Quote from Epiphany:
[thoughts? [/B]
My thoughts, off the cuff (I'm here way too late now):
1. If a "joker" (your term) takes a company public, that portion of the public who buy into it without vetting (establishing he's in fact a joker) deserve what they get. Right?
2. I disagree with your definition of fraud in this case, that since one person "knows" more than another, he's immoral if he acts on that knowledge. The fact is, had Waksal been left alone by the thugs in the government, he'd have been a net loser anyway, since by the FDA's own capricious and arbitrary behavior it soon thereafter (and it seemed quickly) approved Erbitux.
[Aside, and like you NOT to insert an emotional component into this, but I want to mention that a very close friend of mine died of colon cancer last year. LAST YEAR. Do you understand?]
It seems even by your definition that Sam wasn't quite that "in the know" after all; he should have held onto his damn stock! Of course, it's a cinch to say that NOW. My point being, I don't subscribe to your definition because there is rarely, if ever, a guarantee in buying/selling stock as to the future price. In our profession we know this. People who dabble in our profession do so at their own risk.
And I'm no paragon. I've made plenty of dumb ass moves and I will again. In this instance, it is sufficient for me to know, with existing disclosure laws, that the company insiders are selling. The fact is, there will always be smarter and stupider people than you and me. We will each take into a transaction what we know, what we imagine, what we hope for; and we alone decide for ourselves if we can enter the trade or not. The rest are sheep and deserve to be sheared. The analogy about children (minors) is not one I found to be on point; they do not have the critical faculties developed yet. Most adults do if they want to take the time to develop them. Sadly, most don't and instead play stocks as a lottery (the geniuses in 1999) or trust others to do it, then complain when they aren't perfect.
In my opinion, your argument confuses fact with method. By age 21 (give or take depending on the person), people that had an honest inclination to learn how to think rationally (identify facts, derive conclusions logically) have the tools they need to choose their investments in all areas of life--money, career, love. That there are no guarantees, or because some people get their facts wrong, or make a mistake in method from time to time, is no reason to throw someone else in jail who is also trying to protect his or her own interests, same as everyone else.
Again, I draw the line between those who lied deliberately (as you cited for fraud, I agree) and the Waksals and Stewarts of the world who simply reacted, without pretending otherwise, to save themselves and their loved ones. I won't argue their utter stupidity in light of current legislation and culture; as I said, they appear to me to be idiot savants in many respects.
3. And speaking to self-interest, altruism is the philosophy that says "the greatest good is that which enriches the doer the least (I. Kant)." Unfortunately, such a malicious code of behavior only guarantees that good people are sacrificed to trash (as seen in the latest craze, that insipid passion movie). Buying into that view of morality leads to sacrificing producers to looters, the providers to the needy, those who use intelligence to the ignorant, those who can to those who cannot. Obviously I don't subscribe to that despicable world view, thus my conclusions about moral action are decidedly different than, say, a devout and literal Christian's would be. I find most so-called altruists, in fact, are not. They are, instead, little petty monsters who are looking after what's important to them, and in doing so acting selfishly, but masquerading under the cloth (or whip) of "doing for others."
Except they always want to "do for others" with my resources.
Case in point, the left's claim that "health care is a right." To the contrary, Rights delimit what we already have, not what we are to be given; they assert what no one can take from us. Rights determine boundaries, NOT obligations to do, but obligations on how we must be left alone and unfettered by others. To claim health care as a "right" is to say that those who need health care have the moral (and if they code it into law, the legal) authority to enslave those who can provide it--doctors and other similar professionals.
I was under the impression that Article 13 of the U.S. Bill of Rights outlawed involuntary servitude.
Why? Because health care doesn't grow on trees. Someone has to learn it and provide it. And they are free (in my world) to set whatever price they think they can get for their effort. Naturally, I encourage competition to keep my costs low. I'm a Capitalist.
The principle is identical, imo. It is immoral in my view to codify laws that sacrifice the Waksals of this world to those of us who aren't his peers and could never create something like Erbitux. We, through our own devices and as best we individually can, must determine for ourselves if our investments are worthy of our intellect or if we're looking for a free ride. If the latter (as part of the free ride crowd) then I contend it is they who are the real frauds, not the insider trying to protect his own life in panic to get out of the way of a runaway train called the federal government which routinely creates and destroys hundreds of millions of dollars, wrecks whole industries, rewards patronage, and commits other atrocities based on its whim of the year and prosecuted by ambitious political whores and their paid thugs.
It is my responsibility as an investor to protect my wealth by keeping an eye on things as best I can. But there are no guarantees, except in the eyes of soccer moms who would have all of us stay at home with warning labels on everything from ladders to water glasses.
So to answer your last question: we're adults, not children. And to answer your first: the risk for the real entrepreneur is in being the entrepreneur.
And NOT the joker.
But neither a safety-obsessed soccer mom, nor the eager lawmakers pandering to her, nor those lawmakers' ambitious thugs could understand that fact in a million years.
Never have. Never will.
