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Pastimes : Investment Chat Board Lawsuits -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeffrey S. Mitchell who wrote (1150)	2/27/2001 1:20:27 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12465

While I have personally found consistently negative posters tiresome on the stock boards I have followed, I criticize them far less, and follow this board, because I am outraged at the idea of companies dragging them into court. The only result, IMO, is injury to the free and open discussion that characterized the early internet. The Lebed controversy should probably be put to bed here. Possibly it has it own thread somewhere. But what I have found fascinating about the discussion here the last couple days is that there seem to be exactly two, and only two, opinions: The majority here looks at the kid as a thief and a menace to the public, and laments that the SEC couldn't or wouldn't go further to punish him, preferably for life. And that he injured victims in the way a street mugger or bank robber terrorizes his victims. The minority here, while admitting that both the parents and the child represent a negative social outcome, are greatly put off by a government agency ganging 5 lawyers up on a young boy playing on his computer. They see the ostensible victims as partial frauds themselves (or, at least, hopeless fools), who may deserve our sympathy, but certainly don't deserve the protection of the coercive power of the state. Within the context of the argument, what is interesting is that no one on either side proposed that there must be some middle ground between the extremes. One that keeps the cops and lawyers back on important tasks, while protecting the child from parents who can't teach him right from wrong, as well as a society that can't seem to decide. This discussion is thus a reflection of the current state of America today. There is no middle ground among the informed and interested. The only ones who claim to be moderate quickly prove to be the dulliards and mediocrities among us. On all the issues of the day, taxation, Social Security, environment, the "social issues", we are invariably "talking past each other". The "turbulent Sixties", believe it or not, wasn't like this. Drag the loudest on each side into an ordered and open forum back then, and they re-acquired their sense of civilization and moved toward reasonable discourse (while still disagreeing). Today we "talk past each other", like we are looking for the camera, and a wider audience. It goes without saying that this tendency will lead to more problems than it solves. Eventually, within a generation or two, it means one side or the other must necessarily prevail. When that finally occurs, a new paradigm will come of age that will lead into the next cycle. And you and I may finally find agreement (in our later years) that this new paradigm is an unacceptable evil in our collective midst. Will it be only then that we see the folly of having talked past each other and ignored the middle ground, where the answer to the Lebed tragedy most likely lies?