An acquaintance ...

An acquaintance has a clip of Gordon Gecko/Michael Douglas soliciting viewers to call the DOJ if they suspect financial hanky-panky on Wall Street.
The acquaintance posits: "I don't know whether this makes us laugh or cry"

My response:

“Laugh or Cry”?

I opt to cry.

Running to the Government for every problem’s solution is a one-way street: No return.

Greed is an emotive code word; semantically crafted to instill guilt, shame, forced altruism, to garner social acceptance of the Politically Correct and self-appointed Annointed and fuel the politics of envy.

Greed is impossible to define without unqualified, unjustified judging, subjective imposition of standards and practices that may not be – and usually aren’t - compatible with the principles and ideals of a Free Market.

The worst punishment, misdirected legislation, government imposition floats in on the tears of some “victim” who “lost it all” to some scurrilous Gecko. Invariably, it was the “victim’s” failure to Due Diligence or simply fail to seriously heed the warning “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is”. There Bad Guys out there. Always have been; always will be. And when they do bad things, occasionally they get arrested and prosecuted (if they don’t have sufficient political collateral).

Most likely, they are really “victims” of the simple fact: One cannot enjoy Freedom  and Liberty without exercising Personal Responsibility for his choices and actions.

Or, as Tom Sowell wrote: “It’s not necessarily what is “best”; it’s who gets to decide what’s best.”

You are the Boss of You. Who do you want deciding what’s “best”?