btilly, nowhere did I bring communism or capitalism into the conversation. It is interesting that you think I did. This is the where so many of these conversations break down: people use these words differently, and so, often a diverse group of people, not understanding each other's vocabulary, will end up talking past one another, each thinking that the other means something else.

You wrote:

"Which in effect boiled down to saying that it was possible that it could be easier to discourage gaming the system by providing bigger punishments for bad behavior than it is to do it by providing bigger incentives for not gaming the system."

Correct, which is I why I suggested that larger fines might be a reasonable option to look at. In the article, Stiglitz' points out that the fines that are now imposed are laughably small compared to the money that some of these people made in the financial deals discussed in the article. To my mind, the next obvious step is to increase the fines, till they offer a reasonable incentive not to engage in a particular activity. As I wrote before "I can think of a lot of incentives that might be put in place to help align the interests of those writing the mortgages and those who are receiving the mortgages". Larger fines for misrepresentation would be the most obvious incentive to try here.

I could go into some detail about the different ways that people have historically used the words "capitalism" and "communism." However, past a certain point, such writing becomes incredibly tedious. Strunk and White, in their book Elements Of Style, compare normal writing to legal writing. No one can write well, they say, who doubts the intelligence of their reader. Good writing depends on assuming good will on the part of ones readers. They contrast that to legal writing. When lawyers draw up a legal document, they assume the document will be read in bad faith. After all, if 2 parties still have good will between them, they rarely need to consult their written agreements. It's when all good will is gone that people pull out the contracts. Therefore legal documents need to be written with great redundancy and verbosity, to try to drive out any ambiguity and to try to cover every edge case.

Not mentioned in Strunk and White is the case where the reader bears no ill will to the writer, but through inexperience with the subject is unable to reach conclusions that the writer regards as obvious. For this latter kind of reader, a simplified kind of writing is sometimes required, and this kind of writing resembles the kind of writing you would do if you were assuming bad faith on the part of the reader - it is a kind of writing that tries to define everything, and drive out ambiguity. I often engage in this kind of writing when I'm trying to explain things to my customers.

This kind of writing can be compared to the kind of software that tries to take into account every edge case. We all know that, for non-trivial software, there is a substantial gap between the effort needed to get the software working for the simplest case, versus the effort needed to ensure that the same software takes into account every edge case that it might face. The first kind of coding tends to be fun, the second kind of coding tends to be tedious.

I'm willing to engage in that latter kind of writing for my job. Should I make that kind of effort on Hacker News? Such writing can be exhausting - it is often a verbose kind of writing, and, above all, it needs to be a very careful kind of writing. There are places where I recognize the importance of making such an effort - at work, and with certain friends when a subject is emotionally charged, and when I've undertaken some substantial responsibility. I find that I'm only able to write like that for maybe 5 or 6 hours a day - it takes too much out of me to focus at that level for much longer than that. Does it make sense for me to invest some of those hours on Hacker News?

To the extent that I can assume I'm being read in good faith, I can write with some shortcuts. That is the way I have conversations with friends. If I can't assume good faith, then I need to engage in much more careful style. As I said, this only seems worth it to me when the stakes are high.

You can, perhaps, understand my ambivalence? On a subject like the one involving the article about Stiglitz, yes, I could spend 2 hours putting together a careful essay explaining my views, how they formed, who I've read and how it influenced my thinking on the subject, and why I think an important aspect of the article is being overlooked. But am I being paid to to spend 2 hours that way? If not, I can probably spend those 2 hours more profitably elsewhere.

Thus, as I said, I'm ambivalent about continuing to participate on Hacker News.