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Can’t we just ask the regulator?: Difference between revisions
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“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. | “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. | ||
The world of modern finance was unexplored: broken-fenced frontiers everywhere you looked, and you were free to wander the hinterland scalping unwitting customers — “ripping customers’ faces off” was the vogue term, come to think of it | The world of modern finance was unexplored: broken-fenced frontiers everywhere you looked, and you were free to wander the hinterland scalping unwitting customers — “ripping customers’ faces off” was the vogue term, come to think of it — unrestrained by official hand. | ||
This, contemporary [[thought leader]]<nowiki/>s believed, was best for everyone, in the long run. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government ''is'' the problem,” as Ronald Reagan once famously put it, and Javier Milei {{Plainlink|https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024/sessions/special-address-by-javier-milei-president-of-argentina/|did again — without attribution — at the WEF in 2024}}. | This, contemporary [[thought leader]]<nowiki/>s believed, was best for everyone, in the long run. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government ''is'' the problem,” as Ronald Reagan once famously put it, and as Javier Milei {{Plainlink|https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024/sessions/special-address-by-javier-milei-president-of-argentina/|did again — without attribution — at the WEF in 2024}}. | ||
In recent times this carefree impulse has fallen on stony ground. Of course, it has: to survive its auto-destruction, any new programme must self-organise: that founding spirit of optimistic anarchy will resolve to well-meant gentle governance which in time will calcify into impenetrable rules, etiquettes and ways of operating [[calculated]] to maintain the emergent power structure around the programme. This happened to the fifties, to rock ’n’ roll, | In recent times — President Milei’s remarks notwithstanding — this carefree impulse has fallen on stony ground. Of course, it has: to survive its auto-destruction, any new programme must self-organise: that founding spirit of optimistic anarchy will resolve to well-meant gentle governance which in time will calcify into impenetrable rules, etiquettes and ways of operating [[calculated]] to maintain the emergent power structure around the programme. This happened to the nineteen-fifties, to rock ’n’ roll, to the internet, it’s happening to crypto right now and will happen to AI at some point in the future — as long as Skynet doesn’t happen first. | ||
The financial markets are the same: the libertine laissez-faire of the eighties | The financial markets are the same, only on a loop: three free-wheeling 1920s gave way, via the shock of the Great Depression, to the carefully regulated mid-century of war with the East and steady economic growth in the West; that gave way to libertine laissez-faire of the eighties, the [[The End of History and the Last Man|End of History]] itself in the 1990s which decayed into the late-stage freewheeling techno-anarchy of the noughties which fetched up upon the rocks of the Global Financial Crisis, whereupon the cycle began again. | ||
We are all technocrats now: a freedom that once seemed hopeful and elegant now seems barbaric in its simplicity. We have become inured to the idea that, because it can be, our every financial impulse should be minutely monitored, reported, and ''regulated''. | |||
===The theory=== | ===The theory=== | ||
And that is fine. Being a pragmatist, it is not the [[Jolly Contrarian|JC]]’s motive to take sides in the cosmic debate: rather, to say, however heavily we frame our rules, good governance and our well-rehearsed imperative of juridical [[certainty]] requires them to be as plain, clear and actionable as they can be. The world is [[Certainty|uncertain]] and [[Complexity|non-linear]] enough: the guardrails we erect to protect each other from it should not be. We should not be left in doubt about what we can and cannot do. We should not be held hostage for the consequence of acting in a case of genuine doubt. | And that is fine. Being a pragmatist, it is not the [[Jolly Contrarian|JC]]’s motive to take sides in the cosmic debate: rather, to say, however heavily we frame our rules, good governance and our well-rehearsed imperative of juridical [[certainty]] requires them to be as plain, clear and actionable as they can be. The world is [[Certainty|uncertain]] and [[Complexity|non-linear]] enough: the guardrails we erect to protect each other from it should not be. We should not be left in doubt about what we can and cannot do. We should not be held hostage for the consequence of acting in a case of genuine doubt. | ||