[extropy-chat] Re: Ethics of contrarianism

[Lifespan Pharma Inc.]

That is like when the options trader phones as the BSE was first 
anounced and me going out
and putting 100,000 into options on the down side of beef so I could be 
400,000 richer in a week,
Ethically I know that the market will be drained of liquidity for the 
producer and that the consumer
will probably never benefit from the  beef market crash and I will know 
that in some small
way I have contributed to both these things by taking a quick rake from 
someone else's disaster.

Ditto with options trading on heating oil futures, natural gas futures , 
unleaded gasoline futures the day of the hurricane.

Frankly the ethical thing for Bush would have been to freeze the options 
markets on those commodities and
put a 1/2 to 1 cent ceiling on moves for the month afterward.  Not the 
free market thing to do but the ethical thing to do.

The farming subsidy game is just that a game.   Farm subsidies are more 
like farm welfare. 
USA farmers make as much by farming the program in net terms as farming 
the farm some years, for some crops.

Where ethics comes in is if a large group of farmers secretly conspire 
to raise or not raise a particular crop
and deliberately bid the opposite side of the market with a bait and 
switch approach leaving non-farming
speculators holding the bag.  Of course , one of the merits of the farm 
programs is that they prevent
that very thing from happening by making farmers more predictable.

I still see options and derivatives markets as more parasitic (in their 
everyday use)  than enhancing the true market valuation of goods(as is 
the commonly purported purpose for their existance).



spike wrote:

>>bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Technotranscendence
>>    
>>
>...
>  
>
>>In this case, too, by "selling" the view, might not Spike be bringing a
>>lot of bad consequences on himself?  After all, if he reinforces wrong
>>views and then these same people, e.g., support bad policies doesn't
>>that, ultimately, hurt him?  Yes, he might make a quick buck now, but
>>what about the wider implications.  The world has enough foolish ideas
>>in it already, why add to the mess?:)
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Dan
>>    
>>
>
>Hmmm, this seems a little extreme.  What I had in mind
>is to put some farm land to work producing fuel crops,
>stuff that can be converted to ethanol or biodiesel.  To
>make it pay, I would need to collect subsidies on it, or
>at least take full advantage of the tax breaks that may
>be available.
>
>I don't feel that subsidizing that kind of stuff is a
>good idea, but hey, I could be wrong.  I might have been
>wrong about freon: they tell me the ozone hole is
>decreasing.  I never did see how human use of freon
>could have that much impact, but perhaps it did.  I
>had a job in the early 90s phasing out freon in
>aerospace manufacturing processes, so in that sense
>I was cashing in on something I thought was bogus.  But
>perhaps it wasn't so I suppose farming fuel crops today
>is analogous.
>
>spike
>
>  
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20050904/24007fa6/attachment.html>