The very people whose job it should be to stop this sort of thing are the ones who are profiting from it. How do you change this?
No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would they ever vote for such a bill?
We elect people who actually believe in governance instead of people out to make a buck. I know that everyone's going to act in their own interest (that's sorta how interests are defined) but some people feel a legitimate duty and loyalty to country and welfare above their own personal comfort - these people tend to be torpedoed very early on in US politics because they refuse to cozy up to special interests to play the campaign finance game but they do exist.
It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world, but most people aren't out to con everyone else when they get the chance and, if a spotlight is shone on the problem, will respond that actions should be taken to make things more just.
Here's an article calling out the stock trading specifically around Covid treatment drugs with some congressmen and politicians calling out the behavior:
AOC was vociferously calling for the shutdown of Parler on Twitter, when the protest was coordinated over Facebook and Twitter too. Imo, she's just a classic Democrat politician with a louder mouth, enough to rival the Republican mouths.
Meh, a lot of the people you're describing are incredibly incompetent and succumb to simplistic ideologies. Over the long run they end up in the same position that everyone we're complaining about ends up in.
While not entirely related, I remember a study by the U.S. military during the Vietnam war that said the worst performing soldiers were the ones who were patriotic and served due to a sense of duty. I'm simplifying here but the idea was that those were often the first people to feel a sense of entitlement and feel as if because they had good intentions that they were "owed" something.
Belief in governance is cheap and doesn't do much to solve anything. Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that result in change... having a good heart and believing in or trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is basically a loser's game.
I strongly agree it's a loser's game - given our current political system. People who aren't willing to fight dirty and compromise their morals will fail since that's where the money is - and that's sort of my point. We need to change the system to make it so that these people can fairly compete by pulling money out of the political system and evening the playing field.
I'm also not advocating that blindly loyal idiots should be in charge - a good comparison to make is to look at more local governance. On a local level the stakes are much lower so the money being thrown around is far less - this lets people get into politics because they want to make change which is an anomaly at the national level - most of those politicians are there because it's a career and they value preserving that over everything else.
Another decent idea in this direction is term limits but I'm a bit concerned that that might deprive us of competency.
>Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that result in change... having a good heart and believing in or trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is basically a loser's game.
If you are competent, skilled, and a leader, but are not altruistic, you will end up being a very competent, very skilled leader of a burglary operation. ;)
> Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that result in change... having a good heart and believing in or trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is basically a loser's game.
We should expect elected officials to have both. It's not like it's impossible.
We elect people who seek power for the sake of power, and sometimes pretending to care about others help them acquire it, and sometimes when the stars align, having to actually help others helps them keep it.
> It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world...
Checks and balances are supposed to address this issue. I think the only one which really does the job here would be the right to initiative/referendum. That or an electoral solution, but that one's really hard since new legislators will be incentivized to maintain the status quo. You would almost need a new party defined around that one issue, which is hard to imagine in the US.
Maybe an executive order could also prohibit this? I'm not sure.
"Maybe an executive order could also prohibit this?"
I don't think this will help. I feel that executive orders are misused and abused today. They are really only only supposed to be executive guidance on how to enforce or implement a law. Instead they are being used as redefining law or even ignoring them.
I'm frankly disturbed that this kind of specific trading by people in power is going on at all. Salaried federal employees above a certain level are strongly encouraged to invest only in generic mutual funds to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. When I look at the above trades I'm not sure whether anything technically illegal occurred but I'd support making all specific trading illegal to avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior. Higher powers deserve to be held higher standards.
> When I look at the above trades I'm not sure whether anything technically illegal occurred but I'd support making all specific trading illegal to avoid even the appearance of unethical behavior.
That sounds like an excellent idea to me. While in office, can only trade TSP funds, or their rough equivalents outside of TSP. If you wanna sell something that isn't a giant index fund? Do it before you take office.
Then I'd further support that all trading would have to be done via a 10b5-1 plan, with a blackout window of at least 6 months.
> Still, two major elements of the law remain. Insider trading is illegal, even for members of Congress and the executive branch. And for those who are covered by the now-narrower law, disclosures of large stock trades are required within 45 days. It will just be harder to get to them.
my naive solution: politicians become monks. They go without. They are provided modest housing and budgets. I'm sure there are zounds of issues with it, but I like to imagine servant leaders who go without to do more for the communities they serve.
I'd be happy with that, but perhaps an easier solution is to make them moderately wealthy. Pay them a top 5% salary with a guaranteed pension for life, plus mandatory open finances for life. Then there's much less incentive to resort to graft.
I've always wondered about this. These are people who we elect to do a job - one that we expect and need them to do well. I wonder what would happen if their base salary was something higher than current - perhaps $300k. They receive the maximum healthcare coverages available to the majority of Americans. Pension is set at $100k/year at retirement, no strings attached.
BUT - In exchange, you'd have to agree to some very restrictive governance while in office. Example:
- No trading of specific investment vehicles, you may invest a maximum of ($x) per year in the following options (ETF, Treasuries, etc.). This goes for any immediate family members.
- Congressperson's income can only consist of the US Government salaries. Any income from previous book deals, consulting, etc, must go into a blind trust that can only invest in the aforementioned investment options.
I wonder if that is enough of an incentive to still attract sharp minds while perhaps incentivizing them to work more for the people and less for themselves.
The income for a US senator or congressman is already literally exactly at the 95th percentile at 174,000. Making someone wealthy doesn't remove their incentive to gather more wealth it gives them a stake and incentive to be more effectively corrupt.
The number I saw was $300k. But either way, I don't think that's true. Countries with endemic corruption tend to underpay people. E.g., countries where you have to bribe cops and bureaucrats are ones where those people have a hard time making a living on their normal salary.
Some people, of course, are infinitely greedy. But most people aren't. E.g., most developers I know aren't maximizing their income fully, and they definitely aren't criming to make even more money.
175k is not enough... it needs to be 300k at least. maybe 500k. Something high enough that the risk-reward for corruption is less attractive. 175k is a nice life but not even remotely enough to have the lifestyle you'd expect for someone running our country.
It is the nature of ambition not to be satiated. people making millions of dollars per year want to make billions. Billionaires strive to exceed their peers. Our leaders already have a lot to lose. Predictably most of our corruption isn't high risk blatant illegality its the boringly legal influence peddling where regular donations buy your "totally legitimate" interests and concerns additional consideration by decision makers instead of paying n dollars for a particular law.
There is no reason to believe paying them 2-3x as much so they can be really wealthy would lead to electing better leaders.
Our lawmakers make 175k directly in salary and aprox 1 million dollars for staff and 143k for office expenses. This is not including the cost of the lifetime pension they will qualify after only 5 years and lifetime health plan for themselves and spouse after 10 years in the house or 8 in the senate. Hint I know they pay I think 28% of the cost of their gold plan.
Lifetime a 2 term senator will cost the tax payers near 18 million dollars in total.
100% Agree. Salaries for elected officials should be far higher and then make punishments for this very very strict so there's zero incentive to graft.
The people running our country should not be making less than any typical c-staff or high level executive. They should be making lawyer/doctor/c-staff level money.
That doesn't really solve the problem because how do we make them become monks? We already have a blueprint on how to hold them accountable: hold them to the same standard as those working in financial services with access to PII. Essentially make it impossible for them to be active traders; they can even still invest in ETFs and hands off advisors/roboadvisors like Betterment.
Even then, do you want people who are incentivized to pump-and-dump the macro market during their term? You'd almost need to enforce this for 10 years or more, even if it goes beyond their term.
I've had a similar thought on many occasions, but even then, they will find alternative ways to acquire wealth and power. The clergy of many religions, in aggregate, have a lot of wealth and power, even if the wealth is not directly in their name.
No system can prevent humans from exercising their basic instincts, emotions, urges, needs, and wants.
The Catholic Church tried this and it did not work. Monks and nuns still become greedy, still compete for positions of power and still abuse their power when they get it.
"No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would they ever vote for such a bill?"
Well, those people profiting off of it would have to vote against each other's interests.
Money wins elections. Not issues, which are just window dressing. The media cartels own your attention for all your waking ours and, as MiB said, while individuals are rational and sensible, people (that is, the voting electorate) are easily scared, easily duped, and increasingly easily controlled.
So it's not just "vote against being rich", it's also "vote to lose the next election".
I think I agree in theory, but I think we've seen in practice that people are easily controlled by mass media. Wouldn't we just be moving the locus of control?
It's a form of representative democracy, so it should be able to avoid the issues of oligarchy (being centralized and easy to corrupt) as well as the issues of full democracy (where every idiot has a say worth any experts)
Why would you believe that both the individual voters and their delegates wouldn't be susceptible to almost all the same corrupting and manipulative factors that plague voting systems today?
The OP is correct...spending in mass media on the various issues would almost surely allow the purchasing of voter mindshare just exactly as advertising today drives sales of almost identical branded products for inflated prices.
Don't get me wrong...in general I like the idea of "liquid democracy" (I remember it being called "Superdemocracy" back in the 80's when MajorBBS creator Tim Striker very much lobbied for its creation)...but it would be foolish to believe that the same forces that corrupt modern politics wouldn't be able to corrupt it as well.
Corruption is still possible, but the real trick to liquid democracy is that every stage is a form of escalation with the potential for correction.
Let's take two scenarios:
1. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an extremist channel, it'll likely get locked in and come out even more extreme than it started. extremists tend to look up to people who are even more extreme. when this happens, there's a good chance the person who's vote it originally was will be upset with where it ends up
2. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an intellectual/thoughtful person, it'll likely get locked into the academic/altruist channel and come out with an extreme subject expert. this is the ideal outcome.
Basically, at any point where the vote is being passed up it can hit one of these channels and get locked in. There's massive (and immediate) drawbacks to letting your vote hit an extremist, and massive gains to passing to someone who's more intelligent and thoughtful.
While you're totally right about peoples first vote being super manipulable, each successive pass off has an opportunity for escaping that mind control. And once it does, it'll stay out.
Politics/people is the top of the OSI stack, hence why the problem must be solved there.
If you're more comfortable behind an IDE, gotta get comfortable calling representatives and pounding the pavement. That leads to where the decisions are made.
You cannot. As long as there are rigged markets and cadres of elites, we can truly do nothing. Sad, really. Not helping the matter is half of the US is below average intelligence and will elect crooks because they say the right things.
If only there were more Ron Wydens and AOCs. But you see red states electing nutjobs who barely have high school degrees (Boeber) because they shout the loudest.
AOC won’t be immune to the same pressure that eventually corrupts longtime politicians. She’s just barely begun her second term. I’m certain she’s already begun to make perfectly legal deals and investments that are going to look shady to average people.
Also, one person’s “shouting nutjob with barely a highschool degree” is someone else’s “passionate populist who represents the common people.”
You’ve missed my point. Politics is a team sport and optics depend on your worldview and biases. “One mans X is another man’s Y” is me pointing this out.
But also, please refrain from calling other commenters’ thoughts “your bullshit” because that’s not nice or productive discourse.
Wyden and AOC enjoy the luxury of not having to worry about re-election due to residing on extremely blue states. They would not be so bold if they represented Texas or Florida, for example.
The same goes for Republican representatives in highly red states.
AOC would not represent Texas or Florida because they are not progressive enough to support her in a landslide, twice, the way her district did.
Manchin mealy-mouthed his way into a slight win and has to be a slimy politician with no backbone because he craves power.
The funniest part of your post is that you claim AOC "would not be bold." Do you even know who she is? She's the definition of bold. She is doing what she said she would do and pissing off centrist dems all over the place every day.
But call me when AOC & Wyden are involved in a scandal, which is what this entire thread is about. If so, I'll change my tune, but until then, my original point stands.
We have to do the work. We have to educate ourselves on the issues which means reading bills as they are going through the process and being voted on, calling and writing our representatives to tell them how we want them to vote on those bills.
I have family who just love to complain about what legislators are doing and how they're voting but have not once, ever, actually contacted their representative about these issues. Not once have they actually read the bills and tried to understand them. It's all based purely on whatever news channel they're watching. Yet, they somehow think that through all that complaining they're actually accomplishing something.
I know my family isn't unique in this. I was just talking to a contractor who is doing work on my house that started in on this nonsense.
Congress already passed the STOCK act, that is why these disclosures are required, and partially why this kind of securities fraud is illegal. It is the job of the SEC, and the justice dept to enforce this
In the past, the things that ultimately worked were collective revolts, strikes, sabotage, assassinations.
I think we need to acknowledge that, in the same way that the people with the power to stop this are profiting, they are also the people with the power to change who is in power or how they get in power. Elections are not effective ways of changing systemic power structures anymore. Society pretty much needs an overhaul, especially in the face of serious existential risks like climate change or looming military conflicts.
We have to educate the broader populace about the issue, then politicians will use the issue to gain political capital, win elections, and maybe change legislation and practices.
In some states the people can literally make the law via public initiatives. If you don't have that process at home push for THAT. Looking at this map there are a lot of states that need to work on step 1.
I feel like a good first step would be requiring that any assets over some small cutoff be held in a blind trust. It wouldn't solve all problems, but it sure would solve a lot.
Since the media and intelligence agencies are great at vilifying any dissent (see "Capitol Riot" and how difficult it is for them to even get representation), there is no hope. The US is not going to get better as corruption is rampant and most are in the dark or powerless.
Politicians like Bernie Sanders give hope, but they are few and far between, and muzzled.
Perhaps the migration away from centralized news sources that are filtered by advertisers & intelligence agencies (see Manufacture of Consent) could help move us towards actually having information in the mainstream so that we can have a say, since our election system is rigged by the two right-wing parties, but there are too many decision makers still reading NYT and WSJ.
Social media is clamping down on "fake news".
The majority in the House/Senate are trying to push censorship for this reason, and now they are even trying to change the judicial branch to suit their whims.
They are neither left nor right. There is a middle elite group that exploits politics on either side of the aisle to maintain power. And that's all it is. And they get filthy rich, but so too does the CCP which is left-wing. Taking advantage of power for personal gain is not an exclusive domain of one wing or the other.
At any rate these oversimplified analogies break down among many lines upon closer inspection. There are elite insiders and then there's the rest of us.
Well the Capitol riots were not just any dissent. They were the gathering of a mob of people with crazy conspiracy theories (that very probably would not even agree with each other) as part of mediatic stunt (just not "the media") to give legitimacy to the claim the election had been stolen so the Republican party could suck up more money from its base for "the cause". I have myself much respect for Bernie Sanders and people fighting for more democracy and more equality please, please don't put them in the same bag than people being manipulated into giving time and money for imaginary causes.
> An amendment may be proposed and sent to the states for ratification by either:
> The U.S. Congress, whenever a two-thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives deem it necessary; or
> A national convention, called by Congress for this purpose, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (34 since 1959). The convention option has never been used.
Start with the 3 best examples you can name and we can go over how regulated various industries are, what percentage of income is paid in taxes, and what percentage of their GPD is non military government spending.
There is a lot more to governance than expenditures and safety nets. I'm starting to think we've been in a free society in the west so long that people have simply overlooked the history of large governments stifling industry and life. Limited government is a very big thing in the West, even in countries with very generous social programs.
No, because you already have made up your mind that big government is good and will associate any market friendly economy with big government automatically in your head instead of looking at it on a global/historical scale. So there's no real reason to waste my time.
You make broad pronouncements and avoid talking about specifics because your argument is incorrect and indefensible. You say a statement is true of most western countries but can't name one in which you would be willing to dig deeper. You use glib pronouncements to hide the fact that your words lack substance. It's not your time that is being wasted.
> No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would they ever vote for such a bill?
The recent Black Lives Matter protests have taken a far more aggressive turn against systemic issues. Systemic issues such as the economy, the stock market, policing as a whole, and capitalism in its essence. Donating to bail-out funds, joining the protests, increasing awareness in the problems our economic system has created for us without proper good-faith regulations is all helpful.
You can't reform corruption to this level. You need to cut it out and start over.
trying to stop the trades is the wrong fix. The right fix is remove their ability to affect markets. Getting to choose winners and losers will always create opportunity to abuse this privilege.
Someone has to wield political power over companies right? I would rather senators who are restricted from trading than senators who are restricted from lawmaking that might move a stock price.
I disagree with this. The people we elect to govern have to be able to govern. But, they maybe don't need to have any business holdings / stock while they're in office.
again, the government's role should be protection of protection of person and property. You're conflating "govern" and "control". There are other means to control. In reality, your goal will never be met because no one is going to openly step into that scenario and be altruistic, certainly not all 536 people.
The protection of person and property oftentimes runs counter to the benefit of a subset of corporations. Given this, government has to do a balancing act. It's in that balancing act that lets them enrich themselves - either through happenstance or on purpose.
That's a pretty pessimistic view. Perhaps the individuals currently filling those roles wouldn't go for it, but it seems like we might be able to find 536 altruistic idealists somewhere in America.
I didn't dive deeply into this data, but it doesn't sound like we even need to find 536 idealists. If you sort by number of trades descending, it becomes less than mine very quickly (I buy 4 mutual funds once a month, automatically). If you sort by value of trades descending, it looks like there are only a handful of officials with any meaningful amount of money in the stock market. (For some value of meaningful; there is an example in there about a $50,000 trade, and it just doesn't seem like very much money to me. 50 million dollars, get out that microscope. $50,000? Doesn't change anyone's life, so not really worth being corrupt for.)
This is fantasy, the rules by which the country is run inevitably effects the markets. Raise import taxes, local manufacturers do better, importers worse. Lower import taxes, the opposite. Build roads, construction companies and their supply chains do better. Weaken environmental laws, oil companies do better. Make it easier to sue for health damages, personal injury lawyers do better. Fund the military, defense contractors do better. Etc, etc.
look at the trades in the article and how it was impacted by government. Did they outlaw vaccines or did they specifically award money to specific companies?
Further - it will not be reduced to zero. The goal is to move towards zero.
I spent all of the stimulus money I received at local businesses which have been severely impacted by the pandemic. Unfortunately none of them offered stock I could purchase.
My first instinct was to give it all to a large tech company in exchange for some marvelous electronic bauble from China, but that seemed counter-productive after some deep thought.
No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would they ever vote for such a bill?