[nicoburns]

The financial instruments (and the underlying rules of the economic system) are the enablers here. You're probably right that it's probably better than what came before, but that doesn't mean we can improve on the system we have.

[lazide]

Of course we can improve it - by identifying where people’s behaviors and systemic effects are causing undesirable behaviors. That probably doesn’t happen if we blame ‘finance’ for it though?

Every system has exploitable loopholes and will become unbalanced once enough people start gaming it. Some of them (especially new ones) are easier than others.

It’s easy to say ‘this is terrible’, but that can easily turn into rejecting a known system with adjustments and corrections for bad behaviors that isn’t perfect into a system that gets gamed even easier by bad actors and turns into an even worse (but different) mess. See 90% of all revolutions ever.

[CRConrad]

Judging from how utterly close that was to a well-worn idiom, I'm guessing what the GP meant to write was "that doesn't mean we can't improve..."

Just so you guys don't get into violent agreement.

[nicoburns]

Ha, yes I certainly did mean that. Sometimes I type HN comments too quickly.

[lazide]

Haha, for sure.

That’s it! Handshakes at dawn it is!

[CRConrad]

The new Russian-roulette-ish form of dueling: Handshakes at dawn -- without hand sanitizer.