As a school child, I was taught that the American constitution and our bill of rights protects our inalienable rights (given by God) from the government. The government doesn’t protect us. We wrote protections to guarantee our rights from the government m.
Yet you’d be hard pressed to find anyone pitching a government law these days that isn’t wrapped in logic about us needing protection from the world. Our laws now protect the American people from worldly fears.
Precious few of us discuss needing protection from the government in order to exercise our rights. The government protects us from the world’s many from dastardly threats. We don’t care so much about protecting our rights from the government anymore.
Protect the children, consumers, workers, businesses taxpayers we plead. Save us! And lawmakers respond in kind. It’s for your own good might as well be the nation state’s motto.
And what do we have to show for it? Are we freer? Do our financial systems enable life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? It sure doesn’t seem like our recent track record is working well. Have the last two crashes and subsequent legislative responses led to a more productive prosperous economy?
Sarbanes-Oxley (and the enormous growth of private venture capital) mean companies don’t need to go public anymore, and prefer not to given the compliance cost.
Which of course means the small private investor has zero chance to grow assets like the already wealthy routinely do.
I scan 20 years of tech life, and can’t think of a single instance of regulation actually improving anything for the everyman user/investor
Antonio Garćia Martinéz on Twitter 6/9/26 regarding Databricks raising a series M at a reporter 165B valuation
You used to be able to buy an initial public offering for a startup and grow with it. Now most of the gains are in the private markets. So if you were a SpaceX private investor you might have a great summer but it’s hard to say if you will want to buy the IPO.
It all reminds me a little bit of my favorite Christmas movie A Christmas Story. The movie follows a young boy and his family’s misadventures during Christmastime in 1940. He wants a a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle for Christmas. Everyone from his mother to the mall Santa Clause insists “you’ll shoot your eye out!”
Now I don’t want to spoil the movie but let’s just say that the kid doesn’t come to any harm despite getting his wish even if there are a few moments of fear and regret. Because ultimately he’s a responsible kid and it’s a BB gun.
I’d hope we continue to conclude that Americans are responsible people. Sure BB guns, frontier large language artificial intelligence models, and investments in the stock market all come with risk. But isn’t a life with Christmas magic, helpful compute and capital gains worth it?