave like
| royalty and keep getting elected, isn't that an
| expression of the preferences of the electorate?
| notacoward wrote:
| A market that allows insiders to profit from still-hidden
| information, inevitably at the expense of non-insiders, is not
| truly free. And legislators privy to non-public information
| from hearings are definitely insiders in any rational sense.
| The fact that they're not so in a legal sense is only a
| reflection of the fact that _they write the laws_ and sometimes
| do so for their own benefit. As the saying goes...
|
| There are two groups of people who laugh at the law: those who
| break it, and those who make it.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| How do you prevent this anyway? If you want to make money
| from insider info you can trade it (on a truly free black
| market), if you want to minimize the risk of being caught.
| golemotron wrote:
| We should give her a break. She is busy solving problems in her
| district.
| publicexecution wrote:
| Did you know you can legally rape a 14 year old boy in San
| Fran Shithole?
|
| Did you know that the school board calls asian americans
| "house niggers" ?
|
| Did you know that Pelosi repeatedly gets away without wearing
| a mask inside even though all of us will get yelled at if we
| don't have the mask above the nose in the grocery store,
| present our vax pass and be tripled or quad vaxd?
| publicexecution wrote:
| Did you know that London Breed's (also who repeatedly
| violates the city and now state mask mandate) boyfriend was
| arrested by the FBI for stealing money from the SF Clean
| Streets Program?
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| I can see fat dripping from this post.
| 3glkjlkjgr wrote:
| Yep.
|
| * We've had 3X murders more than "covid deaths" last year.
|
| * We have people dying on the street - you have to literally
| walk over them.
|
| * We have human shit everywhere.
|
| * The mayor's ex-boyfriend was arrested by the FBI for
| stealing money from the "clean streets program".
|
| * They banned natural gas and it is ~40 F right now.
|
| * She repeatedly gets away without wearing a mask (in the
| hair salon, at the Getty wedding, etc.) while us plebes get
| violently assaulted for not having our mask on 'properly' in
| the fucking grocery store.
|
| * The school board refers to Asian Americans as "house
| niggers" and won't leave until people bribe her with a
| package of tens of millions of dollars.
|
| * They tried to rename the schools from names like Washington
| and Lincoln. Why? I don't know Lincoln, a republican, wrote
| this document called the emancipation proclamation -
| apparently freeing a bunch of slaves or something.
|
| * You can't enter a restaurant or most any business inside
| the city without showing your papers - even if you are
| tripled/quadruple vaxd and you are wearing a mask.
|
| * Oh yeh, I forgot, you can legally rape a 14 year old boy
| but not a 14 year old girl.
|
| Man, this fucking list is endless. I hope San Francisco is
| the first city the Chinese bomb with their nuclear tipped
| hyper-sonics.
| godelski wrote:
| I think what a lot of people miss is that a well regulated
| market is a free market.
|
| A market that is unregulated ends up with monopolies and huge
| power dynamics as the old guard is able to pool capital through
| momentum and compounding forces. Good regulation reduces the
| power imbalance so David has the possibility to defeat Goliath
| and they can fight on even ground.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| In capitalism, if you have money you can get power.
|
| In socialism, if you have power you can get money.
|
| I guess in a mixed economy, it flows both ways.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| What if there was a congressional index fund where ordinary
| people could invest in the same basket of trades that
| congressmen/women are making.
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| When I worked for a finance adjacent firm, not even a firm that
| handled money, my compliance policy was super strict even by
| industry standards and I was a lowly Sr. SWE. The reasoning I was
| given was to not never even provide a hint of impropriety or
| using data ahead of our customers. Reputation was everything.
|
| The blanket company-wide policy was as follows. Certain
| departments had rules on top of this.
|
| 1. Limited to general stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, etc. No
| derivatives allowed (options, etc.). Even private stock or
| private options from my prior require required a review from
| compliance when I started. 2. No selling for a gain within 30
| days of the purchase date on ANY security. Selling for a loss was
| allowed at any time. 3. All brokerage accounts had to be linked
| to their compliance portal. An automated compliance check pulled
| your statements weekly and would open a ticket with compliance if
| anything looked to violate policy. If your brokerage was not
| supported electronically, you had to submit monthly paper
| statements.
|
| I don't see why Congress shouldn't be subject to similar rules,
| especially those on finance committees.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| >The reasoning I was given was to not never even provide a hint
| of impropriety or using data ahead of our customers. Reputation
| was everything.
|
| One bit I took away from grad school was the strict standards
| around conflicts of interest. The big concept was "Disclose and
| avoid conflicts of interest _and_ the appearance of
| impropriety. " The avoidance of impropriety is a much higher
| standard, and unfortunately it's all too common to see that
| standard not applied in government.
|
| "Rules for thee, not for me" mentality.
| chernevik wrote:
| Limiting Congress and staff to ETFs and mutual funds seems
| reasonable.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| On the right committees I think you could probably do pretty
| well knowing when to buy SPY puts.
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree with Pelosi that congress members should not be excluded
| from participating in the stock market.
|
| HOWEVER, they should have to follow the same rules as C-level
| execs at public companies, except for every company. They should
| be required to file a sales plan in advance of any sales, and far
| enough in advance that any investor can front-run them. Then they
| can trade on insider information all they want, just like CEOs,
| because it won't matter.
|
| This would basically force them to trade long on companies they
| truly believe in, just like CEOs have to do.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| And who is going to draft a law preventing lawmakers from trading
| stock? Generally, lawmakers have some kind of immunity to prevent
| conflicts of interest like these.
|
| But for the same reason the usual laws don't apply to them, the
| usual "free market economy" shouldn't either. But who is going to
| stop them?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| First, the claim that we are a "free market economy" is factually
| inaccurate; a free market is an unrealizable idealized analytical
| abstraction. We are not such an economy.
|
| Second, it is _particularly_ egregious for someone in a
| leadership position in the legislature which engages in the
| substantial regulation of the economy which makes it _not_ a free
| market to make that claim, _especially_ to defend their own (and
| others similarly situated) ability to act as simultaneous market
| regulators and participants.
|
| Members of Congress should not be permitted to trade stocks
| personally; they should be required to (as Presidents before
| Trump for quite a while traditionally have, but have not been--
| though they should also be--required to) place assets in a blind
| trust during their tenure in office.
|
| I _might_ be able to accept them being allowed to trade
| personally on one condition: each who wants to do must establish
| a fund for that purpose, in which any American citizen is free to
| invest (and liquidate a position in) at any time, with all
| transaction and administrative costs covered by the fund.
| dionian wrote:
| There is a reason Twitter deleted the NancyTracker twitter
| account. This was one of the only few blogs I could find which
| explains what happened: https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-
| nancy-pelosi-stock-tr...
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| As long as the democrats keep hypocrites like Pelosi around they
| will never make any progress. She f...ed up the Obamacare
| negotiations with her super partisan approach. She is just the
| typical super rich NIMBY progressive who talks one way while at
| the same blocking any kind of progress that may cost them money
| or convenience. They talk public schools while sending their
| kinds to exclusive private schools. They talk about solving
| homelessness but the only think they do it is to keep it away
| from their own neighborhoods.
|
| Soon we will we have two 80+ people in leadership of a supposedly
| dynamic and innovative country. WTF?
|
| It's really hard to argue for this party in its current state.
| Not that the other guys are any better but it would be nice to
| have somebody you actually want to vote FOR and not just against
| the other.
| actusual wrote:
| You are a civil servant, why are expecting outsized profit from
| running our country? Our current political climate attracts folks
| who are excited to become wealthy and famous from running our
| country, when we should want people who are excited to run our
| country.
| jnmandal wrote:
| At this point, the country is run by a gerontocracy, and they are
| blatantly grasping at the last scraps of their grift as the ship
| goes down. It's sad to see -- really pathetic.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Pelosi in particular is pretty gross. Seeing her officiate the
| wedding of a Getty, the godfather of the governor, who used to
| be married to Trump Jr's girlfriend, in SF city hall, while
| 10000 guys are shivering in tents on the sidewalks outside, was
| disgusting. I honestly do not understand why the people in SF
| who consider themselves radical socialists haven't burned down
| her mansion. It doesn't make sense that they will torch a
| Google bus but never go after their actual oppressors.
|
| If this scene won't make you sharpen your guillotine, what
| would? https://www.hola.com/us/celebrities/20211109306320/ivy-
| getty...
| throwaway75787 wrote:
| It's her sanctimony that settles it. Claiming to be righteous
| in the face of Trump/Republicans' sins (and believe me, I
| have no special love for that). Similar with people like
| Hillary acting like they are owed the election. Meanwhile
| people in the heartland are pissing in bottles, hoping to get
| another dollar per hour, and getting killed by tornadoes
| because they are not allowed to leave their shift at the
| warehouse. While she's defending grift to earn millions more.
| It's filthy. So this is how we go out, not with a bang but
| with a whimper. So much for "all men (and women) are created
| equal".
| devmunchies wrote:
| > It's filthy. So this is how we go out, not with a bang
| but with a whimper.
|
| agree. and we just have to watch
|
| >So much for "all men (and women) are created equal"
|
| created equal != retain equal value
| dntrkv wrote:
| What do you find gross about that? That there are people
| suffering while others are well-off? That rich, powerful
| people are friends with other rich, powerful people?
|
| Not seeing how that makes Pelosi particularly "gross."
| jeffbee wrote:
| > That there are people suffering while others are well-
| off?
|
| See, you got it in just a single guess. Good job!
| dntrkv wrote:
| How does that make Pelosi particularly gross? That
| applies to any person that's well off.
| hossbeast wrote:
| Because she, in particular, is in a position to do
| something about it.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Yes, and she has done more about it than the vast
| majority of not just people, but public servants. She has
| helped pass a ton of legislation as Speaker of the House.
| You might not agree with her politics, but she has done a
| lot.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Social spending can't solve San Fran's social problems.
| 3glkjlkjgr wrote:
| Most of our politicians should be shot.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| gerontocracy: Government based on rule by elders.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Just wait...the geriatrics will die soon enough as they
| necessarily do, and then all of the resources they've
| squirreled away will be inherited by their heirs who have even
| fewer scruples or talents than their parents.
| disambiguation wrote:
| It's amazing these people keep getting voted back in too.
| bmeski wrote:
| Your plane will likely crash if you don't toe the line.
|
| edit: Tow => toe
| gruez wrote:
| the phrase is " _toe_ the line "
| bmeski wrote:
| oof. thank you lol.
| mitigating wrote:
| If I have a choice between someone who used insider trading
| to make money and someone who lied about election fraud, a
| direct attack on democracy, I choose the least evil (or best
| of) the two people. I wish there was a third party system.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The fact that you felt compelled to say what you just did
| (which is patently absurd) is why our democracy is failing.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's the same old problem. Everyone hates Congress, but loves
| their own Congressman. And tribal politics being what it is,
| nobody wants to throw away their vote on a third-party
| because they're worried that will cause The Other Side to
| win.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I mean that's literally true though. Every election in the
| foreseeable future will pretty much always be won by one of
| the two parties. As the parent comment points out they've
| got millions of dollars put in to generating tons of
| outreach. Do you honestly believe an internet comment is
| comparable?
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's amazing these people keep getting voted back in too.
|
| It's a two-party system, you have to vote for one of them!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuYsZUMuj0M, The Simpsons
| S8E1 - Treehouse of Horror VII - Kang and Kodos
|
| Or more accurately, they've gotten really good at getting
| people to focus on hating the other guy or getting wrapped up
| in partisan BS.
| CPLX wrote:
| "It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
|
| "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
|
| "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more
| rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had
| the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing
| anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people
| are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the
| lizards and the lizards rule the people."
|
| "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a
| democracy."
|
| "I did," said Ford. "It is."
|
| "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously
| obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
|
| "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've
| all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the
| government they've voted in more or less approximates to
| the government they want."
|
| "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
|
| "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
|
| "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
|
| "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the
| wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
| PeterisP wrote:
| You can vote for someone else in the primaries though,
| can't you?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| How would that help?
| gorwell wrote:
| How many times are we going to fall for `This is the most
| important election of our lives!`. It's always about
| choosing the lesser evil. Every time. And then nothing
| changes.
|
| Andrew Yang has the right idea. We need to break the
| duopoly by implementing Ranked-Choice Voting and
| Nonpartisan Primaries.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> How many times are we going to fall for `This is the
| most important election of our lives!`. It's always about
| choosing the lesser evil. Every time. And then nothing
| changes.
|
| > Andrew Yang has the right idea. We need to break the
| duopoly by implementing Ranked-Choice Voting and
| Nonpartisan Primaries.
|
| Those sound like a technical solutions to a social
| problem.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Why can't technical solutions help to simplify/ease the
| social problem? It's clearly not the only thing required,
| but it would provide some major relief.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is that we do not have effective third parties,
| because
|
| * elections in the US require a fuckton of spending. AOC
| raised millions for a _House_ district that wasn 't even
| competitive, meanwhile the British Parliament has a
| 30,000GBP spending _limit_. It is a lot easier for upstart
| parties to raise tens of thousands of dollars rather than
| millions.
|
| * third parties in the US have a habit of mostly trying to
| go for broke and failing. The general track record of
| successful ones elsewhere is that they usually cut their
| teeth in lower levels of government before they start
| competing well in national elections, and on top of that
| the lower level elections are generally easier to win (much
| lower voter count = much lower spending, thinner electoral
| margins, etc.)
|
| * the US lacks regional parties, which is another source of
| third-partyism, but depending on your views this might be a
| good thing.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > * the US lacks regional parties, which is another
| source of third-partyism, but depending on your views
| this might be a good thing.
|
| IIRC, for a lot time the two major US parties were
| effectively federations of different regional parties
| (e.g. your farm-state Democrat had a very different set
| of positions that your northeastern urban Democrat, ditto
| for Republicans). That's collapsed in the last 20 years,
| and everything's basically national, which is a big part
| of the problem.
| felistoria wrote:
| It's amazing that we don't have a middle ground party.
| The compromise between left and right since they can't
| compromise on their own.
| whatshisface wrote:
| A lot of people would argue that they're both middle
| ground parties that pretend to have big differences for
| the show of it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > A lot of people would argue that they're both middle
| ground parties that pretend to have big differences for
| the show of it.
|
| Even though a lot of people argue that, if it weren't
| true things would be far worse. Despite the differences,
| there needs to be something resembling a governing
| consensus.
| Mizza wrote:
| Absolutely amazing you can look at the state of American
| politics and think "what we need here is more centrism".
| whatshisface wrote:
| Does the 30kGBP limit include money that other people
| spend on you? If not, that sounds like a way to
| _guarantee_ that big third parties (who can write checks
| independently of the campaign to support their
| candidates) will always be able to outspend grassroots
| donations organized by the campaign.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| The lack of 3rd parties is not a function of spending -
| it's due to one-winner voting. With only one winner in
| each election, voters who would prefer a 3rd, 4th, or 5th
| place candidate quickly figure out that this is a waste
| of time and they had better line up behind one of the top
| two. This is how the US does end up with a small handful
| of 3rd party candidates here and there - because there
| were enough concentration of voters in their (usually
| small) district to make them the _top candidate in that
| district_. Very hard for smaller parties to have this
| level of concentrated support over any medium or large
| area.
|
| An alternative voting system might have voting for many
| offices together, with many winners. In that case the
| winners can be distributed among the various voter
| preferences proportionally. Some countries already do
| this and therefore have reasonably robust multi-party
| systems - though I don't think it's at all clear that
| this is better at serving the needs of the public.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Eh, third parties are plenty viable in the FPTP UK,
| Canada and India.
|
| It's just a feature of US politics that movements like
| the Tea Party or DSA decide to shake things within
| existing parties rather than launch new ones. Even the
| new ones that launch like the Working Families Party
| often just support two-party candidates.
| pitaj wrote:
| No mention of FPTP voting system?
| bialpio wrote:
| Isn't it more of a property of single-member districts
| rather than voting system?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, multimember FPTP districts would be the same but
| worse (that's pretty much what most states use for
| Presidential electors, though), whereas you could
| construct a single-member district system with an
| electoral system producing proportionality and supporting
| multiple parties (though it would probably be ugly to
| administer) [0] which would not have the same problem
| (though it might have all kinds of other problems). It's
| a absolutely an FPTP problem, though most reasonable
| solutions also involve multimember districts.
|
| [0] for an example of the top of my head: vote as in
| single-member FPTP, determine the proportion of first
| place votes globally by party to determine how many seats
| each party must win, and then globally order candidates
| from each party entitled to at least one seat in
| descending order of their vote share in their district.
| Starting with the party with the candidate with lowest
| maximum vote share, assign that candidate as the winner
| from their district, removing all other candidates from
| that district and dropping the party from further
| consideration if it has been assigned the number of seats
| it is entitled to; proceed until all seats are assigned.
| bialpio wrote:
| > determine the proportion of first place votes globally
|
| This sounds to me like artificially creating an election-
| wide multi-member district. I don't think it's standard
| to allow votes outside of a particular voting district to
| affect the results in that voting district.
|
| I'm not claiming that making districts multi-member is a
| solution (as you mention, multi-member, winner-takes-all
| districts are also bad), just that it is a necessary
| condition to arrive at results that are closer to
| representing the choice of the voters.
|
| Edit: apologies if this feels like moving the goal-post.
| I need to think a bit more about what could happen for
| example in single-member voting district with ranked-
| choice voting system - I think it would not lead to a
| 2-party system, so you're right here and changing the
| voting system may be sufficient.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This sounds to me like artificially creating an
| election-wide multi-member district
|
| I can see that.
|
| > I'm not claiming that making districts multi-member is
| a solution (as you mention, multi-member, winner-takes-
| all districts are also bad), just that it is a necessary
| condition to arrive at results that are closer to
| representing the choice of the voters.
|
| Ranked choice methods with single-member districts can
| _slightly_ mitigate some of the problems, but yes, I'd
| agree that realistic solutions that do more than nip
| around the edges require multimember districts.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You can have third parties under FPTP. The UK, Canada,
| India to name a few have them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| So does the US, they even occasional win elections, even
| to Congress (historically, there is at least one case
| where one displaced a major national party in the state-
| level duopoly), that doesn't mean FPTP doesn't tend
| toward duopoly. (FPTP plus a strong Presidential system
| tends more strongly toward duopoly; FPTP plus a strong
| Presidential system plus an indirectly-elected President
| where Presidential electors are mostly elected by
| multimember FPTP tends even more strongly to duopoly.)
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| It's actually a one party system with two divisions, as
| their voting record shows. [1].
|
| [1] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgile
| ns/fi...
| NoGravitas wrote:
| If you didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get
| in!
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Most people vote against the other other guys. I don't think
| anybody really wants Pelosi or Biden but they just look at
| the alternatives. It's a sad state of affairs that you can
| only choose between two bad choices.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| What's wrong with a gerontocracy and how does that relate in
| any way to stock trading?
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| Folks who are over 60 years of age should not be making and
| setting rules for an entire country to follow. When you're
| that old, you're stuck in the past and the laws don't move
| forward with the public. Think of how many times you've to
| explain to your grandparents how "things are different now".
|
| A gerontocracy doesn't directly relate to stock trading, but
| this old woman is saying very absurd things.
| thehappypm wrote:
| This is ageism, folks.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I agree. I am in my 50s and I can barely relate to the
| world my younger colleagues in their 20s live in. I can't
| even imagine how far people in their 70s and 80s are
| removed from the reality of younger people. They shouldn't
| make any decisions for the future of a country.
| cryptica wrote:
| I don't think anybody believes that we still have a free market.
| IMO, based on the current unfree market, politicians should not
| be allowed to trade stocks and it should be illegal for any large
| corporation to fire employees for any reason (except maybe by
| majority vote).
| jkingsbery wrote:
| We are a free-market economy. But the free market assumptions are
| not just allowing for voluntary trades, but also require
| information symmetry. When one person (or group) has more
| information, we no longer have a free market.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But when asked whether lawmakers _and their spouses_ should be
| prohibited from trading stock while in Congress, Pelosi said,
| "No," adding that "this is a free market."
|
| I get iffier on this when you regulate family members. Children?
| Siblings? Parents? You'd be forcing a good number of
| Congressional spouses to retire if you implemented this without a
| gradual implementation.
|
| I'd like to see lawmakers subject to similar restrictions as
| other insiders; having to openly plan their stock sales/purchases
| at least several months out. If you want a more actively managed
| portfolio than that, hire a financial firm to run a blind trust
| for you.
| kradroy wrote:
| For spouses I don't see a problem. In the US spouses cannot be
| forced to testify against one another in court. So (also)
| barring a spouse from benefitting from insider trading seems a
| fair trade-off.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"You'd be forcing a good number of Congressional spouses to
| retire if you implemented this without a gradual
| implementation."
|
| Call me jaded, but boo-hoo, so be it. The power and privileges
| that come with being so close to someone in power surely make
| up for the loss of being able to trade stocks.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| If you're not in house leadership, salaries are around
| $174,000. Depending on where someone is in their life
| (children in college, mortgage, etc) this may not be enough
| to be a single income earner in a family.
|
| Not saying that family members should have unfettered
| abilities to trade, but having to use something like a
| trading plan or announcing trades prior or even just (gasp)
| enforcing insider trading laws against them, would be
| terrific.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| That's 86th percentile for US household income. They can
| make do. Welcome to public service.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Members of Congress tend to wind up having to run _two_
| households, though, and I 'm sure there's a variety of
| other sorts of expenses that are fairly unusual. Salaries
| haven't gone up in over a decade, either.
|
| Limiting Congress to people who can independently afford
| the income/expense hit might not be optimal.
| jatone wrote:
| salaries havent gone up because they've opted to decline
| the increase for themselves.
|
| no one is denying they should be paid for their work
| we're wish to deny them the right to fuck over working
| americans to line their pockets.
|
| they can easily pass a bill to fund lodgings for congress
| critters in DC if they wanted. it'd certainly be cheaper
| for americans than this corruption.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > salaries havent gone up because they've opted to
| decline the increase for themselves
|
| Well, sure; why would the wealthy incumbents want to make
| it easier for new, not-independently-wealthy candidates
| to break in? You probably limit the AOC-style folks a bit
| by not adjusting for inflation.
|
| > they can easily pass a bill to fund lodgings for
| congress critters in DC if they wanted
|
| I kinda like that idea; a little Versailles-y.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Yes, there's always excuses to "need" higher pay.
|
| 86th percentile is more than sufficient for
| representatives of the people.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| If you view public service as requiring sacrifice,
| perhaps, but if you wish to attract folks you need to at
| least bring decent pay to the table.
| jcranmer wrote:
| And the second household is necessarily in one of the
| more expensive real estate markets in the country.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| The whole idea of marriage is that their interests are united.
| A spouse is just one half of a two-shareholder corporation, so
| whatever covenants and restrictions there are shouldn't sit
| upon just one half but the whole.
|
| That said, I do think it would be entirely legitimate to
| prohibit government service outside of the enlisted (non-
| officer) military ranks for direct relations of politicians
| during and some time after their term in office, it would just
| take a constitutional amendment and some very carefully thought
| out details.
| nimos wrote:
| Socialism for thee, libertarianism for me?
| wilde wrote:
| Top beneficiary of policy defends it. More news at 11.
|
| Unusual whales has done some fun analysis of this. Given the
| data, Pelosi's position is almost uniquely unsurprising.
|
| https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/congress
| [deleted]
| CalChris wrote:
| The post-Watergate _Ethics In Government Act_ [1] requires blind
| trusts for certain executive officials. It should apply to
| Congress as well.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_Government_Act
| more_corn wrote:
| The crime is insider trading. They have information the rest of
| the market does not. This is already against the law. If we
| really care about the law we need to enforce it even when the
| rich and powerful break it.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's a crime for corporate insiders under certain
| circumstances. What she's doing is perfectly legal, even if
| clearly immoral.
| monocasa wrote:
| Insider trading has been illegal for congressmen and women
| for almost ten years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| FredPret wrote:
| I stand corrected. Now let's hope they enforce the Stock
| Act.
| ludamad wrote:
| "Insider trading is about theft, not fairness". Many
| sophisticated traders have proprietary information on their
| positions. The key is the conflict of interest
| elliekelly wrote:
| I disagree. It is about fairness to some degree. Insider
| trading undermines the integrity of market. Which is why
| Pelosi's statement here is so absurd.
| ludamad wrote:
| I'm quoting Matt Levine, who is in turn summarizing the
| state of US law. That's not my personal philosophy, ftr
| tiahura wrote:
| Not my area of the law, but I don't think he's right.
|
| I think the general consensus is essentially "fairness"
| for utilitarian reasons. Markets are important, and
| insider trading discourages investment because it creates
| an impression of unfairness and increases uncertainty.
| gruez wrote:
| > Not my area of the law, but I don't think he's right.
|
| As far as I know that's how the law is structured. A
| second source that say the same thing:
|
| >KESTENBAUM: And she says while everybody gets upset at
| insider trading because it gives someone an unfair
| advantage, that is not the legal reason why it gets you
| into trouble. The argument used these days in court for
| why it's illegal is that insider trading amounts to
| stealing information from a company. It's like theft. And
| so for that reason, proving that someone traded on
| insider information - that is not enough to convict them.
| If, say, a financial document from some company blows out
| the window, and you happen to find it sitting there on
| the sidewalk, Sarah says it's not insider trading for you
| to use that to make money in the stock market because you
| didn't steal it.
|
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/460689797
|
| As for your "fairness" hypothesis, it really doesn't
| hold. Is it "fair" that hedge funds can afford to spend
| millions on alternative data sources (eg. flying
| helicopters with thermal cameras over oil fields, to see
| how much oil is being stored) to get a edge over traders
| who can't? Probably not. Is it banned? No. https://www.bl
| oomberg.com/opinion/articles/2013-12-19/helico...
| elliekelly wrote:
| The entire basis of US Federal Securities Laws is the
| concept of "full and fair disclosure".
| gruez wrote:
| 1. source?
|
| 2. that sounds more applicable to sellers of securities
| (ie. "you can't hide stuff in your quarterly statements")
| than insider trading.
| Freskis wrote:
| You're making a very serious allegation, that a politician has
| been using insider trading to make money on the stock market.
|
| Do you have any evidence of this, or are you repeating
| something you read on Reddit/Twitter/Facebook etc?
| disambiguation wrote:
| I'm not aware of any direct evidence, but I think there's
| plenty of indirect evidence that should prompt an
| investigation.
|
| Senators dumping stocks prior to the pandemic shutdowns, for
| example.
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/488593-four-senators-
| sol...
| Freskis wrote:
| Do you think that people should be calling for the death of
| a politician based on "indirect evidence"?
| publicexecution wrote:
| fuck off commie
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Which part are you doubting? That Pelosi has access to
| material nonpublic information? Or that she's making money on
| trades after she attains that knowledge?
|
| The latter is public record. She and her husband have
| drastically outperformed the market for years. I think the
| former is undeniable given her job. Just a comment about an
| industry she likes or doesn't like can impact share prices.
| Freskis wrote:
| Again, you are making an incredible claim (Pelosi has made
| money illegally) without providing any evidence. I
| understand that this rhetoric is normal on some low-quality
| websites that you may frequent, but there's generally a
| higher standard of discourse here.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Based off of your tone I can't tell if you're trolling or
| not, but I'm going to give your comment the benefit of
| the doubt.
|
| They don't make it easy to link to specific queries, but
| you can pull up her financial filings here:
| https://disclosures-
| clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/Financi...
|
| For evidence that she has inside information, I'd
| encourage you to read the wiki article for Speaker of The
| House, especially the sections that go over their
| legislative and committee-steering powers: https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of_the_United_States_H...
|
| There's no smoking gun audio recording where Nancy Pelosi
| specifically says "Hey Paul, I'm gonna launch an
| investigation against Facebook and accuse them of being a
| monopoly tomorrow, so sell your shares now!"
|
| I could lose _my_ job for insider trading even without
| that direct proof of causality, just trading stock with
| material insider info leads to a presumption of
| wrongdoing. Since Pelosi nominally works for us, maybe
| she (and the rest of Congress) should be held to the same
| standard?
|
| I don't think the claim is particularly incredible like
| you claim: around 50 members of Congress have been
| punished for violating the STOCK Act with fines often as
| high as $200.
| throwaway8582 wrote:
| This is quite different from insider trading in the private
| sector. In addition to having information that is not public,
| legislators also have the power to influence the value of their
| investments by passing legislation favorable to companies they
| are invested in or harmful to their competition. Does anyone
| think lawmakers can be objective when they may have millions of
| dollars at stake?
| infocollector wrote:
| Not sure if these family connections of Pelosi are widely known :
| https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/01/gavin-newsoms-keep...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You'd have to be fairly delusional _not_ to expect these sorts
| of connections to arise. Arnold Schwarzenegger married into the
| Kennedy family; their dating pool is largely other highly-
| connected political folks.
|
| Same reason celebrities largely date other celebrities.
| publicexecution wrote:
| After Pelosi is executed Newsom should be next.
|
| Hair Gel NAZI FUCK!
| pirate787 wrote:
| This issue a symptom of the underlying problem --- the activist
| US government influences outcomes in every market -- indeed the
| feds pick the winners and losers in many markets through
| spending, tax benefits, and regulations. The true reform is to
| limit the size and scope of the government and return it to being
| a neutral referee of the private sector.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"The true reform is to limit the size and scope of the
| government and return it to being a neutral referee of the
| private sector."
|
| In principle yes, but this really does seem like an impossibly
| idealistic goal. We would practically have to repeal the last
| 150 years of American government, probably more, to get back to
| semblance of this ideal. It would also require a fundamental
| cultural shift in how the citizenry views the role of
| government. From my perspective the younger generations yearn
| for more government intervention, not less. You would have to
| undo that mindset through multiple decades of influence.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I agree. The only way I see such reform happening in less
| than a generation is an Article 5 convention. A convention
| can strip the government of all unconstitutional power it has
| acquired and make amendments to attempt to prevent the same
| power creep that has occurred over the last 150 years.
|
| One thing I think our Constitution needs is an explicitly
| protected right of nullification. That adds an additional
| check on passed laws for when multiple branches of government
| are aligned with the same faction.
|
| We are currently seeing some states practice their implicit
| right of nullification and it is beautiful.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I'd have no issue with it at all if they simply followed basic
| industry standard regulation. Employees of investment companies
| usually need to adhere to something like this:
|
| - Need pre-clearance to trade in a share or ETF, sometimes mutual
| funds
|
| - Once pre-clearance granted, need to trade within a short window
| of time (say 24hrs)
|
| - Minimum holding time of 30 days
|
| - Ban on trading any assets/industries that you have close
| connection to
|
| - Regular disclosures of investment portfolio
|
| Sure you may find a market for internal tip-offs, but (1) that's
| already a bit harder, (2) there's a clear record of not only
| trading, but also intentions, and (3) the minimum holding period
| makes insider trading less attractive. So a fellow senator gives
| you a tip that a company might go up 5%. OK, but that's a short-
| term thing, usually, what's going to happen over 30 days is less
| clear.
|
| Plus covering everyone in the same household.
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