But we've cross a line. On this side of the line, we are in grave risk of the type of thing that happened in 2008.
I phrased it in a black and white way, but this type of thing is never black and white. It's a continuum and as I said, we're too far to one side right now, for the corporate side of things.
They break the law with impunity because prosecutors know that, due to out of date and/or weakly stated rules and legislation, they would never get a conviction - an indictment and trial would waste everyone's time, money, and reputation. Because the laws are still not worded well enough to overlap perfectly with the crimes being committed. Hence more legislation and rules.
Regulations worked: it was when we unravelled existing regulation that things went belly up in almost exactly the same way they had gone belly-up the time before, inspiring the regulation in the first place. Cause-and-effect are a bitch sometimes.
But it's still a horrendously complex thing to do, a revolution doesn't really do much other than bring the complexity level down for a while till all the lessons are learned again and the same problems resurface with new actors.
No, but by the same token, it's hardly the case that all business leaders in a capitalist society are crooks. This is just particularly galling because it's so blatant and because they're basically saying "yeah, we're guilty" and still no one is being punished.
I believe unfettered from regulations, transparency and oversight, this is what capitalism devolves to.
But we're not in a system that's unfettered from regulations, transparency and oversight. At least not in the sense that we don't have a "government" that purports to provide those things. But the current system obviously doesn't work, so I'm not sure how more government, bureaucracy, rules, regulations, etc. are going to fix anything, when it's clear that certain groups that break the law with (near) impunity.
I'm a liberal, but I hate too much regulation. I do think, however, the pendulum has swung very far in the lack of the features I mentioned above.
I think lack of enforcement (which I attribute to cronyism and corruption) are more then problem than lack of rules, and laws, and regulations. This is one (but not the only) reason I am so skeptical of government, because the more power you grant it, the more there seems to be temptation for it to devolve, along with the "titans of industry", into this quasi-fascist, corrupt, cronyist system. sigh
Times like these, I tend to think it almost doesn't matter what political ideology one believes in... you almost just have to accept that the system is always going to decay and become corrupt eventually, and you just have to scrap the whole thing, throw it out and start over.