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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

How many taxpayers do you think are more capable than the regulatory boards at assessing bank risk? Sure, the number is not zero. But it's not very high. If that's your answer, it's basically "good luck, suckers", which is not a very good answer at all.

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You're assuming consumer intelligence is a static property.

You're also arguing a false dichotomy. (“Either taxpayers have to get smart, which they aren't, or we have to use regulators.”)

Getting screwed is part of any learning process, and lessons about individual cases can be encoded at large; I'm just arguing that regulatory bodies are one of the worst ways to do that.

I'd rather have 1,000 independent pen testers examine a bank[0] (and be compensated for it) than some operating manual–laden bureaucracy applying the same standard test every shark working at a bank knows how to side-step.

An infinite regress of regulation is a waste of human intellect and creativity.

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[0]: Imagine a bank in the style of an Open-Access Startup where the books and assets are laid bare, either to the public at large or their clients. This is no longer practically infeasible in the era of the crypto-ledgers but what engineer in their right mind would willingly enter the total regulation shitshow that is today's American banking industry? The best engineers have choice, so they go elsewhere.

> I'd rather have 1,000 independent pen testers examine a bank[0] (and be compensated for it)

The rating agencies are independent bodies which do something similar. They've totally dropped the ball prior to 2008 and were a major component behind the financial crisis.

The good thing about government agencies is that they're not driven by greed (unlike those rating agencies, which totally were), so there's actually less incentives for majorly screwing the populace.

If I recall, fraud and bribery were indeed issues at Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s. Not going to argue that.

> good thing about government agencies is that they're not driven by greed

So what are they driven by? And how do you know?

Fundamentally, they're driven by politicians who want to get re-elected. So, they try to steer these agencies into doing something positive for the people. Of course, there's a ton of corruption and waste along the way, but at least the core goal is to do good and not to get as rich as quickly as possible, which seems to be an operating principle of most private enterprises.

> the core goal is to do good and not to get as rich as quickly as possible

How can you "get rich" without doing good?

> which seems to be an operating principle of most private enterprises

How else could private enterprises determine if they are producing anything of value to others?

> How can you "get rich" without doing good?

Cheat? Steal? Monopolize industries and charge exorbitant prices? Manufacture cigarettes? Etc etc.

You cannot "cheat" and "steal" your way to massive wealth because those are forms of leakage on the primary pile. (You can only cheat, steal and siphon from piles of money people submit for services they desire—even if you consider the price to be "unfair".)

You cannot monopolize an industry that doesn't provide something people want in the first place.

In general, you're talking about extraction or leakage, which represent a tiny fraction of money that changes hands.

You may have an issue about "what's fair" but you give weak examples of how people get "rich".

You asked "how you can get rich without doing good?". So, regarding stealing, let me give a concrete - the Russian oligarchs have become massively wealthy by stealing the companies which were previously owned by USSR's state. Sure the companies are likely providing valuable services, but the oligarchs didn't do an ounce of good and yet became obscenely rich. Q.E.D.

Regarding monopolization - do you think it's benign then? Why are there laws that prevent it then? Are they wrong?

You ignored completely the part about producing and marketing harmful and addictive substances. Do you think the execs of those companies are doing good? Would you personally write a thank you note to them for getting billions of people addicted and millions killed by cancer due to their actions (which have lead to their wealth)? If not, then the tobacco company owners are another example of "people getting rich without doing good".

Lastly, let's maybe finish with the most obvious example - a hacker steals into somebody's bitcoin store and steal millions worth of bitcoin. Surely you can agree that he has now became wealthy without doing any good?

In fair turn I would say you are assuming if enough people are “screwed” they become interested in learning instead of turning to violence or some other sort of retribution.

No, I'm assuming some minority of screwed users will build instead of "destroy".

Building something fixes knowledge and know-how into something others can benefit from, at scale.

Destruction does not scale.

People do not side with destroyers. They side with people who build alternatives.

(No one said it has to or will be perfect. It just has to be better than whatever preceded it.)

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