“Tell me what the rules are, and I’ll make money with them.”
This statement, made by Jeffrey Sprecher of Intercontinental Exchange, captures
well the attitude that business practitioners should have toward government
regulation in a republic. That is to say, businesses should be
regulation-takers rather than makers. For the regulatees to make regulation to
which they themselves would be subject is an oxymoron, or contradiction in
terms. At the very least, it involves a conflict of interest. At the macro
level, business as “regulation-maker” effectively turns a democracy into a
plutocracy. Accordingly, the strategic use of regulation should pertain to the use side, rather than the regulating
side. Crafting regulations—essentially dictating them to legislators or
regulators—in order to make money from them takes the strategic use of
regulation too far.
The full essay is at "Profiting from the Rules on Wall Street."
