‘Unintended Consequences’: Former Bain Exec Sparks Controversy Over Income Inequality

[The Magistrate]

2. Among The Problems Here, Sir, is That The Rewards Of Defeat Need To Balance Those Of Victory

No real risk is taken if no real suffering attends the person who takes the risk when it comes a cropper.

Where the rewards are so outlandish as those received by modern financiers and chief executives, the penalties must be similarly outlandish if the system is to have any balance. For instance, to take one from today's head-lines: the losses at J. P. Morgan. A few people are being put out of their offices, forced to live on their millions of dollars of capital --- hardly a fate to reckon with even looking from the short end at long odds. Something ranging from confiscation of all assets to make good what can be on the losses, to breaking on the wheel in a public square, would seem a proper balance for the enticement of the millions and billions held out as reward.

The fact is that these purported 'risk-takers' risk nothing at all themselves. They put at hazard the savings and employment and lives of many other people, but put at stake for themselves only their current place in the game. They want risk premiums, but only from a fully insured position.