My example tax is only a conversation starter. You would be right to say that the reality is a little more complex. But not much. I worked in the bond, fx, and commodities end of Wall Street for nearly 20 years and an average guy from my old department would know how to set, implement and administer such a tax for each product. It's not that hard. In fact a similar system existed for regulatory capital for a very long time.
The Communism comparison is really a red herring. The principles of the price system, the central feature of a free market, are under constant assault from informational asymmetries and externalities of all kinds. Before our era of jargon, they were simply called fraud and rumor mongering. HFT is 21st century micro-rumor mongering.
To protect the functioning of markets these are appropriate objects of regulation--even for a free marketeer like me. I merely suggest we modify the the regulation of an already regulated market.
Unfortunately the style of regulation we keep opting for punishes bad behavior of individuals--when it does anything at all--and ignores the systemic causes. This repeatedly plays into the hands of industry interests every time. The public interest requires more information, to reduce the tendency for fraud that our regulators have proven they cannot control.
The Communism comparison is really a red herring. The principles of the price system, the central feature of a free market, are under constant assault from informational asymmetries and externalities of all kinds. Before our era of jargon, they were simply called fraud and rumor mongering. HFT is 21st century micro-rumor mongering.
To protect the functioning of markets these are appropriate objects of regulation--even for a free marketeer like me. I merely suggest we modify the the regulation of an already regulated market.
Unfortunately the style of regulation we keep opting for punishes bad behavior of individuals--when it does anything at all--and ignores the systemic causes. This repeatedly plays into the hands of industry interests every time. The public interest requires more information, to reduce the tendency for fraud that our regulators have proven they cannot control.