The American welfare state has bred a class that resents those who make a lot of money the old fashion way: with grit, determination and hard work. If you get rich this way instead of off government they look for their so-called leaders to take you down and take you down hard. As they collect those welfare checks and live off your tax dollars, you will be an object of scorn by the State for making money while doing it honestly with no regrets in your wake.
This leads me into a controversial thesis in these times, that insider trading is not a crime. It is a victimless crime that hurts no one so thus leaves no victims; hence the term victimless.
A crime is an unwanted intrusion into someone else’s personal space or property, generally by force. In this scenario there is always an aggressor and victim that is wronged in the situation. In a victimless crime it generally involves either two consenting parties that agree to a transaction that the State deems inappropriate or a distraction of attention from it. It can also be an activity that only you partake in either for your sole benefit or for pleasure that the State deems inappropriate due to its threat of distraction from absolute government power. The only victim in this sort of ‘crime’ is the government and no one else. Government, not being a proper human being, cannot be necessarily wronged against if not directly attacked. The only way it can be ‘wronged’ is if there is a direct threat to its monopoly of power. Thus, they will lock you up if you engage in activity that affects no one but yourself.
How can be insider trading be victimless? Aren’t these money hungry men in business suits making all the money they can at the expense of the investor by withholding information that would determine what to do with a stock? The simple answer is no. This is an issue that is incredibly easy to grasp if we take it out of the hands of professional pundits on CNBC who are there to make matters look complicated, even when they’re not, to feed you the establishment line.
Let’s say you go to a psychic with the ability to predict the future with an accuracy of 100 percent; a true clairvoyant. She gives you information that there will be a war in the next month and a small aerospace firm in the Midwest will have the exclusive contract on building fighter jets for the United States Air Force. Or you’re standing in a crowded elevator and you overhear a whispered conversation that involves insider information on a large corporation that will dramatically affect the price of said stock. Is it morally wrong to take the information in any of the above scenarios and use it to turn a profit for yourself in the open market? Even when no one else but you and maybe one or two others are privy to this information? Of course not. Journalists, who love to heap scorn upon those engaging in this activity, are always undercutting one another and withholding information from their colleagues in order to land the scoop and the profit from a big story. What separates a journalist and a Michael Milken? Nothing, except their position in the halls of power.
Anti-business liberals will go on to cite the victims left in the ashes of insider trading’s wake. Stock brokers and investors are nothing like gangsters or terrorists. The victims of gangsters and terrorists are easy to catch. Gangsters and terrorists leave their victims corpses, which are pretty easy to catch; or at least I’ve been told. The victims of insider trading are either nebulous or non-existent. They either are monsters created in the imagination of Elliot Spitzer or victims of their own short-sightedness and financial idleness.
While the SEC goes after insider traders this nation is facing a foreclosure fraud crisis perpetuated by real criminals in banks propped up by a private central bank, The Federal Reserve. Millions of homes are being foreclosed on where the bank does not own a legal title to said property. In effect, every foreclosure made on homes where the bank does not own a title is theft of property. Every time a homeowner pays their mortgage to a bank that has no right to collect it, the bank is stealing money from the homeowner. There is an aggressor using force to violate another’s property, the Banks, and a victim, the homeowner. There is a real crime the SEC and the FBI should be investigating. Not if a few stock brokers and investors is withholding information from other investors to make money or prevent from losing money.
The government’s conviction on prosecuting insider traders is a good way to rile up people dependent on the welfare state for their very daily sustenance. They keep the lower elements of society fat, stupid and dependent on the system so they will never rise up. As statistics go, a few always have a mind and are a threat to challenging the system with an ability to lead others. That’s why you teach them class envy. Keep them hating wealthy people, keep them on the dole and they will get the others to follow them in class envy. Show them a few wealthy men in handcuffs, keep the government cheese flowing and the welfare checks in the mail and you have a reliable voting bloc. Insider trading is stealing to them and any argument to the contrary is met with heavy cognitive dissonance.
Finance is not baseball. It cannot be governed by strict rules, similar to most sports, which aim to even out the playing field so the same team doesn’t win all the time. Not due to the unfairness of the Yankees winning every night, although that would be nice for us Yankee fans, but because Toronto and Boston fans would stop watching the games and spending their money on causes that would essentially be throwing money into a bottomless pit that only breaks your heart.
Finance is not a game. Its goal is to secure prosperity and economic success to those with the know how to succeed. That know how involves an acumen with numbers, intelligence enough to know what’s going on in the world and the independence to know how to make money. Finance is not there to make you bend over backwards for your opponents at the expense of your own success. Finance is not there for redistribution of wealth. Finance is not there for government to tell you how and where you can make money and why.
It is time to legalize freedom. It is time to legalize insider trading.
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