Risk is an integral part of the market. Why should people be prohibited from taking risks? I could probably get behind preventing people from taking extreme risks--those that would likely make them dependent on our social safety nets--but why prohibit people from putting a few bucks into a high risk investment (which is what you're doing if you prohibit the sale of stock in companies pursuing bankruptcy)? Even if you're 23 and betting your life savings, you still have an income and retirement account and a lot of working years left before retirement.
Because then we are implicitly responsible through social services for the idiots who gamble away their life savings with margin trading as an advanced form of gambling addiction. It's not just 24 yo doing it, it's also 55yo doing it with their life savings. I remember my previous landlord complaining about her ex-husband doing it decades after the fact and it's the reason why they split.
Requiring a pilot license level of education for margin trading & gambling past a certain point (like $1k) is making more and more sense as time goes on.
A local businessman in our area began day trading and options trading. Soon was fudging the books and lying to corporate about inventory. They soon came and locked up the joint, hauled him to jail and his family had to sell out to make up the losses. They'd owned a huge mansion and estate outside town - now its a development.
He was in his 60's, been a rock in the community and nth generation in the family business.
I'm not in favor of loosening the rules on who can trade risky investment.
I addressed all of this in my post already. This doesn't support the idea that we should prevent companies from selling stock when they're pursuing bankruptcy. It does support the idea that we should prevent people from taking risks that will likely land them on social support (which does not apply to the 23-year-old scenario above or even the 55-year-old scenario provided the couple had enough in retirement to keep them off of social services). Note also that none of this is incompatible with a licensure program.
You're just rephrasing the original argument, not rebutting my proposal. So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)?
> So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)?
1. These risks aren't reasonable.
2. It's practically simpler to ban this kind of weird and sketchy offering entirely than to implement some kind of control to limit the impact of what people can lose on a particular investment.
1. There's nothing unreasonable about someone investing their own money on whatever odds they want, provided the upside is proportional to the risk and if the investment goes badly it's not financially ruinous (where "financially ruinous" means "the person becomes a burden on welfare system" or similar).
2. It's marginally simpler but enormously restrictive. If I want to invest $100 for a potential thousand-fold payout, why can't I? I can legally spend more for worse odds (and a worse payout) on any number of institutions (casinos, lottery, etc). When you say "sketchy and weird" you just mean "a different risk profile".
> There's nothing unreasonable about someone investing their own money on whatever odds they want, provided the upside is proportional to the risk and if the investment goes badly it's not financially ruinous
Why stop there? Why not let Ponzi schemes operate unimpeded? After all, if you pull your money out of the scheme early enough, you could profit handsomely. Why not let people take that risk?
>> when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)?
> It's marginally simpler but enormously restrictive.
All right: please submit a notarized accounting of your income and assets, so that the bureaucracy can evaluate it and decide if it's acceptable for you make this investment. We'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks with the decision.
> Why stop there? Why not let Ponzi schemes operate unimpeded? After all, if you pull your money out of the scheme early enough, you could profit handsomely. Why not let people take that risk?
To be clear, you think Ponzi schemes are illegal because they are too risky?
> All right: please submit a notarized accounting of your income and assets, so that the bureaucracy can evaluate it and decide if it's acceptable for you make this investment. We'll get back to you in 6-8 weeks with the decision.
I don’t understand the snark. That’s less involved than getting a permit to remodel your kitchen and the government already has information about your wealth anyway.
Anyway, I don’t understand your argument: “it’s too easy to make risky investments and if you make it harder it would be too hard so we should prohibit it altogether”
