Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 29, 2010 19:45 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285)
In reply to: Linux at NASDAQ OMX by Np237
Parent article: Linux at NASDAQ OMX

The market isn't chaotic in that sense. Food and water will always be valuable. So will labor reduction (employees, slaves, machines) and entertainment. At a medieval feudal level a planned economy can be run from the top down. That couldn't be done if it was a truly chaotic system.

In the modern world eliminating the market or placing too much control on it will always fail.

The market will resurrect itself in the form of an underground economy where supply and demand (plus legal risk fees) will result in exchanges at the true market value of goods and services.

A regulated market that respects true values will still fail when the regulation cost exceeds the legal risk costs. At that point it becomes much cheaper to avoid the legal markets (pay workers cash under the table, hire illegal aliens, buy drugs from Canada, etc).

Take the old USSR for example or any government that has attempted to enforce a rationing system. Ticket sales and scalpers are another example.

To take this back to the subject, if there was any attempt to impose month long waits on stock sales, investment brokers would go somewhere else, to another country probably, where such ridiculous laws were not in force.

There will always be someone. North Korea or Venezuela could become the finance capital of the world.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 29, 2010 20:03 UTC (Fri) by Np237 (guest, #69585) [Link] (7 responses)

Economy as a whole is not necessarily a chaotic system. But the market with no control (or joke control, as currently) is definitely one.

As for other places becoming the finance capital of the world: sorry to disappoint you, but it has already happened. Bahamas, Cayman, Isle of Man, to a lesser extent Delaware and Singapore This is where the large transactions are happening. The solution is not to just imitate them and hope for the best when speculation and market manipulation takes away any kind of value from the real world economy. The solution is, on the contrary, to impose strong regulations (with high legal risk costs, as you point out) and to make it costly to make money flee in such places. Several realistic solutions, from Tobin tax to various kinds of oversight, have been proposed in this direction, but have not been implemented because of beliefs in the market that confine to religion.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 30, 2010 22:43 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (6 responses)

As for other places becoming the finance capital of the world: sorry to disappoint you, but it has already happened. Bahamas, Cayman, Isle of Man, to a lesser extent Delaware and Singapore… This is where the large transactions are happening.

Let's not exaggerate. Far more money changes hands in New York, London, etc. than those places. These are the finance capitals of the world. And it's because laws in New York and London allow exchanges to run Linux and execute a million orders a second. If they didn't, then the transactions would move to those other places.

I don't get the "sorry to disappoint" angle at all, since you're at best confirming zlynx's point: places like North Korea and the Bahamas can have fewer restrictions and be the marketplace of choice.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 6:18 UTC (Sun) by Np237 (guest, #69585) [Link] (5 responses)

You are completely missing the point.

I dont care about people playing casino in such places. As long as they dont do it with our money.

There are ways to prevent people from using money and goods from our countries in such places. Running a competition for which country has the laxest laws to allow the fastest transactions with the least control is not one.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 7:04 UTC (Sun) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

if all you are worried about is your money, then just don't give your money to money managers that do things you don't like.

unless you are forced into a union, they don't force you to give them any money, you can do whatever you want with it.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 7:24 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Have you forgotten about the great bank bailout of 2008?

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 7:51 UTC (Sun) by Np237 (guest, #69585) [Link]

Do you actually know how the economic system works?

Not everyone of us wants to spend his life alone in the mountains raising goats.

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 8:13 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

if all you are worried about is your money, then just don't give your money to money managers that do things you don't like.

I don't think anyone is posting worries about his own money, even though the posts might be worded that way out of simplicity. What people are worried about is their wealth, and having a mattress stuffed with money doesn't make you wealthy if the price of everything is high. Certain behaviors of financial institutions make prices high so that no matter what one person does with his own money, he ends up poorer.

And it's rather arbitrary what money we call mine and what money we call yours (laws can easily change that accounting), so it's legitimate to complain about things that waste "our money."

Linux at NASDAQ OMX

Posted Oct 31, 2010 7:59 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

You are completely missing the point.
I don’t care about people playing casino in such places. As long as they don’t do it with our money.

No, I just wasn't addressing that point. I was addressing the point from your immediate previous post that the Cayman islands, etc. are today the finance capitals of the world, and that that revelation should disappoint zlynx (who said places like North Korea could become finance capitals if laws were to restrict trade in today's finance capitals).

If those weren't points you intended to make, you shouldn't have said it.