Up north in Canada instead of having a single SEC each province has its own securities regulation.
Which let's the Texas of Canada, Alberta, run it's own stock exchange with much looser listing requirements and security requirements. This Texas exchange will not have that advantage.
The important aspect for Alberta within the context of Canada. Is how the local regulation allows the Alberta exchange to list and provide capital to junior drillers. Small companies which raise capital using ipos to use in speculative drilling. Alberta sees this as important for their economy. To the extent it prevents Canada from having a nation SEC like singular security regulator.
With that in mind, I question how a Texas based exchange will be more than a market for lemons. Companies too sketchy for the big exchanges might be interested in listing, but no one worth investing. This contrasts with Alberta where the difference in regulation allows a unique group of companies to list.
Instead we'd expect an exchange who's selling point is less regulation, to be filled with companies who cannot pass the higher bar. A self selection of the worst companies.
> Which let's the Texas of Canada, Alberta, run it's own stock exchange with much looser listing requirements and security requirements. This Texas exchange will not have that advantage.
One point of note, there hasn't been an Alberta stock exchange since 1999. The Toronto stock exchange bought the Vancouver, Alberta and small cap option market form Montreal and merged them into one stock exchange called the Toronto Venture stock exchange.
Its head quarters are in Calgary but its computer are located in Ontario and its under IIROC supervision and rules. And the BC and Alberta government co regulate it but their securities commission rules aren't what's followed, its the IIROC rules that apply.
The Canadian Venture Exchange was absolute anarchy, and that was compared to the already lax Toronto exchange that had been chock full of sketchy mining stocks, the poster child of which was Bre-X.
Elon has demonstrated that you can get high, make a stupid multi-billion dollar company acquisition, and just sack another public company that you control to make yourself whole.
When the “overbearing regulatory regime” represents said company shareholders interests, you move to Texas where the MAGA vision of freedom reigns.
This is a pretty absurd idea. The Tesla Model S, the Nissan Leaf, and the Renault Z-E platform (initially with a pretty unsuccessful car built on it; the successful Renault Zoe came the year after) all came out within a year of each other. The VW e-Golf came out the year after. You can thank progress in lithium ion batteries hitting a tipping point, not Musk, coupled with government incentives (California, the EU, and China were all pretty much saying to manufacturers "make this, and we will subsidise it").
I can see why people might think this, particularly Americans, because the Tesla Model 3 was arguably the first mainstream/affordable electric car _in America_ (the Leaf and similar vehicles never really caught on there; they're too far outside market preferences), but the idea that Tesla in some way made electric cars possible is simply nonsense.
> Without Musk EVs would be nowhere and NASA and ESA would still be the laggard they are with reusable launchers absolutely nowhere to be found.
There is no way to prove this without having the ability to observe all the other universes that have Musk and that don't have Musk. It's very likely if he didn't build these companies, someone else, or multiple someones, would have built similar companies.
1) He’s an individual yet his wealth surpasses the GDP of entire nations.
2) The market caps of his companies that informs that wealth are wildly and recklessly speculative. The company that innovated in its space is worth 1/3 of the company that has consistently oversold or completely failed to make good on promises(which frankly they all do regardless of their innovative effect).
3) And still, he’s currently holding one of his companies for ransom for even more.
> He built companies that provide breakthrough goods and services.
I must have misunderstood why his companies hired all of those employees.
Were they all just there cheering him on as he built it all himself?
Absent Musk, someone else would have worked out how to arbitrage government subsidies on efficient cars, household solar and space flight. That's how capitalism works: if there's free money floating about, someone will figure out how to take it.
There were - and are - a lot of companies vying for those sweet subsidies. And most of them can't make it work even with subsidies. Maybe Toyota with their prius is getting anywhere, the rest are mostly a footnote. And yet, Musk comes and makes a successful business there. I think there's something more than subsidies in play. Sure, subsidies help, but a lot of people failed where Musk succeeded.
I respected the guy on his merits until he fabricated the Saudi investor nonsense to take Tesla private at $420 a share. When that happened, I sold my last few Tesla shares that came from the SolarCity acquisition. It's been a word vomit rollercoaster since then.
He feeds off negative attention and actively seeks it out.
You are implying that the company that seeks less regulation necessarily does it because it's of lesser quality and this is the reason they can not abide by stricter regulations. I don't think this assumption is true.
> With that in mind, I question how a Texas based exchange will be more than a market for lemons. Companies too sketchy for the big exchanges might be interested in listing, but no one worth investing.
This is exactly how it will end up being used for. Companies that are listed as OTC (over the counter) or “pink sheets” are most certainly dog shit; and often subjected to pump and dump schemes. The TXSE will be no different especially with reported “fewer regulations” than NASDAQ or NYSE.
This is great news for grifters. The average retail investor will likely end up getting shafted.
Yep. Let's say you're a reputable business with solid earnings and market cap, and a track record of following the rules and being able to meet listing standards. Which exchange(s) are you going to consider? The well-known, venerable NYSE or NASDAQ, or the Texas Freewheelin' Discount Bargain Barbecue Exchange?
Now, if you're a less than reputable business, with questionable earnings and a disregard for following the rules, and you are ineligible to be listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, which exchange are you going to consider?
BSE, CHX, MS4X, NSX, PHLX and more? NYSE & NASDAQ aren't the only players in the US equities exchange market. NYSE & NASDAQ are merely the 2 largest players in a very large field. And that's _just_ equities. Get into commodities or options and other derivatives and there's even more.
Also, not being listed on NYSE or NASDAQ doesn't mean you're any less of a reputable company. There's some real shit listed on both.
Texas has the headquarters of many companies, but how many are actually incorporated in Texas? What would the advantages be to a Texas exchange over NYSE or NASDAQ?
I understand the desire for a different marketplace. But no matter where it is, they’ll still have to follow Federal securities laws, which will require some level of red tape.
Many of those companies are national or multi-national companies. For example, Exxon has its headquarters outside of Houston, but is actually incorporated in New Jersey (According to Wikipedia). So, for them, what would the benefit be?
This is probably just a preemptive move in case of a New York state financial transaction tax and has less to do with any other political issues. This isn't "Texas" setting up their exchange, it's Blackrock and Citadel. The CME had this issue with Chicago/Illinois politicians demanding a financial transaction tax so they are did things to be set up to leave immediately if it passed.
==The CME had this issue with Chicago/Illinois politicians demanding a financial transaction tax so they are did things to be set up to leave immediately if it passed.==
Has a bill ever even existed to pass in Illinois? This idea seems to be brought up more as a scare tactic from the trading and business community than as a revenue generator from actual politicians.
Chicago has always been fought over between speculative interests who want parts of the city to remain poor for cheap development, and more “citizen focused” groups that want the resource to be taxed for the betterment of all.
Most of Ken Griffin’s work has been buying his family name on things and repeating anxieties about crime and (lack of) policing without actually providing solutions or even calling out root causes. But again, he’s not really a citizen of Chicago, nor the US. People at his level of control (his admitted price fixing, or moving trades to dark pools) have inherited and expanded on wealth to the point where they don’t need friends or social programs or infrastructure to live out 90 years on the planet.
That was my assumption too, but it's not across the board. For example, AT&T, Inc (HQ in Dallas) is a Delaware Corp. But, I expect that any of these companies that have many years of history will have complex organizational structures. As such, I'm not sure what benefit a brand new exchange would have for them.
If I were TXSE, what I'd be arguing is that the new market would have a benefit for new companies. Can you list faster with fewer requirements? Will there be capital available on the market? Can an IPO on their market be a replacement for later stage VC?
"Diverse board" is a euphemism for discriminating against those that are not defined as "diverse".
It puts people in positions of authority based on their ethnicity, biological sex, and sexual orientation and therefore discriminates against others based on their ethnicity, biological sex, and sexual orientation.
But regardless of which state has the most at any given moment, even if 100% of Texas F500 companies decided to abandon their existing exchange and investor base for a more relaxed regulatory environment, that's...49 companies.
edit: another commenter points out that California reclaimed the throne in the 2024 list, released just yesterday.
As far as I can tell, there's some amount of movement to Texas for lower corporate taxes (especially companies led by executives like Musk or Ellison who prefer Texas's politics).
I would be surprised if any major companies delist from NYSE / NASDAQ in order to go all-in on a new exchange, although I could see, say, Tesla considering it if it was a condition for an attractive ticker symbol like T (NYSE symbol for AT&T, which is also headquartered in Texas).
That's not how things work. Shares can be freely traded on any of these exchanges at any time.
its where you list that we are discussing here.
Listing on an exchange is all about what reporting requirements you are required to make inorder to be a publicly listed company and what share requirement you are required to maintain to list.
ie
- share price above a certain threshold,
- report your financials quarterly, etc.
- often a minimum trading volume
- certain requirements about the viability of the company, ie not bankrupt, etc.
Foreign companies will often dual list in the US to get access to US liquidity as well as list on their own home exchanges.
But once you are listed in the US there is no benefit to list on multiple exchanges as all you do is make your reporting requirements go up. Your shares can be traded on any US exchange once you are listed on any of htem.
What if a company wants a new class of stock - would they always list on the same exchange? I'm not sure what the rules are around this, but I know it is sometimes done.
Notably, the 2024 list was released just yesterday, so I wouldn't fault anyone for not having seen that yet. Texas was in the lead for a couple of years, but honestly it's so close that I don't think it's interesting to assert that "X state has the most big companies according to some magazine's list!". CA, NY, and TX are all huge states with long-standing business investment. That's not changing any time soon.
I get it, but the fact is…California is currently #1.
As an aside, I do find it still impressive given the number of high profile companies that relocated, and the fact that there’s a constant news doom agenda against California.
All this to say, it’s a healthy reminder of just how much California matters to the US and global economy
This doesn't really matter on which world-wide stock exchange companies end up listing. There are many companies which list on the NASDAQ rather than in their home exchanges, or on a more theme appropriate exchange rather than one closer to their actual area of operations (I'm thinking mineral exploration companies on the ASX).
A true libertarian utopia. After the last one got attacked by pirates and couldn't afford fuel. After the last one got overridden by bears. And the one before that was a Ponzi scheme.
Assuming the founders of this exchange are smart people who worked out how to exploit other people's stupid ideologies, they are smart and will make a lot of money, like the people writing the Ponzi scheme coins.
I look forward to witnessing more Texas-style deregulation nightmares. This will probably play out as the financial equivalent of their paroxysmal electrical grid. Sometimes your purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
Texas actually has roughly average electric grid reliability compared to other states (28 out of 50) while also having substantially below average electricity costs.
In this context, I wouldn't be interested in averages. Their systemic issues dealing with extreme weather (winter and summer) are pretty well known. The average reliability rates aren't going to necessarily show these events.
The average reliability rates cited (via US News rankings) explicitly exclude such major events. From the methodology page:
Minutes of Power Outages: The number of minutes of power outages the average customer experiences in a year, excluding major events. (U.S. Energy Information Administration; 2022).
> systemic issues dealing with extreme weather (winter and summer) are pretty well known
No they aren’t. They’re often repeated, but they aren’t true.
Texas had a catastrophic “grid failure” in 2021. It hasn’t had any actual issues since. There have been no power outages due to “grid failure” since that one event. The past couple winters and summers have seen several situations where the grid operators have issued warnings, but these warnings are completely normal and are part of the process to inform power producers to not go offline, etc. In software terms, it’s basically the equivalent of “it’s going to be a busy day today, try to avoid doing any deployments to prod unless they’re really necessary”.
Just like the train derailments last year, and the airplane issues this year, the media loves to use the fervor around a single bad event to then create big headlines about every similar event.
Back to the software example, imagine if every big shopping holiday there was an CNN headline of “Amazon told its developers they cannot deploy to prod today. Amazon is worried about an outage!!” And because the layperson doesn’t know any better, they fall for it. But in reality, it was business as usual.
Over a million people lost power in Texas just about one week ago, an issue that continued to impact hundreds of thousands of people days after the event. Hundreds of thousands lost power for multiple days last winter as well following another cold snap. Those are two events I can recall by memory - one because it's so recent, the other because I was personally impacted by it.
Do other states regularly have multi-day outages that impacts hundreds of thousands of people? I know California has at times with wildfires, but other than that? Are these issues below the line for being considered "systemic"? I'm actually asking, not refuting using question marks.
Both of those events were due to localized weather events that destroyed local power infrastructure (specifically, storms that destroyed overhead power lines). These are things that have not to do with federal regulations, which is the topic of this thread.
Sandy was relatively weak when it hit the East Coast. Most Texans wouldn't blink an eye at a category 1 with 80 MPH winds. That's the same wind speeds as the storm that hit Texas a few weeks ago and knocked power out.
I'm not making an argument, I have no "position" that I'm advancing.
I've seen the headlines, I was asking for clarification on what made those different. I do think "storm preparedness" is not a category that should be excluded from consideration given their occurrence is also systemic (and may increase due to climate change), but I'm also open to how these outages differ from more systemic outages. The difference that makes sense to me is that federal regulations - the topic at play here - wouldn't have impacted these situations at all. Makes sense.
I don't believe you can fully prepare a grid for winds bringing down trees and residential/transmission lines. That's the distinction. The winter outage could have been handled better both from preparation and from the crisis management.
> Texas actually has roughly average electric grid reliability compared to other states [...] having substantially below average electricity costs
The Texas grid is better compared to a third world country. It works great except when there is an emergency or any sort of edge case. Reliability numbers miss the context of a transmission line failing when it is 68 degrees and sunny vs a natural gas line freezing up when its -7 and everyone needs electricity to not die.
Pricing is handled exactly the same way: its $0.12/kWh when things are normal, but jumps to $7.00/kWh as soon as there is an emergency. Normal states split the difference and charge something like $0.14/kWh all the time so that when you're forced to run your heater 24/7 to stay alive you don't have to sell your car to pay your power bill.
I'm afraid you've been reading too many sensationalist headlines. You are completely able to get a stable rate for power in Texas. No one is forced to choose a rate that can spike to $7/kWh.
In fact power in Texas is cheaper on average than many other places in the US (including NYC, where I live). This is partially because Texas is the energy center of the US, with abundant wind, solar, and oil/gas.
The Texas grid is the opposite of a third-world country. The engineering and operations groups at ERCOT are extremely competent, even if the PUCT sometimes forces them to make stupid decisions.
> You are completely able to get a stable rate for power in Texas. No one is forced to choose a rate that can spike to $7/kWh.
Yes, everything is fine if you have money and can choose. Other states explicitly ban these types of pricing models because they are predatory and can result in the people who are most price sensitive ending up in financial ruin.
I have no doubt that ERCOT has some good people working there. At the macro level however Texas makes isolationist decisions like not engaging in interstate energy sales agreements because they would subject the energy industry in the state to more federal regulation.
You might be interested in reading the final report of the 2011 incident, where ERCOT agreed that having appropriate capacity to the Eastern and Western interconnects would have mitigated most of the problems. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/Reportonthe...
Griddy was the company that hit the headlines who sold at live wholesale prices as you used electricity had 29k customers and is not how the typical electric company in Texas works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griddy_(company)
We can tell with your third world country comment that you have bias but at least get your information correct.
The pricing scheme you describe was true for a company that no longer exists, for a type of pricing that is no longer allowed. The number of customers were in the minority.
And as everyone knows, past performance is a guaranteed indicator of future performance. If you simply go as fast as possible, you'll continue at that rate forever.
Many California corporations have moved to Texas. These include HP, Oracle, Tesla and Charles Schwab. It turns out many companies like less regulations.
Oracle didn’t move its entire workforce, but it’s inaccurate to say it was “in name only”. Oracle spent hundreds of millions of dollars building a massive office campus near downtown Austin that reportedly has space for 10,000 employees.
I’m curious what other companies you’re thinking of when you say “like many others”, because all of the ones I can think of have moved significant parts of their operations to Texas.
It seems mostly like companies like to start elsewhere. Once they become established, they like fewer regulations to keep taxes low and throttle competition.
I just wish Texas cared about individual freedom as much as they do corporate freedom.
It was a joke on investment disclaimers saying past performance isn't indicative of future performance.
As in "Texas's future is bright because of past performance", which is just an assumption that doesn't take a lot into account, like harsh weather patterns, weak infrastructure, and living in texas.
The Texas electrical grid is great. It had one rough event that has been echoed all throughout the internet endlessly because the left thinks it is a dunk on a red state.
I don't know either of you and I'm not trying to assert either of you is correct or incorrect but it's worth remembering how insanely large your state is. It'd take 11hrs to drive from Houston to El Paso and Texas contains most of the different climates we're all familiar with.
To some degree, saying "As a life long Texan" then trying to generalize the "Texas Experience" to be your own is as incorrect as saying "As an American, there are mountains everywhere and it's green and beautiful".
I lived through a continuous 43 hours of absolutely no power resulting in living with 40°F indoor temperatures, so you can GTFO with your pernicious and reprehensible propaganda.
I strongly object on comparing the Texas power grid with this wild-west stock exchange.
Deregulation of power grids (which has been done throughout the US, not only in Texas) isn't the same as removing red tape in financial reporting. It's about removing oversight of large, vertically-integrated utilities by fostering competition of unintegrated market participants.
Deregulating power grids has been such a success for flexibility and renewable energy integration that the European Union codified it into law in 2019.
Is it working perfectly in Texas? Absolutely not. Is it an example of utter failure of "deregulation"? Absolutely not!
Enron is the poster child of how opening the energy grid to an unregulated free market makes it ripe for price rigging and manipulation. Enron was famous for trading strategies like "Fat Boy" and "Death Star" where they would do things like submit fake energy schedules to create the illusion of congestion on transmission rights they own to collect payments for relieving the congestion the next day, which wasn't actually going to happen. Energy markets need regulations and oversight to prevent bad actors from ripping off utilities, which ultimately get passed on to ratepayers via higher rates.
Absolutely, these "deregulated" markets still need oversight. And there is oversight: look at what happened with JPMorgan manipulating energy markets [0].
My issue is, "deregulation of electricity markets" means "unbundling vertically-integrated utilities", not "removing oversight". This Texas Stock Exchange is about removing oversight.
I mean, people crap on Wall Street a lot for good reason, but honestly it's a reasonably well-regulated entity. It's not perfect, and you can find cases of utterly gross mismanagement (e.g. the 2008 crash), but stuff like insider trading and unregistered securities and the like do get attention from the SEC, particularly if they're reported.
I've said a lot of negative stuff in the past about the Wall Street banks, and I have come to regret most of it after learning a lot more about finance. Stocks absolutely can be a way for the "rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer", and of course the traditional exchanges aren't a vaccine against that, but I do think that they do some level of vetting to make sure that companies aren't just Ponzi schemes.
I mean, for example, WeWork had its IPO rejected in 2019 because regulators were afraid about its business model, and it only ever went public through a SPAC loophole. Clearly they shouldn't have gone public at all, but some basic sanity checking is better than zero.
To be clear, I'm totally onboard with Texas making their own exchange if they can actually do it better, or at least as-well. Competition is a good thing.
> I've said a lot of negative stuff in the past about the Wall Street banks, and I have come to regret most of it after learning a lot more about finance.
Ironically, the more I learned about finance, the more I disparage it. I worked (actually) on Wall Street back when it wasn't a strip mall. It's just a casino for the vast majority of people that call themselves investors.
I don't think that investing in stocks is inherently a casino; if I buy a share of AAPL then there's not inherently a loser; if the price goes up then both Apple and I benefit from this. Even if it goes down, I still retain whatever value the stock is currently worth. Still, I used to make sweeping statements about finance that I don't agree with anymore; I used to say short selling was inherently evil for example, and I actually don't think that anymore [1].
I do think that option contracts might be evil and a glorified casino though. It feels like they kind of end up with a means of really really rich people to extract money out of poorer people without those people actually gaining anything back; since options are (as far as I'm aware) a binary "make money or lose your entire investment" situation, and each transaction requires a winner and a loser, it definitely is very analogous to a casino.
I do call myself an "investor", but 95% of all the money I have in the market is in low-risk ETFs (VOO and VTI), which I don't think is gambling.
[1] Well, they might still be evil but I think it's a necessary evil in order to put downward pressure on the market to avoid ponzinomics.
Do you agree with the reasons? Are they the right answer to the problem, or is there a better way? Are there other downsides to the red tape that make it not worth it despite what they protect against?
We need a specific instance of red tape to have a debate about it. However the above questions will get you started in the debate.
It might be the case that, in general, people can never consider the downsides without leaving the rules in place forever. Maybe they do need to be mindlessly trashed every once in awhile, and maybe the price paid for those downsides is worth it on a very long time scale where the alternative would be for rules to only ever accrete but never shake loose. And they have to sometimes unless you believe that all regulations ever, no matter how poorly formulated are perfect.
What an unnecessarily narrow view. There are options beyond "rules are permanent forever" and "our only choice is to remove all of the rules".
But by all means, tear down all these fences without understanding why they exist. They can just be rebuilt after all, and it's not like wolves will eat all of us and our livestock in the meantime.
==It might be the case that, in general, people can never consider the downsides without leaving the rules in place forever. ==
This assumes that the rules created themselves out of thin air and we never lived without them. In most cases, existing rules/regulations were created in response to events that proved their necessity.
That regulations were created in response to events that should have been regulated does not imply that the resulting legislation was an appropriate way to solve the problem. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
The last fifteen years we've been watching crypto start from scratch and gradually rediscover the exact reason for every single securities regulation and finance convention. So idk maybe we were on to something the first time around.
That's kind of what gives me pause about Texas thinking they can do things better than the other exchanges.
It's entirely possible that they can, I'm not claiming that NYSE is perfect or anything, but in my years on this earth something has become abundantly clear to me: if there's an "obvious" solution to something, and no one is doing it, then there's probably a pretty decent reason and you're not a genius for thinking it.
The easiest example that comes to mind is the stainless steel frame of the Cybertruck that doesn't crumple, which sounds like an "obvious" good thing (no one really wants their car to break in a crash), until you realize that that drastically reduces the safety of the vehicle because a lot more of the shock transfers to the passenger, and the other mainstream car producers were already well aware of that.
Sometimes. But a surprising number of rules on US financial markets come from self-regulation. I'm not an expert, but I'd guess that these are generally the only kinds of rules that this Texas exchange would be able to avoid. Texas is still subject to federal law.
And self-regulation is one of the cases where you can be pretty sure that the rule makers are intrinsically motivated to consider the downsides as well as the upsides.
Sure, I guess I'm asking which rules the Texas Stock Exchange will be removing, and why those rules have downsides.
Entirely possible that I'll agree with the changes, though what I'm more worried about is it becoming some vague "culture war" bullshit about wokeness or something, as seems to be the only talking point being brought up in traditionally-conservative states now.
Though, as long as we're just talking about "red tape" in the abstract, and not even specific regulations, we're not even dealing with Chesterton's Fence. We're dealing with Chesterton's Vague Unspecified I-Don't-Even-Know-What.
No the regulation system as a whole is analogous to the fence. You're asking them to point to a specific picket and explain why it's there. But that's very obvious: it's part of the fence. We're still left with understanding the goal of the fence & its suitability for that, and deciding what to do about it.
The fence analogy kinda breaks down here. The sum total of regulations are like a collection of Chestson's Fences, each one added to the legal code for specific edge cases and the outcome of removing any individual one will have different results.
It doesn't mean anything to talk about reducing regulations without being specific about which rules you actually have an issue with, but it can provide the illusion of consensus.
I mean, you agreed on something, which is the bloat of a system, you just disagree on the "how to fix it" part.
If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
> I mean, you agreed on something, which is the bloat of a system, you just disagree on the "how to fix it" part.
Unfortunately, the "how to fix it" part is the part that requires building political consensus. Getting agreement on X being too expensive is easy; everyone always wants everything to be cheaper.
> If I said "We need a crane that can lift 3000lbs" and you agree, and you come up with a design that uses an electric motor system, and I come up with a design that uses a diesel engine, we still agreed on something, just not the implementation of how to do it.
> I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but if you and I could agree on some bad consequence of "too many regulations" (e.g. the prices of healthcare are too high as a result of the regulations), that is some common ground. The question then comes down "which regulations would be best to cut to lower costs?" and reduces to an optimization problem.
The problem I have is that using "too many regulations" as the foundation is inevitably doomed. Lets say we find some collection of regulations that could be cut. Well, any solution is going to, at a glance, look like an additional regulation to the layman. And that's before the parasites that are profiting from the existing inefficiencies start spinning narratives about how this is another government overreach and how we're killing America.
That's the most conservative interpretation of Chesterton's Fence I have ever seen. Each rule is critical because it is included in a set of rules which are intended to help, and removing any means breaking the whole fence?
I guess you could get even more conservative and assume that the absence of a law is also intentional and we should maintain the status quo forever. I'd argue that even that would be preferable to a system where you can only add restrictions.
That's not quite what I'm pointing at here, and I also agree with the other commenter that the metaphor is stretched too far to be useful.
But if we're going to stick with it, it's very likely the fence will still work for its purpose if you remove some of the pickets. But to figure out which ones, and how many, you need to have a clear conception of the fencemaker's goal and how it currently accomplishes them or fails to. The significance of any specific part isn't a sound basis for an argument about the purpose or usefulness of the fence per se.
Do we have any indication that TXSE is arguing against the purpose or usefulness of the fence, or that they won't make thoughtful decisions about which pickets to remove? This article just calls the diversity rules, which have (afaict) no bearing on the integrity of the market.
But, for context, all I was trying to do when I accidentally started this whole side tangent was suggest that unbounded speculation that isn't tied to concrete, specific things is unlikely to be fruitful.
As far as I can tell, the only specific thing that's been mentioned is not having an equivalent to NASDAQ's board diversity rule. Which doesn't seem like a _huge_ differentiator given that NYSE doesn't have one either?
TBH though my first instinct is to say that I doubt their rules will be egregious, and in a market as large as the USA having a third national stock exchange probably wouldn't be a terrible thing. Markets generally benefit from healthy competition, even when some of the individual competitors aren't everybody's favorite.
I sometimes wish there were Talmudic-like annotated regulations that discourse upon the history and context of each regulation, down to the precise punctuation mark, word, line when those granularities have meaning, so we don't have to hold these "what was the reason" conversations in public, and have more meaningful conversations over "with hindsight, was the original reason justified" to add to those annotations.
I worked for a bank for about three months last year, specifically on the ACH processing system.
I had previously kind of bought into the cryptocurrency crap about how "bloated" and "draconian" the banking system in the US was, and that's an easy narrative to fall into...the ACH standard is 800+ pages long! Surely us genius software engineers can do better than all these dumb financial regulators.
But as I read through the standard (I'll admit I mostly skimmed, 800 pages of dry financial text isn't exactly exhilarating stuff), I learned that, actually, most of these rules are actually pretty reasonable. It turns out that sending money between people is actually a pretty complicated thing, with tons of edge cases that you have to consider (e.g. How do you deal with fraudulent transactions? How do you deal with situations where you send money to a dozen accounts but one of the account numbers is wrong? Which transactions need to be reversible? etc.).
Definitely having a "why" attached to every single regulation could be helpful. I'm not going to claim that every regulation associated with finance is (still) necessary, but it's rarely as cut and dry as it initially seems.
What I would like for law (which regulations are a type of) is for it to be stored in a public git repository. I want to be able to access that to see who drafted a law, when it was merged into ratified/voted law (and who voted it in), when it was repealed, and so on.
I understand the appeal certainly, but unfortunately in practice it is real case of sausage making. Where at best the reason for clause X,Y, or Z was 'so it would get passed even though it is utterly irrelevant' at best or at worst 'cynically exploiting a moral panic or corruption'.
It's called a history book, and the problem is that a lot of the people who yell about removing "red tape" have read those history books and want to do the things the red tape was literally created to prevent, which is usually lie to someone to make money, and then millions of Americans who think reading history books is woke get very very upset that they can't give their money to companies that need to change the law to be allowed to lie.
Look at crypto. That's literally a system with very little """red tape""" and it's nothing more than a breeding ground for fraudulent investments because the company that promises 10% but literally cannot deliver will always beat out the companies that promise 4% but can mostly safely deliver that. If there's no punishment for lying, honest companies are at a disadvantage, because a market is not a transparent system, you cannot know the internal workings of a company that isn't required to make that info public.
It seems analogous to someone new coming into software development and wondering why their small apps suddenly needs a builder server, docker, kubernetes, airflow, jira, etc... They might have a valid argument but it isn't based on experience.
The article quotes how Nasdaq now have diversity requirements on board members. That's the sort of thing disconnected from business that would push even honest companies away from these larger exchanges.
Assuming the backers can attract capital to this new market, then I can see a win for companies who list here and then move to the majors if their capital needs exceed what this market can provide.
Not likely to be that big of a deal concerning the red tape. SEC handles most of that across the country. Exchange specific rules tend to play a smaller role and are mostly just basic checklists to get listed. The whole point of the restrictions for listing is prestige to separate those securities from generally lower quality OTC. It's likely the new exchange will have many similar items on their checklist.
> They're also hoping to appeal to large-cap companies' desire to incorporate in the Lone Star State, which has fewer regulations and more favorable tax policies.
Most companies listed on NYSE/Nasdaq are not incorporated in NY so I'm not sure what the appeal here is.
> Lee said that the TXSE would be apolitical, but its proposed launch comes at a time when right-wing culture warriors have taken aim at mainstream financial markets.
I'm calling it now. While I hope that TXSE ends up on the same level of NYSE/Nasdaq, I feel like the major appeal of TXSE will be ideological and it will end up gobbling up "culture war" companies doing IPO's/SPAC's. This will be the place where the likes to Truth Social, Rumble and other companies will be listed and it has mostly to do with it being in bright red Texas while the other two are in bright blue NY.
This is just Business Insider confusing ... a bunch. The jurisdiction within which the listing is and where the company is incorporated have absolutely no relationship. Sure it might be a smart move to open the exchange and some companies will do it for various reasons but that won't be a motivator for them to also move the state in which they're incorporated.
It will be an interesting question whether or not some of the newer libertarian tech companies move here. MuskCo, Palantir, companies funded by AH. But your company would probably have to be meme-y enough not to rely on institutional investors.
I do somewhat seriously wonder if we'd all be better off at this point. Let the so-called libertarians all flock there (as they're happy to suggest other do, e.g. when local laws are passed to restrict reproductive rights). It'd be a release valve for lots of the tension which has arisen over the last few years.
They can deregulate everything, roll the dice and enjoy the flaky electric grid, fire ants, modified AR-15s, tornadoes, floods, etc. They can do whatever they want with their new southern border and we can do the same in turn.
Sure, as long as we fully subsidize relocation the millions of vulnerable people who would like to leave, and who will otherwise be forced into slave labor for the likes of Paxton and the other criminals running the show.
I hear this meme a lot, but I think it's kind of laughable to think that Texas could break off.
The Civil War made it pretty clear that states cannot leave the union, and doing so would probably be treated as an act of war, and while Texas does have a pretty impressive economy, it's still not enough to take on the entire rest of the United States.
I lived in Texas for awhile, and there is this sort of running idea that Texas is somehow able to be self-sufficient in a way that other states cannot be. I think I dispute that.
> that Texas is somehow able to be self-sufficient in a way that other states cannot be. I think I dispute that.
The world is filled with states similar in size to Texas (or smaller), by whatever measurement you want to use, all of which seem perfectly self-sufficient. Even those in Europe didn't join the EU out of concerns about self-sufficiency, but rather about efficiency and synergy.
I see no reason why Texas would be different in this regard. It might be unwise for Texas to attempt such, as there are benefits to remaining, but the idea that it couldn't be is nothing short of absurd. For the record, I don't think this opinion is unique to Texas, most of the other states in the US could do so just as well.
I wasn't saying it wasn't possible for Texas to be self-sufficient in a vacuum, I'm saying that I don't think Texas is uniquely qualified to be self-sufficient. I think there are several other states that are comparably qualified (e.g. California) if they wanted to be self-sufficient.
I mostly think Texas would not be able to win a civil war against the US, and so splitting off would be impossible. If they were somehow able to convince the federal government to let them secede, I think they'd probably survive, though I also think it would be a downgrade to Texas citizens.
ETA: Rereading your comment, I actually don't think we really disagree on anything here, I just chose some poor wording making what I said ambiguous.
> I'm saying that I don't think Texas is uniquely qualified to be self-sufficient.
Oh. I'll do you one better then. Texas is uniquely unqualified to be self-sufficient. They tried it once and went bankrupt in 10 years.
> I mostly think Texas would not be able to win a civil war against the US,
I don't know why one would or should be fought. The people who think that the US has the right to prevent secession are pretty weird... ask them if they think divorce should be illegal or if the husband should be allowed to murder a wife who tries.
> Oh. I'll do you one better then. Texas is uniquely unqualified to be self-sufficient. They tried it once and went bankrupt in 10 years
In fairness, a lot can change in 100+ years. Texas has much better utilization of its resources with a much higher population now than it did the last time they were independent. It's possible that they'd do better now.
> I don't know why one would or should be fought. The people who think that the US has the right to prevent secession are pretty weird
It might be weird but wasn't that the conclusion of the US Civil War? I very highly doubt that the fed woudl let Texas secede without a fight.
I would hope that one of the things that has changed in 100 years is that the rest of the US wouldn't want to go murder a few million people simply because they don't want to be together anymore.
> I very highly doubt that the fed woudl let Texas secede without a fight.
Sure. And I would expect the fight to be litigative, or even diplomatic in nature. But martial? Though, I will say I keep forgetting how bloodthirsty the typical person is, and how few socially approved avenues they have to engage in that mindset. So who knows.
One of the problems with the global economic order benefiting people unequally is that we undersell how much that order benefits the US to the average citizen. It is so advantageous to do business around the world as an American, because you are coming from such a big, prosperous, unified market.
I am sure there lots of people in Texas, California, etc. that think they'd be better off as their own states. Its the same logic as Brexit and its hard for elites to take it seriously because it is so obviously dumb. But the benefits are so poorly spread around there are just a lot of people who don't care. "I will still get my pension." "This town was dying before." etc.
I mean, my grandmother used to talk about how people are just "mooching off the system" and living off "her taxdollars" while depending on her social security checks every month. She also felt it prudent to mention how Mexicans are coming over the border to steal our benefits (right in front of my Mexican wife), while she has been on Medicare for like 25 years and therefore had not had to pay for health insurance for that entire time, while the Mexicans who come here decidedly do not get that luxury unless they become citizens. When I called her out on this stuff, she'd give some vague justification about "savings accounts" and the like.
She might still say this stuff, I don't know, I haven't talked to her in like 7 years.
The hypocritical potential of humans is incredible.
Sadly, that is my experience with some of my nice, but not too sophisticated relatives. One of the funniest things I ever heard was: "California is so hostile for business!" I pointed out that the fastest growing, most world beating corporations have been coming out of California for the last generations. The reply: "That's not business, that's tech."
These people in general had jobs working for the state or local government. But they were very sure in their views about the economy. My point is that they also didn't really directly benefit much from tech, or international trade, or global finance. So they really didn't have a big stake in being right or wrong.
Yeah, I have had the exact same argument, with that same grandmother; she said NY and California are horrible for business and that's why "no one is opening up businesses there". When I pointed out that that's just not true, California and NYC actually have a lot of very successful and profitable businesses, the response was that "tech" and "finance" don't count, for undefined reasons.
> My point is that they also didn't really directly benefit much from tech, or international trade, or global finance. So they really didn't have a big stake in being right or wrong.
I mean, they have some stake though; presumably most of them have a 401k or some equivalent if they have government jobs, which probably invests in a diversified S&P500 fund or something similar, and most of the biggest businesses in those are tech companies. They should care a little about those business; their retirements probably depend on them.
>The Civil War made it pretty clear that states cannot leave the union, and doing so would probably be treated as an act of war, and while Texas does have a pretty impressive economy, it's still not enough to take on the entire rest of the United States.
Except there's more than one state that would probably side with Texas out of culture war spite.
Also, we just so happen to have the majority of military manufacturing located in said states because defense contractors spent decades relocating for that sweet savings on taxes.
I think the first point is fair enough, but I take issue with:
> we just so happen to have the majority of military manufacturing located in said states because defense contractors spent decades relocating for that sweet savings on taxes.
Most of the financing for these companies is funded by the US military. I doubt Texas (or Texas and the few surrounding states that also left) would be able to maintain the nearly infinite military budget that the fed has, and the military manufacturers would move to a Union state as soon as possible. I guess the physical factories would still be there, but there's a lot more to manufacturing than just the factories.
Red tape actually implies excessive standards that probably doesn't lead to any real accountability gains. You can have a lot of red tape with all bad rules, for example.
I know when it is used as a slogan at political rallies, and they just simply call out things like "these regulations, so stupid, why can't we dump waste in the river, they are reducing our profits".
It is all about profit. The environment, or safety, anything in the way of profit is called '"red-tape" and is put there by some do-gooder.
So, yes, I think I can infer when someone talks about getting rid of 'red-tape' what they are "meaning". But that is also why I listed several categories of red-tape, since some 'red-tape' should be updated.
The First Law of Modern Politics is that nothing may ever be called by its right name. This applies recursively, i.e. it applies to metaphors and euphemisms as well as to their original referents. "Red tape" means "you are making it harder for me to steal money, cut that shít out."
I wonder what red tape we're talking about. SEC regulates disclosures, but pretty sure NYSE and Nasdaq decide when to allow trading, halt trading, APIs, what gets listed, and more, and after you spend time in crypto on-chain trading, it all looks like BS. You wonder... Why can't I buy 24/7? What do you mean GME trading was halted 6 times today? I can't get out of a position because the market is limit down? I can't transparently see who is buying what and when in real-time? I can't earn multiple % per day providing liquidity? Just to name a few. I don't want any of this so-called protection. But my sense is it's going to be irrelevant soon anyway as stocks and commodities get bridged as on-chain tokens. Maybe there's still room for a more centralized exchange that's good for HFT since global blockchain networks will take hundreds of ms of latency to settle, but I don't know. On-chain trading on Solana is pretty great today and liquidity will pool together.
PS: There are so many shitty comments in this thread adding nothing of value. So you don't like Texas and have different political views. Fuck off. Some of us actually want to discuss this.
Texas produces more electricity than any other state, in fact more than 2x as much as the 2nd place state: https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=TX (ctr+f for 'Texas produces more electricity than any other state')
In terms of addressing climate change (which is already negatively affecting Texas), what matters is not the amount of renewable generation, but the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Per capita, Texas is the 10th-worst state by this metric, while New York is the best.
> Lee said that the TXSE would be apolitical, but its proposed launch comes at a time when conservative culture warriors have taken aim at mainstream financial markets.
What planet does he come from and what are they smoking? Texas is about as conservative as it gets. Even our Democrats are somewhat to the right of center. This will not end well; more money means more influence and Texas will become a client state and puppet of billionaires.
Maybe we should rename ourselves The Kingdom of Texas.
tl;dr - Where stock is traded is _largely_ irrelevant due to how exchanges are regulated; the interesting thing is where it's listed. The last attempt at a 'CEO friendly' exchange, LTSE, has been around for five years. Two companies are listed on it.
The story of the red tape is that every time somebody does something stupid or malicious, there is some red tape added so that future investors face less trading risk.
Risk == cost
So less red tape needs to be translated to investors facing potentially higher risk on their transactions of various stupid or malicious shit others can pull on them.
Most regulations in the United States exist because someone before has abused the system. That's why the "libertarians" love "dismantling of the regulatory state" so much - it's in the way of fleecing the rubes.
For example, Trump Media would have never been possible just a few years ago, but now we have SPACs - a legal fraud scheme, so we don't really need Texas for that, but go ahead, have fun with a "wild west" exchange. It's not going to go sideways, no no.
You are right, but their rise is not accidental. The appetite for risky investments, MEME stocks, and companies not vetted by the rigorous S-1 IPO application process has grown.
"SPACs are not new and have existed for decades, in which they were historically used by small companies that had trouble raising capital on the open market via IPOs. However, in recent years, fueled by the market volatility following the Covid-19 pandemic, SPACs have become more mainstream."
So, yes, while LEGALLY an SPAC could have existed a few years ago, investors never really seriously considered them as a safe investment.
Actually I'd say you're wrong here. They know exactly what the fence is for and want to tear it down so they can steal out of your backyard. Sad thing is they'll convince every idiot in this state to sign up for the 'crime in the name of freedom' party.
I'd be tempted to apply Hanlon's Razor and assume stupidity rather than malice, but yeah, this has gone on too long to apply that rule.
There is a saying that "regulations are written in blood". That's not a good way to write regulations. They end up being haphazard, both too strong and not strong enough. People rightly get frustrated at the patchwork. It's tempting to apply the experience and create a new, better set of regulations from a clean sheet.
But unfortunately, the loudest voices are usually the ones who are well aware of the price already paid in blood, and want to be the ones to get another dose of it. They will design the rules so that it's not their blood, but will take advantage of the blood of others until it gets banned all over again. The hard way, again.
lol, if you don’t like your power grid, in Texas you can choose amongst 30 other power companies to provide your electricity. In other states you’re at the whims and high prices of a local monopoly.
•If one isn’t reliable; pick a different one.
•If one jacked up prices; pick a different one.
•If you want to sell solar, wind, or stored battery electricity back to the grid, pick one that will let you. Battery is sometimes the most benefit/cost with a tiered pricing option.
What on earth is an "anti-woke" bank? Does it automatically decline your card transaction when you try to buy tickets to see the Barbie movie or something?
A transient marketing based regular bank specifically pitching itself to "Real 'Mericans"
Pitching itself as a financial institution that allowed one to be “free to celebrate your love of God and country without fear of cancellation,” GloriFi’s marketing read more like a campaign ad than an enticing APR offer on a new credit card.
Highlights from the “about us” page include: “OUR BILL OF RIGHTS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE” and “WE ARE ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”
There's also been a "Freedom Phone" (?? IIRC) mobile phone company that pitched itself in a similar manner and pledge to use a percentage of profits to nominate and support candidates into public school boards to axe "woke" books and oppose diversity policy, etc.
> This zero percent freedom play. It’s entirely wanting to avoid the rules against naked shorting, the newly about to be enforced consolidated audit trail system (CAT). And all the other “it’s crime” ways they cheat the retail investor.
This is a bad take. The short selling rules are SEC made and country's wide regardless of exchange. Nothing about this exchange can do away with SEC rules.
This is an exchange created by a bunch of hedge funds/market makers(side note these companies are so big they don't fit one definition as they do everything).
These companies make more money as more trades happen so adding another exchange to trade on makes them more money.
It also allows them to break into the exchange market, previously they had ATS's(dark pools as some people know them as) but no lit exchanges.
Now they have an actual listing exchange so that provides them another way to make money via corporate fees for listing and the exchange portion of trading fees.
Ok, so the people that have been gaming and manipulating systems for decades to more and more severe outcomes including financial disasters… those people want a thing in order to make more money than they are already “making” now.
And your reaction is that it will be legitimate uses?
No my point was that your conjecture that they are starting a new exchange to get around naked shorting rules is obviously wrong as they can't just create a new exchange to get around the SEC's rules.
Can’t wait to see the kinds of “meme” stocks they create as a result of this new market. It’s funny, MSM blames the retail investors, but if Citadel had never naked shorted GameStop 3 years ago we wouldn’t be here, still witnessing the effects of mitigating the risk they created.
Texas also has loudly proclaimed that they want to secede from the USA, but keep the military bases and equipment, the jobs, the money, the people...but still be totally independent.
Good luck, Texas. You'll quickly find that regulations are in place for a reason.
"Texas" never proclaims anything but basically every time there's some setback (I think most recently it was the Supreme Court ruling that they couldn't pile trash in the Rio Grande to prevent crossings) there's a whole crop of politicians banging the secession drum.
The Confederacy claimed that the US Government had broken the 'compact' that the states had agreed to in order to join the union when they abolished slavery - so their justification for secession under these dubious legal theories was called the "compact theory" -- it's no accident that after that most recent SC ruling, Texas's governor was out there saying that the US Government had broken the compact between the Federal government and the states. He then issued a series of unconstitutional orders daring the Federal government to stop him;
It wasn't an overt threat to secede (though many in his party do make that specific threat) but it was an obvious nod to where they think this will end up if they don't get their way.
> but keep the military bases and equipment, the jobs, the money, the people.
That's how secessions/federal disintegrations generally work, just look at the USSR post-1991.
And I also see this move as a potential further step towards Texas's devolution from the government in DC, who's going to stop them once they'll decide to "pass the Rubicon" for good?
IIRC, this was also more or less the kickoff of fighting in the Civil War. SC decided it was just going to keep Fort Sumter, and the US Gov didn't take so kindly to that thought.
>That's how secessions/federal disintegrations generally work, just look at the USSR post-1991.
Yeah, it might be, but think of it this way - if Texas said "we're independent, and all the military installations and research facilities are now ours" I have a strong suspicion the US government might say "yeah, no, that's not happening". The likes of Lockheed Martin and other major AF/Army/Navy contractors have production and research facilities in the DFW area. Texas goes independent, that's a lot of stuff in those facilities that the USA wouldn't want an openly hostile neighbor to have.
Governor Rick Perry joked about it in 2009, but it was just a joke. Even so trolls are having fun fanning the flames of political discontent by spreading this and other conspiracy theories. No rational person is asking for this, nor would it be legal. [1]
The Smithsonian claims it might be legal if Texas hews to its original agreement to break into five states if they did secede. [2] Of course the trolls are ignoring that since it doesn't appeal to anyone's pride to break up into the state of Dallas, Houston, etc. It would also undermine the alleged conservative vision for a pure red state since Texas metro areas trend purple to blue.
Texas actually breaking into five states that remain would be bitterly fought against since it would dramatically raise the number of House and Senate seats and shift the balance of power.
Legal implies some authority over both parties, that they have agreed to some common rules.
If you are succeeding, you are no longer bound by the laws of the original country, you are your own country with own laws. And then you can just make some new laws to make it 'legal'.
Ask anyone from Austin and it's the second greatest city in Texas. The greatest city in Texas is Austin twenty years ago before everyone else discovered it and came here.
I'm not talking about gov mistakes, but about basic climate trends. There is no way the place stays alive, hence any debate about what they do or why they do it is meaningless.
Texas is not only viable as an independent nation, it is more viable as an independent nation than the overwhelming majority of independent nations. It would be in the 95th percentile by land area, the 95th percentile by GDP, and the 90th percentile by proven oil reserves.
I don't really dispute any of the points you made here, though I do wonder how much of that is confounded by the fact that the federal government picks up a lot of the slack that an independent Texas would have to do themselves. The federal government handles the military, subsidizes a lot of education programs, and pays a large percentage of medical costs for the lower-income and elderly; if Texas split off on their own, they of course would be stuck footing the bill themselves.
I'm not saying that they couldn't do it, I'm just curious to how much that actually messes with the numbers, and moreover I haven't really seen any compelling evidence that Texas being part of the USA has held them back.
> The federal government picks up a lot of the slack that an independent Texas would have to do themselves...
Federal money doesn't grow on a tree in D.C.--it comes from taxpayers in the several states! So while it's true that the Federal government would stop paying for these things, it's also true that Texans would stop paying Federal taxes. With this in mind, it's clear that Texas could easily afford to assume any and all federal obligations by replacing federal taxes with their own equivalent taxes.
I've heard it said that Texas is a net recipient of Federal dollars, but only by 1-2%. Given that Texans will likely want a signaficantly smaller government, this can easily be covered via spending cuts.
> I haven't really seen any compelling evidence that Texas being part of the USA has held them back.
Texans are subject to federal law, which is regularly dicated to us by people from thousands of miles away, with whom we have little in common. If that's not being 'held back', what is?
> Federal money doesn't grow on a tree in D.C.--it comes from taxpayers in the several states!
Sure, I'm not saying it's impossible, what I'm taking potential issue how accurate the numbers you provided are since it's possible that the reason that Texas has such a successful economy is because they're not directly paying for everything.
I could be wrong, I'm not asserting anything, I'm just pointing out a potential confounding variable.
> Texans are subject to federal law, which is regularly dicated to us by people from thousands of miles away, with whom we have little in common. If that's not being 'held back', what is?
That's true of literally every state, so it's really not a Texas-specific problem.
Which specific federal laws do you think are hindering Texas, outside of some vague notion that people in New York and DC "have little in common with you"? I'm not saying there aren't any, I'm actually curious, but this always seems like a sticking point that would come up when I lived in Texas and people would talk about the virtues of secession.
I guess you could argue "gun laws", but even with that the US federal government offers considerable leeway to the states to handle that already.
> Sure, I'm not saying it's impossible, what I'm taking potential issue how accurate the numbers you provided are since it's possible that the reason that Texas has such a successful economy is because they're not directly paying for everything.
It's not clear to me what you're saying here. What aren't we paying for?
> That's true of literally every state, so it's really not a Texas-specific problem.
It's not only true of every state, it's generally true of every breakaway region ever, in all of history! This commonality isn't an argument against Texas secession, it's an argument for local governance.
> Which specific federal laws do you think are hindering Texas, outside of some vague notion that people in New York and DC "have little in common with you"?
Things that are hindering Texas:
> The sheer size of the federal union. It waters down our representation, reduces the feasibility of grassroots movements, and increases the power of mass media at the expense of the people.
> All laws that infringe on the 2nd amendment.
> All laws (or lack thereof) which permit government to infringe on the 1st amendment, or encourage private institutions to do the same.
> All laws that empower the Feds to infringe on the 4th amendment (Patriot Act, etc), or to circumvent it (by buying data to spy on citizens without a warrant).
> Federal control of our border, which they refuse to protect and which is irrevocably changing Texas demographics and politics, against the will of Texans.
> The federal tax code, which is as much a progressive welfare program (see "refundable tax credits") as a revenue stream.
> The federal bureaucracy in general, which is designed to provide jobs rather than serve the citizenry.
> All laws which the Feds use to force state action, on threat of withholding state money (see Medicaid expansion, drinking age laws, etc). By withholding our own tax dollars as leverage, the Feds are, by definition, acting against state interests.
> The high level of funding of the US military, which provides negligible benefit (beyond policing the seas), constantly gets us dragged into conflicts around the world and heightens the risk of WWIII.
> The huge, ungainly, esoteric body of petty laws, which drive up the cost of business while adding negligible value, if any.
The biggest issue of of all is that Texans no longer have faith in the ability of the Constitution to constrain the power of the Federal government. We no longer see the federal government as the guarantor of our natural human rights. We see it as the single greatest threat to them.
Nonsense. The United States can survive just as well with 49 states as with 50.
> China and Russia dream of this happening.
Here I was thinking that Texans should strive for a government that best represents their values and protects the liberties they care about. Thank you for reminding me about what really matters--standing up to our common enemy--Eastsasia! Or was it Oceania?
Which let's the Texas of Canada, Alberta, run it's own stock exchange with much looser listing requirements and security requirements. This Texas exchange will not have that advantage.
The important aspect for Alberta within the context of Canada. Is how the local regulation allows the Alberta exchange to list and provide capital to junior drillers. Small companies which raise capital using ipos to use in speculative drilling. Alberta sees this as important for their economy. To the extent it prevents Canada from having a nation SEC like singular security regulator.
With that in mind, I question how a Texas based exchange will be more than a market for lemons. Companies too sketchy for the big exchanges might be interested in listing, but no one worth investing. This contrasts with Alberta where the difference in regulation allows a unique group of companies to list.
Instead we'd expect an exchange who's selling point is less regulation, to be filled with companies who cannot pass the higher bar. A self selection of the worst companies.