I was just thinking, maybe we should privatize the police force. And then when the police kill or maim another unarmed black man, we can sue them for securities fraud, for not providing the promised level safety of law enforcement. It sounds like a lot more justice than we're getting now.
Is Everything Securities Fraud?
41–50 of 115 posts
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Economists like to talk about "utility" and the common good with their theories, but they tend to only measure money Yeah, that's the problem. The economic notion of value weights according to wealth while the moral notion of value does not. It's absolutely scandalous that we let economists conflate the two. Feed a starving kid in Africa? Zero economic value. The kid doesn't have money. Figure out how to merge toge…
I am an economist, and I have no idea what you're talking about.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#43Heads up – the linked article has not been peer reviewed yet: “Preliminary draft January 5, 2021–Please do not cite or circulate.”
Only a few law journals do traditional peer review. Most law review articles are reviewed by law review editors, who are law students in their second and third years, not law professors. In any case, you rightly point out that the author marked this private and preliminary. It's not a crazy idea. Nobody outside academe looks at SSRN ... until they do.
It's a little odd to put a paper on SSRN that is "do not circulate". I'm guessing it was left on there by accident.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an economist, and I have no idea what you're talking about.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
It is also difficult to get a man to understand something when you are not familiar enough with the subject. I suspect that is the more common failure mode.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Economists like to talk about "utility" and the common good with their theories, but they tend to only measure money so unless you can put a price tag on it it is invisible to economists. The wellbeing of a prostitute is one of those things that has no market. The same is largely true of toxic workplace behavior. There is a tertiary effect from potential lawsuits, but those are almost impossible to price into a busin…
> Economists like to talk about "utility" and the common good with their theories, but they tend to only measure money Yeah, that's the problem. The economic notion of value weights according to wealth while the moral notion of value does not. It's absolutely scandalous that we let economists conflate the two. Feed a starving kid in Africa? Zero economic value. The kid doesn't have money. Figure out how to merge toge…
This is nonsense. It's not The Market™ or The System™. It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone except to their parents, who have no means to provide commensurate to the child's value to them.
The blunt truth is that arbitrary lives are probably nearly valueless and certainly worth less than $1000. I have tested this hypothesis by describing GiveWell's mathematics to people at varying stages before they would spend money similar to that: in every case, people choose to spend the money rather than save arbitrary life.
I have tested this hypothesis on myself and it turns out that a pair of Zipp 606 carbon fibre wheels are worth way more to me than two African children.
The "moral notion of value" is a nonsensical concept invented to reinforce the notion of self-worth while not contributing to anything. Test it on yourself each time you spend: is a human life worth more to you than a hundred burritos? a set of car tyres? the higher trim on your car? The magic of this method is that it's memoryless. Irrespective of whether you give a million dollars a year or ten, the question applies to the next one thousand.
Your spending habits will prove it. No. Arbitrary life is valueless to you. And if you disagree, it should be easy to prove since GiveWell can save one arbitrary life per thousand dollars. Show me your spending and I will construct a way you could save a life by giving up non-essential parts of life.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That... is a good point. Actually, suing a company for securities fraud seems kind of strange when you put it that way. How could a shareholder derive net benefit from suing a company for a share of the assets they already own? Unless they've already sold the shares and they're suing to try and recover their loss? Is that allowed?
Do you still have to be a share holder when you sue? Or can it play out like, I own xx shares in Y Corp. Y Corp does something bad and share price goes down, I sell my stake and sue Y Corp for securities fraud for making my shares go down during the time period I owned them?
Could it be even worse -- that they are shorting the stock by the time the lawsuit goes to court?
The notices of class action lawsuits for stocks I've owned have only stipulated that you've owned the stock during some time window, as far as I recall.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only a subset of shareholders are suing, e.g. shareholders who bought shares between date X and date Y, they are only losing a fraction of a dollar in share value for every dollar they win in the lawsuit. They are gaining at the expense of shareholders who are not part of the lawsuit. (Ignoring court fees.. the suing shareholder is paying court fees on both ends, could end up being net negative.)
Wouldn't anyone who held shares during that time have standing for the lawsuit, regardless of when they bought them?
Possibly? I would have thought if the problem is artificially inflated price, shareholders who didn't buy or sell during the period are not affected, but to be honest I don't know how these suits work in details.
Just picking at random off Google, I looked at the Pinterest suit, and it's a big shareholder suing Pinterest Inc... on behalf of Pinterest Inc. So yeah you might be right. Sounds very odd.
https://www.scribd.com/document/486543528/Pinterest-Sharehol...
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Economists like to talk about "utility" and the common good with their theories, but they tend to only measure money Yeah, that's the problem. The economic notion of value weights according to wealth while the moral notion of value does not. It's absolutely scandalous that we let economists conflate the two. Feed a starving kid in Africa? Zero economic value. The kid doesn't have money. Figure out how to merge toge…
This is nonsense. It's not The Market™ or The System™. It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone except to their parents, who have no means to provide commensurate to the child's value to them. The blunt truth is that arbitrary lives are probably nearly valueless and certainly worth less than $1000. I have tested this hypothesis by describing GiveWell's mathematics to people at varying stages bef…
You are pushing a bit too far. GiveWell does raise many millions of dollars for those lives. It just doesn't raise all (or even nearly all) the money it would if people actually held the Communist or Utilitarian ideals they may half-profess.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#49This is probably showing up because it showed up in Matt Levine’s newsletter which returned today. In the newsletter, Matt disagrees with one of the conclusions drawn in the paper that shareholders have a perverse incentive to invest in companies that do bad things because they are compensated their loses when the stock goes down. He disagrees because their are compensated with money that the company has which alread…
You mean like how we fine local government for malfeasance and the money comes out of taxes, meaning either we pay ourselves or we don't get a service we paid for?
I think the problem might have existed before articles of incorporation and we just never solved it.
Re: Is Everything Securities Fraud?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is nonsense. It's not The Market™ or The System™. It turns out starving kids in Africa are of no value to anyone except to their parents, who have no means to provide commensurate to the child's value to them. The blunt truth is that arbitrary lives are probably nearly valueless and certainly worth less than $1000. I have tested this hypothesis by describing GiveWell's mathematics to people at varying stages bef…
You are pushing a bit too far. GiveWell does raise many millions of dollars for those lives. It just doesn't raise all (or even nearly all) the money it would if people actually held the Communist or Utilitarian ideals they may half-profess.
The fact that they do raise money but not as much as they would if people adhered to these ideals indicates to me that the utility function is different. i.e. that it isn't just the life that is being paid for.
And that's fine. I think people should spend their money as they see fit.
It's the bit where people make arguments from fictional moral authority that needs some push back. It's just nonsensical outrage - the opium of the partly-informed.