[ExI] anarchy

[William Flynn Wallace]

Far easier to achieve here might be for the federal government to simply
stop rescuing Wall Street when it gets in these kinds of situations. If
large investors and large firms could lose everything when taking risks --
rather than arguing they're too big to fail -- then they might be much more
cautious in the first place. And when they're not cautious? Well, they'd
lose their position in the market, which would be a lesson to everyone
else. That wouldn't require any special new laws or punishments -- just
letting the market actually work.
dan

Since I don't read finance news, I dunno the answer to this:  when the
companies got bailed out and prevented from going bankrupt, to what extent
did this protect the money of the people who bought the derivatives and
such?  I can see letting a company fail - Lehman Bros. was it? - but not
letting investors get hit so hard.

As for severe punishment, I would never use anything not reversible, as in
the hand cut off example, if the actual guilt of the perpetrator was in
question.  I would never go further than one hard whack to the bottom, in
the case of a kid, though I never did hit mine at all.  Perhaps I would
have had they done something really dangerous, the only situation I can
think of that I would use more severe punishment in.  And the only reason
for using severe punishment in that situation is that it tends to stop the
behavior very fast.  And one would never use punishment alone to modify the
behavior.

Severe punishment in the context means positive punishment, as contrasted
with negative punishment, which consists of taking rewards away, like TV
time.  bill w

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 6:59 PM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 9:48 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am against punishment, mostly, for children - if it's the belt kind.
> > Taking away privileges works much better for many reasons.  But
> > if you want to get rid of corruption you have to penalize and heavily.
> > Quick and devastatingly hard punishment will stop the behavior
> > more quickly than anything.  Chopping off hands for a bit of
> > shoplifting seems extremely harsh, but it's the right idea if the wrong
> method.
>
> The problem there would be threefold. One, it seems unjust since the
> punishment doesn't fit the crime -- chopping off a hand or two is wildly
> out of proportion for shoplifting, even for high end items. It's like
> beheading someone for walking across your lawn. Two, it's impossible to
> undo the damage in a false positive: you get the wrong person, they lose
> their hand or hands, and then what do you do? Three, such a high penalty
> would likely make any who still wanting to shoplift to be extremely violent
> when confronted or caught. One can easily imagine shoplifters killing
> anyone they believe might catch them. Draconian penalties usually make for
> those kinds of responses, no?
>
> And it seems a lie to believe these penalties work. The societies that
> have them are generally closed ones where the rulers tell you what they
> want you to believe about them -- rather than (more or less) open ones
> where you can look at the data and folks on the inside can criticize the
> policies.
>
> > Not to re-enter that discussion, but the biggest problem with Wall
> > Street and collapse of 2008 was that there were few if any penalties,
> > much less harsh ones.  So why not do it again?  They will.  Oh yes,
> > they will.  The incentives to do so are billions of dollars.  Measure
> > that against a jail term of a few years, and probably not for the top
> people.
>
> Far easier to achieve here might be for the federal government to simply
> stop rescuing Wall Street when it gets in these kinds of situations. If
> large investors and large firms could lose everything when taking risks --
> rather than arguing they're too big to fail -- then they might be much more
> cautious in the first place. And when they're not cautious? Well, they'd
> lose their position in the market, which would be a lesson to everyone
> else. That wouldn't require any special new laws or punishments -- just
> letting the market actually work.
>
> > On a related note, I read that many companies are getting into finance
> > and out of providing services and products.  Doesn't sound good, but
> what do I know?
> > Seems private debt is getting worse than national debt.
>
> Debt is really only bad when negative feedback loops are thwarted. Nothing
> wrong with borrowing per se, but when folks -- in or out of government --
> can borrow and use the tax base to bail them out, then that removes the
> negative feedback loop. It prevents error correction and tends to moral
> hazard problems. You, as a libertarian, should be well aware of this.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>   Sample my Kindle books via:
> http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
>
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