A Knowledge Problem with Insider Trading Law. Brian Doherty: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2011-05-16):
Reihan Salam at The Daily is of course glad hedge fund villain Raj Rajaratnam was convicted for insider trading, blah blah, but spells out one of the perverse results of keeping those who know the most about companies (theoretically) from helping spread that knowledge and help bake it into the...
How the regulatory arm of the Money Monopoly -- in order to "protect" small investors from predatory insiders, natch -- ends up encouraging, nay demanding, faceless corporations with governance alienated from the enterprise and unaccountable to investors.
New U.S. $100 Even Uglier. Daring Fireball (2010-04-22):
Why are we making our money ugly? We’re ruining one of the greatest visual brands in history. ★
Good lord.
John Gruber, linking the story at Daring Fireball, asks "Why are we [sic] making our money ugly?" I don't think it's hard to explain. The answer is that "we" (you and I) aren't doing anything to the U.S. Federal Reserve notes, because we don't design them and we don't have any meaningful market choice about what kind of money to use, either. The "visual brand" here is a brand in a completely uncompetitive market.
The people who do exercise effective choice over the design of U.S. government monopoly money (Treasury, the Fed, and the Secret Service) have no need to work to attract customers; their work is solely concerned with confining customers. Hence they have no incentive to be concerned with keeping their "visual brand" strong or attractive; the incentives point towards just making it as complicated and inelegant as possible, in order to make the design hard to counterfeit. Money that was produced in a competitive market, and which relied on customer choice rather than government fiat as its basis for value, has typically been attractive and well-designed.
