Quote:
Originally Posted by aklim
If you want to use morality, can I use my standard?
Holes, loopholes, back door entrances, whatever. They are smart and deserve to win. We cheer when a poor guy finds a way to beat the system. When it is a big dog, the rules are different. Makes no difference to me. May the smarter man win even if I lose.
That is one way to look at it. The side effect is that it makes things much more difficult to work with so it isn't all good. Maybe a smarter consumer is a better way.
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I am working with a bit of an edge-up here in that I knew a number of those associated with the ENRON meltdown. There were regulations in place and they found a way to game the system. Where they messed up was in pushing the limits until they fell over the edge and committed crimes, crimes that are defined by regulations.
Their defense in court was that they were just doing business as usual and that they were smarter than everyone else. The reason they were found guilty was that they were clearly making up the rules as they went along and the only thing they understood about the regulations was how to beat them. The problem? They figured wrong. They did not beat the regulations, they ignored them.
A New York finance guy once told me that he would have meetings with ENRON's top brass and then leave the room laughing about how hopelessly mired they were in their own world. Then the New Yorkers would start trying to figure out how to fleece the ENRON guys and then get away clean. The New Yorkers did it and did it by staying with-in the banking regulations; the ENRON guys took the fall since the New Yorkers turned them inside out but made them think they were the smartest guys in the room.
It turns out they were not.