Friday, April 17, 2015

Can't Legislate Against Stupid

I've been casually paying attention to the talk about regulating financial advisors. Then today I see this headline and can't tell if it is deliberately satiric: Should Mutual Funds Be Illegal?

I don't see why the government is so concerned with everybody's investments. First of all, if you are dumb enough to invest all your money into a high priced financial advisor and see no gains, isn't the simple solution to simply not invest with them anymore? People blow money on all sorts of dumb things like motorboats and overpriced homes. Should that be regulated? I don't see why. There's this idea out there that adult folks need to have all these rules to protect them basically from themselves. But in my experience, you can't legislate against stupid and if people want to toss their money into investment advisors who charge a high percentage and in the long run their returns end up being 2% rather than 7%, I don't see this as being an issue worthy of government trying to correct.

No comments: