I think the point is clear, morality has nothing to do with whether something is definitely going to happen or not. If you're taking advantage of a situation and you deem it immoral, whether the end result would have been the same even if you hadn't participated is irrelevant, it's still an immoral action.

Whether robbery and speculation are equivalent is a different point from the one being made. Obviously analogies aren't perfect, I think most people here realize that from the very definition that analogous situations aren't the same. But it's still a useful tool to make an argument with.

Black Wednesday still has political and economic consequences more than 20 years later - the UK is not a member of the Euro and the Right may potentially pull us out of the EU altogether. The (de)merits of both positions notwithstanding, Black Wednesday certainly still has a huge psychological effect on our relationship with the rest of Europe.

Of course, you could argue another counter-factual, that Britain within the Euro would have tipped the balance of power in the ECB in favour of a much more doveish monetary policy from 2008, and thus saved Europe from calamity. It's really hard to speculate about these kinds of reflexive dynamics.

They didn't force a 10 kg block down any ones throat, they choose of their own volition to buy 10 kg of cheese at price they knew to be outrageous, to maintain their manipulated price of cheese because they are the sole maker of cheese.

So as the sole supplier of cheese they fucked up the market by flooding it with cheese, then realizing what they had done bought fuck loads of cheese that costs nothing to produce to maintain their inflated price of cheese. Fuck them.

However, there WERE other parameters. George Soros clearly believed the government to be incompetent/incapacitated (up against a wall), and took full advantage. It's also a zero-sum game where the loser isn't a single, self-motivated individual - it's a body of taxpayers who aren't explicitly consulted or perhaps even aware of the transaction, which calls into question the "willing, self-aware" parameter. Idealised financial transactions end with "win/lose", whereas ruining a whole economy like that results in years of decreased quality of life for other individuals, which has a moral implication. Soros was undoubtedly aware that his transaction would disadvantage a huge number of people, but did it anyway. He could have acted in such a way that netted him lots of money (a million, 10 million, 100 million) whilst still minimising taxpayer losses, but he didn't at all.

So in pure, simplified transactional terms, yeah fair game. In "big picture" we-are-all-human-beings terms, there's a huge moral hole here.

Was the British government up against a wall? Yes, but only because they put themselves there. They said "We will buy British Pounds, all you want to sell to us". George Soros said "Well, damn; I bet I can get a lot of pounds. Let's do this." and it turned out that George Soros's ability to borrow pounds was greater than the government's ability to buy them. How is an entity, full of ostensibly smart people, who continually say "Bring it on, I'm not done yet" the same or even similar to a drunken, passed out man? How is somebody who says "You will buy British Pounds? I have some pounds right here; would you like to buy them? Oh, you would? Well hold on, I'll be right back; I bet I can get some more!" the same or similar to somebody who sees a passed out man and slips off the dude's watch?

What Soros did: Legal + Immoral.

Two parties took a bet, as in a poker game. They each though they were doing the right thing. Turns out, one of them had a winning hand and one of them didn't.

But since everyone knew the nature of the game, and everyone knew they were making bets, why is it unethical?

Really, I would think more anger should be placed on the politicians who got monetary policy so drastically wrong. Or maybe anger is wrong - maybe I should say "learn from this". Because heaping anger on someone who outplayed you is a great way to mask the fact that you need to learn.

But you're right. Judging Soros gets us nowhere, drawing lessons from this does.

Black Wednesday was probably topped only by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%... in the buffoonery stakes.

Some think the gold selloff was an under the radar bailout

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/thomaspascoe/100018367/...

So dealer makes an offer saying "We will give you $10,000 for any clunker, no quantity restrictions, if it has wheels and starts we'll give you $10,000" so Mr. Soros thinks to himself, this is a rediculous offer and starts buying everything on craigslist for less than $10,000. He rolls up with 100 lemons and the dealer buys them, then has a press conference saying he has $15 billion dollars on hand an will buy all the lemons in the world for $10,000 a piece.

So George Soros goes and finds $30 billion lemons and it turns out that the gov't couldn't (or didn't want to) come up with $15 more billion for lemons. Yes, the tax payer got fleeced, but the transactions were made in good faith by people who thought buying lemons for $10,000 was a good fucking idea, and was elected on a fucking platform of buying lemons for $10K.

Shorting a stock (or a currency) is not a crime; it's an acceptable thing to do in a market.

I'm not saying that what Soros did should be illegal, mainly because overregulation can wind up screwing innocent people in all sorts of different ways that I'm not wise enough to predict. But I surely don't understand why he's being held up for praise.

Who screwed Britain? If you're going to tell me that it was George Soros, I'd like to hear why you're holding him more responsible than e.g. Helmut Schlesinger, or the reporter who paraphrased Schlesinger's quote and sent the market into a panic?

edit: Or as loso pointed out in a comment above mine, is George Soros more responsible than the members of the British government who put the pound sterling in the terrible position to begin with?

And to rephrase the second sentence: Soros knew that the bad policy decisions of the politicians would leave the people devastated, but didn't care. Again, I'm not convinced that's relevant; Soros didn't make the situation, he just profited by it. That doesn't make it his fault.

As to your other point, this is how markets are supposed to work. Soros in effect helped show the incompetency of the government, which was a net good. People got screwed, certainly, but the situation was terrible and no one did anything about it until Soros stepped in.

You could say that he is similar to Snowden or other whistleblowers in many ways. They through the government into chaos, likely endangered a lot of the economy and possibly lives, and they did it all because exposing the bad things the government was doing was more important.

Of course, I'm not arguing that it's the same, as the whistleblowers do this despite the fact that it ruins their lives, and Soros did it to make money. What I am saying is, it's great we've setup a system where people like Soros are incentivized to uncover government screwups, so we can do better next time.

> You could say that he is similar to Snowden or other whistleblowers in many ways. They through the government into chaos, likely endangered a lot of the economy and possibly lives, and they did it all because exposing the bad things the government was doing was more important.

Grotesque. Soros certainly didn't give a damn about the public good. A better comparison would be somebody blowing a nuclear power plant to make a point that the security measures are insufficient. Should we congratulate terrorists next, because we can "do better" next time in terms of security?

> Of course, I'm not arguing that it's the same, as the whistleblowers do this despite the fact that it ruins their lives, and Soros did it to make money. What I am saying is, it's great we've setup a system where people like Soros are incentivized to uncover government screwups, so we can do better next time.

Really? Let me ask you, why was the situation terrible exactly? Because the pound was overvalued and exposed to the same predatory behaviour Soros demonstrated? Oh, right...

GDP in 1994 was £693bn

Govt. spending was £4,687 per capita and this loss was about £54 per capita.

Not zero but hardly devastating.

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/piechart_1994_UK_total

£3.3b in 1994 would be £6bn today.

As a comparison, in 1999 Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold before the market moved up, the equivalent of a £9b loss, £13b in today's money. He did this to give the banks an under the radar bailout by manipulating the markets.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/thomaspascoe/100018367/...

Gold doesn't pay interest, whereas the cash raised from the gold sale was used to buy (mostly) long term US treasuries to replace the gold in the BoE's asset portfolio. These have performed very well as an investment over the intervening years (look at, eg the BTTRX fund for a rough equivalent in the private sector) so the net loss is much smaller than you'd think.

As I said elsewhere, there's plenty of blame to go around. Lots of people were complicit, some of them more so than Soros. But Soros is the only one who's commonly held up as some sort of heroic capitalist ubermensch, so he's the one I went after.

To me, guilt is what you've done, innocence is what you haven't done. The British government has done pretty much everything.

So, according to your theory, the perpetrators of the last downturn should have sold as many bogus CDS packages as possible, right? Regardless of the damage?

I'm happy most people don't subscribe to the same law-defined morals that you seem to.

The guys selling CDSs they couldn't pay out had none of their own skin in the game, and were profiting from the presence of then implicit (now very EXPLICIT) government backstops. When they lost money, the public was forced to pay through devices like the AIG bailout, TARP, ZIRP, etc.

There's no legitimate comparison between the two.

Well, no. This is explained in the article: If Soros' assumption (that the exchange rate would plummet) hadn't been realised Sterling would've stayed at the lower bound of the ERM and Quantum wouldn't have lost much at all.

i don't think edward snowden should feel bad for what he did, even if it's considered a crime.

as for robbing a drunk guy in the gutter, you could argue that you are teaching him a lesson, and that the price of this lesson is the cash he has in his wallet now. it would be a rather aggresive marketing strategy, but hopefully the guy does learn from it.

likewise, you could argue that soros breaking the bank of England is him teaching the people of the world a lesson - you can't prop up a currency indefinitely. people like him - folks with lots of money and more desire to earn money than to support practices they think are unsustainable - will prevent governments from pegging rates indefinitely, just as muggers will prevent people from wandering carelessly through parts of town where no one is watching them.

i'd like to live in a world where people were more interested in gaining a positive reputation by passing on the chance to profit from destruction, even if it's legal. that wish is exactly like wanting to live in a world where nobody gets mugged: both of those situations are inevitable if omnipresent surveillance takes off. if being caught is a certainty, nobody's going to pick a wallet anywhere. if databases of people's responses to your actions are publicly available, many supporters of government-backed monetary policy - as well as the friends and families of those who suffered from his actions - will shun soros and anyone else who helps knock a tower over because 'it was going to fall anyhow.'

Can you rephrase yourself in a way that's more understandable?

That was pretty clearly a response to the line he quoted directly above, i.e. rebutting the notion that an action's morality is solely determined by whether or not that action is classified as a crime.

> Well, no. Robbing a passed out drunk is a crime; you should feel bad for committing crimes, even if it's clear that if you didn't somebody else would. Shorting a stock (or a currency) is not a crime; it's an acceptable thing to do in a market.

If you didn't intend to imply that robbing the drunk is bad because it's a crime, and what Soros did is acceptable because it's not a crime, then you weren't communicating very clearly.

consider/distinguish/define innocence vs unawareness vs incompetence

innocent of what ?

is it ok to eat cows ? distinguish from unconscious / unaware / stupid / mentally challenged humans at a biological level - self reflection in another person ? empathy ? isn't that really selfish.. (is selfishness wrong anyways)

yes law | crime != justice | morality

however internal sense of justice, morality - some forms of it (internalised socialism/communism) are a heavy burden and disadvantage, objectively wrong

because

thoroughly exploited by weak / lazy / unlucky people and groups, and various degrees of sociopaths and most of all exploited by the great unaware masses - innocents ? - muppets ?

otoh social cooperation beneficial to all (if that is _the_ goal) only if driven by free will in a way that benefits each member according to his own estimate of his own needs & desires and willing sacrifices to trade .. (benefits vs costs)

is morality guided by relative quantity of beneficiaries/victims & 'quality' of some definitions and scopes of benefit vs harms relative harm or good, does an objective 'detached' harm / goodness exist without context. (harm / goodness are not nouns, not objects, just results from actions) no 'cold' objective guidelines ..offtopic philosophising

self sacrifice without self benefit = self destruction for someone else's benefit, or no benefit at all - just stupid

re reputation - an external motive, essentially hunger for reward + fear of punishment, at a social level :. potentially a form of hypocrisy, not 'real' internal morality

re omnipresent monitoring - fucking creepy kafkaesque horror show... lol, i think population will creep out waay before it ever happens, privacy awareness is already entering mainstream (snowden, visible hackings, internet driven mainstreamising of countercultures)

..re soros et al: foregoing opportunities to appease the incompetent (or unaware, stupid) is a form of self sacrifice - for people who don't deserve it / appreciate it / fucked over by their own government and muppetry / there's really no reward / stupid and futile

And borrowing from your example, if there is a big group of drunk men marching to an abyss and no one would listen to a word you say ( well they are drunk), then maybe the moral thing to do is punch them in the face and run the other way.