yeah, no shit. We're saying the same thing. Sheesh.
But of the 100 reforms I'd like to see, none of them look anything like Sarbanes-Oxley.
Agreed again. So what is your point? Did you even read what I've been writing here?
You've just got different internal estimates of the prevalence of fraud, the ease of deterring innovation, and the costs associated with each.
Interestingly, when people disagree like this they almost always either start talking about principles, generalities, or hypotheticals that are obviously very good or very bad. They never say "let's start with some numbers we can both agree on and see if we can figure it out together."
I think that's because people are wired to think with representative symbols (genius inventor, robber baron, welfare queen), and to weight their judgments according to their loyalty to various ideology brands.
I've no problem with that. I doubt it will stop innovation, except perhaps the kind Enron was involved in (that is, innovation in fraud).
You conflate a lot of issues here by introducing medical innovation and jet engine technology. However, the common denominator is jail time for fraudulent behavior. We're not talking about jailing failed attempts. We're talking about fraud.
As I mentioned above, SOX goes too far in dictating how the company should be transparent. I don't really care. But: the CEO (or, as a reply in the thread above advanced, all of the officers EDIT: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008571) is (are) responsible. They can't simply testify, "I didn't know about that" and get away with it.
I actually think that by spelling out all of these rules, even though they are expensive, they just give bad guys a set of rules to be gamed.