"- High Frequency Trading does not influence long term security values."
That argument provides ZERO justification for skimming a few dollars here and there from millions of small investors. Can I take 10 cents per day of everyone's 401K because it won't have a material effect on their standard of living during retirement? Can I engage in a pump and dump scheme because it won't affect "long term security values"? What if I issue a fake press release and profit from people trading off the false information? Based on your absurd argument, that would be OK because the long term price of the stock is not affected.
You must work for a bank if you're trying to suggest that the blatant and obvious criminality of HFT is just some fringe "conspiracy theory".
Suppose you're an honest trader trying to win in the market based on your own research and DD. All of a sudden you see this massive quote traffic on a stock you've been watching. You try to place an order against all this FAKE traffic that you wouldn't have otherwise made. It's no different than someone leaking a fake press release or engaging in a pump and dump scheme to manipulate other traders into making orders. Deliberate distortion of the market is a crime.
This also has the effect of skimming margins from the little guys. Suppose you put in a bid for $10, and you hit an ask for $9.75. That 25 cents is yours. If a company with an algobot really wants to sell at $9.75, they program their bot to start placing and canceling orders at $11 and work their way down a penny at a time until they hit your bid. They could have this running all day long until they sell of all their shares. YOU can't possibly sit there at your computer and start submitting and canceling bids at $9, $9.01, $9.02 trying to hit your bid below $10.
The markets are supposed to be a mechanism for honest price discovery. You should win when you're smarter than the other guy, not when you have a faster computer.
I think you're mean "orders", not "trades". A trade would mean the transaction has already taken place. You can't cancel that.
These guys are submitting millions of "orders" and then canceling them before others can react. You don't want to make a rule that says you can't cancel an "order". The exchanges just need a rule requiring that any order be open for a fixed amount of time. I'd say 30 seconds. Long enough for any other market participant to fill the order. That's it.
And screw the Federal Government. They could prosecute this $#!T under existing law if they so desired. They just won't do it. Regulators don't want to anger their future employers.
The rule of law is dead in the USA. Bankers and financiers have a free pass from Washington DC to break the law with impunity.
It is a crime to undertake any action (other than buying and selling of course) to profit from deliberately attempting to manipulate prices. Placing orders with no intent to have them executed is no different than a pump and dump scheme, or leaking a fake press release to affect a company's share price.
There's an easy solution (actually two) to stop this BS. Make a rule requiring that all orders need to be open for at least, say 15 seconds. Long enough for a small day trader to act on them. Alternatively, they could assess a small fee for every canceled order above some threshold in a trading day. Call it 5000. i.e. You get to submit and cancel 5000 orders for free, but every additional canceled order costs you a penny.
If I could figure out a good way to cash out my 401K without getting ass-raped by the government (Ask Slashdot?) I'd cease participating in this gambling casino where the house always wins.
I think this particular case has everything to do with where the item was made.
Items made in the USA can be purchased in foreign countries and then imported and sold without being subject to copyright laws. Well, items except prescription drugs and medical devices anyway.
At issue here is whether a book manufactured by the "Asian subsidiary" of the copyright holder can be imported and sold.
"the majority of society is not going to try to turn a profit through dishonestly re-selling their foreign acquisitions to get a larger margin"
What's "dishonest" about it? Someone spots an opportunity to buy something in a foreign market for cheap and sell it in the U.S. for a profit. Good business strategy. If the manufacturer doesn't like it, they can raise the price in the foreign market or lower it in the U.S. market. Creating some artificial legal barrier to prevent import/re-import of products forces Americans to subsidize the development of these products for the rest of the world. It's BS.
This is especially pernicious in the field of prescription medications and medical devices. Why should a dose of the SAME drug that sells for 25 cents in Canada be sold at $25 in the USA? Someone should be taking advantage of the price differential by buying the drug in Canada and selling the drug for $5 in the USA. We're not talking about counterfeits. This is the same drug from the same manufacturer. The company that makes the drug can choose not to sell it to Canadian or European businesses at all OR they can choose to sell it to everyone at the same price. A fair market price. Once it's sold however, there should be no law against shipping it right back to the U.S. retail market.
What? You mean some people in NY think they're smarter than the FDA with regard to the food products they want to consume? That DEFINITELY has to be illegal!
"The decision in Kelo was based on eminent domain being within state jurisdiction, where the taking was allowable according to Connecticut law, instead of federal jurisdiction."
It's absolutely ridiculous that the Courts invoke the idea of "state powers" when it's convenient for them, but at other times insist that Constitutional protections (as per the 14th Amendment) supercede state law. Women have a Constitutional right(even though there is nothing about abortion in The Constitution) to have an abortion that no state can legislate against, but a state law can take precedence over the Fifth Amendment? WTF?
What happens when the USA starts a war with Iran and THEN China decides to invade Taiwan? Maybe the North Koreans (the remaining axis of evil nation) would jump in and invade the South using conventional forces? I don't think China is a military threat to USA soil, but if the US military spreads itself thinner than it already is by war with Iran, China could easily exert military dominance over the region.
"the "doomsday" scenario about China "cashing in" on US debt is unfounded"
They don't need to own the majority of US debt, they just need to be a major holder. Maybe it's not "Doomsday", but if China suddenly dumped more than a $1T in U.S. Treasury securities, it sure would raise hell with the financial markets. Imagine the sheer "panic" that such a dramatic move would produce? I can easily picture it being enough to trigger a shutdown of the stock exchanges as the algobots go berserk on one another. A massive sale would also mean prices drop, yields spike and the ability of the US government to roll over short term debt at such absurdly low interest rates is impaired, at least temporarily. Hard to believe that they'd just do it for no reason, so it's difficult to imagine what things would be like if relations had already deteriorated to the point where they would dump US debt as an act of aggression or retaliation.
Would you suggest that we assess taxes on the whole population so that we may hire government bureaucrats to micro-manage labor relations between parents and children? Would you ban children from working in a family business? How about washing dishes and cleaning at home?
I worked in a family business and also doing seasonal labor on a lot of different farms, orchards, etc. We busted our asses, and on rare occasions worked until we were probably in violation of many child labor laws. Such is hay season and harvest season however. It's actually a very rewarding experience to put in 2 or 3 sixteen hour days to get a big job done. Nobody that I know felt genuinely abused or went on strike. The work needed to be done, so we did it.
I can't imagine living in a country where we have government interfering in this. Sounds like 1984 come to life.
"I'm not for burdening small business and am for burdening large corporations with regulations that ensure fair competition, safe drinking water, and similar."
The problem is that a big corporation can hire a legal team and a regulatory compliance officer to deal with regulations and/or frustrate the regulators. A small business owner has to navigate 1000s of pages of regulatory nonsense while also trying to run the business.
Then you have the regulators themselves, who, in my experience are generally power-tripping little bureaucrats that like bullying small businesses. The 10 year encounter between my family business and the army of government bureaucrats shaped my views on government forever.
Every regulation you pass to combat big business almost surely burdens the small business much more severely.
Maybe if lawmakers would pass readable bills and bureaucrats didn't enforce the laws to the exact letter, it would be more effective.
The blatant erosion of our civil liberties over the past 20 years is exactly why I will not trust the government with ANY new powers. These people, regardless of party, have gutted the Bill of Rights.
-Patriot Act and extensions -Warrantless Wiretapping and ex-post-facto legalization thereof -Indefinite detention of US Citizens -Military Commissions Act -FISA Extensions -Assassination of US Citizens -NDAA
I accept some of the climate change science, but there is no way in hell I am going to support granting the federal government more power to regulate energy consumption. I won't support any new taxation to give these criminals more wealth to waste, or support any efforts for them to seize power to control PAC money or campaign financing.
The federal government and its minions have declared themselves enemies of the citizens of the United States. I want to see them stripped of power and starved of wealth.
P.S. Any federal government employee reading this is invited to go **** themselves.
To hell with taxes. You know as well as I do that the U.S. Congress would build in exemptions to protect Wall St. so that the tax mainly affects the little guy. Like, only the first 1000 transactions in a year are taxed. So, you get hit with the tax on everything you do, while some big firm pays the tax only for their first business day of the year.
There are a couple of simple ways to fix the HFT problem. Make a rule that all market orders must remain open for some minimum time, like 10 seconds. i.e. orders cannot be submitted and canceled in a microsecond. That, or the exchange imposes a penalty on a certain number of orders that don't get executed. Say 10 cents for every 1000 orders. Would never affect a human trader, but would be expensive for the HFTs that submit millions of orders that they have no intention of executing.
I don't think you quite understand the difference between automated trading and High Frequency Trading.
The HFT algorithms submit millions of market orders and then cancel them before a human trader could possibly act.
Suppose you submit a bid for a stock at $10/share. If the ask price comes back at $9.95 (from another human) that 5 cent difference is yours. HFT algorithms are skimming those surpluses off the top. Suppose a firm using HFT really wants to to sell a stock $9.95. Rather than putting that price out as a sell order, they submit and then immediately cancel orders at $11, $10.99, $10.98 etc. until they hit your $10 bid. They've just stolen 5 cents that would be yours in a market that was an honest mechanism for price discovery.
If you don't have enough food, water, medicine and other necessities for you and your family to survive for at least 30 days without going to the grocery store, you're a fool.
Any number of things short of a Mad Max scenario could cause a prolonged interruption to the supply chain. Natural disaster? Disease outbreak? Major fuel shortage?
You don't have to be an obsessed survivalist with a fallout shelter in the mountains to prepare for unlikely, but entirely possible events. It would take you about 4 hours some Saturday morning and (depending on the size of your household) a few hundred dollars to make basic preparations. Worst case? You eat the food and drink the water. Best case? You save your and your family's lives.
In our current steady state, I think you're right about the distribution, but that steady state isn't going to last much longer.
Over 40 MILLION Americans currently on food stamps. Ben Bernanke debasing the currency to finance exorbitant federal deficits (QE1 and QE2 sparked the last round of soaring food prices). Drought conditions potentially impacting this year's harvest.
What happens when the monthly food stamp allotment (or for that matter a SS check) will no longer provide enough for basic subsistence?
Consider the possibility of a war with Iran and its effect on oil prices coupled with the intimate relationship between food and petroleum products.
I think there will definitely be widespread civil unrest, and empty stomachs will be the precipitating factor.
The Dachau concentration camp in Germany was created in 1933 whereas Auschwitz in occupied Poland was not built until 1941.
How did the Germans know in advance that Dachau should be given code '003' to leave room for two camp names that preceded it based on alphabetical order?
Somalia was ruled by a military dictatorship (government) for decades. The government was overthrown by violence. Then, the government of the U.S. conducts a military invasion to make it safe for corporate exploitation and has been continuously interfering in Somalia ever since. Including a U.S.-backed invasion by Ethiopian forces, and a series of drone and missile strikes. Gee, I wonder why the country hasn't flourished?
Corporations are creatures of government. Government has granted then special legal privileges, most importantly certain legal immunities. Even the most ardent libertarians agree that a tort system is necessary for a society. The officers and owners of a corporation are not legally responsible for their decisions, it's small wonder that abuses occur.
Why do you think we need government to provide infrastructure? Aren't roads just subsidies to automakers and the petroleum industry? Would CO2 emissions, pollution, urban sprawl and other environmental problems be so serious if government had not FORCED us to divert resources into roads? What about the number of deaths and injuries in traffic accidents?
Re Somalia, you can't expect a nation that endured decades of rule by a military dictatorship (government) to blossom into paradise after the violent overthrow of the regime. Especially when the US government launches an immediate invasion under the auspices of a humanitarian mission and has continually intervened in the country ever since. Somalia might be populated by warring clans, but how many foreign countries have they invaded and how many foreign civilians have they murdered in the last decade?
What happened to those Wall St. speculators when their bad decisions were about to destroy their companies? Along comes GOVERNMENT to bail them out and force everyone else to take responsibility for those decisions. In a libertarian world, you take responsibility for your own actions. Half the problems with the U.S. economy are a direct result of propping up a failed financial system.
I don't reject science. I reject the idea of giving government any additional power. They've done enough damage.
Summary: "those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories OR who strongly supported a free market economy..."
Article: "people who agreed with free market economic principles AND endorsed conspiracy theories"
Who the hell are they talking about?
1. People who advocate free markets AND simultaneously believe conspiracy theories.
2. The sum total of (people who advocate for free markets REGARDLESS of their other views) + (people who believe in conspiracy theories REGARDLESS of their view on free markets)
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for checking on that.
The person is obviously a shill for the scumbags engaged in this practice. Nobody could be so stupid as to think this is "harmless".
"- High Frequency Trading does not influence long term security values."
That argument provides ZERO justification for skimming a few dollars here and there from millions of small investors. Can I take 10 cents per day of everyone's 401K because it won't have a material effect on their standard of living during retirement? Can I engage in a pump and dump scheme because it won't affect "long term security values"? What if I issue a fake press release and profit from people trading off the false information? Based on your absurd argument, that would be OK because the long term price of the stock is not affected.
You must work for a bank if you're trying to suggest that the blatant and obvious criminality of HFT is just some fringe "conspiracy theory".
"All in all, no damage done."
BULLSHIT!
Suppose you're an honest trader trying to win in the market based on your own research and DD. All of a sudden you see this massive quote traffic on a stock you've been watching. You try to place an order against all this FAKE traffic that you wouldn't have otherwise made. It's no different than someone leaking a fake press release or engaging in a pump and dump scheme to manipulate other traders into making orders. Deliberate distortion of the market is a crime.
This also has the effect of skimming margins from the little guys. Suppose you put in a bid for $10, and you hit an ask for $9.75. That 25 cents is yours. If a company with an algobot really wants to sell at $9.75, they program their bot to start placing and canceling orders at $11 and work their way down a penny at a time until they hit your bid. They could have this running all day long until they sell of all their shares. YOU can't possibly sit there at your computer and start submitting and canceling bids at $9, $9.01, $9.02 trying to hit your bid below $10.
The markets are supposed to be a mechanism for honest price discovery. You should win when you're smarter than the other guy, not when you have a faster computer.
I think you're mean "orders", not "trades". A trade would mean the transaction has already taken place. You can't cancel that.
These guys are submitting millions of "orders" and then canceling them before others can react. You don't want to make a rule that says you can't cancel an "order". The exchanges just need a rule requiring that any order be open for a fixed amount of time. I'd say 30 seconds. Long enough for any other market participant to fill the order. That's it.
And screw the Federal Government. They could prosecute this $#!T under existing law if they so desired. They just won't do it. Regulators don't want to anger their future employers.
The rule of law is dead in the USA. Bankers and financiers have a free pass from Washington DC to break the law with impunity.
It is a crime to undertake any action (other than buying and selling of course) to profit from deliberately attempting to manipulate prices. Placing orders with no intent to have them executed is no different than a pump and dump scheme, or leaking a fake press release to affect a company's share price.
There's an easy solution (actually two) to stop this BS. Make a rule requiring that all orders need to be open for at least, say 15 seconds. Long enough for a small day trader to act on them. Alternatively, they could assess a small fee for every canceled order above some threshold in a trading day. Call it 5000. i.e. You get to submit and cancel 5000 orders for free, but every additional canceled order costs you a penny.
If I could figure out a good way to cash out my 401K without getting ass-raped by the government (Ask Slashdot?) I'd cease participating in this gambling casino where the house always wins.
I think this particular case has everything to do with where the item was made.
Items made in the USA can be purchased in foreign countries and then imported and sold without being subject to copyright laws. Well, items except prescription drugs and medical devices anyway.
At issue here is whether a book manufactured by the "Asian subsidiary" of the copyright holder can be imported and sold.
I wouldn't expect it to be illegal to re-sell legal drugs if they were purchased in a country were they were cheaper either ... but it is.
"the majority of society is not going to try to turn a profit through dishonestly re-selling their foreign acquisitions to get a larger margin"
What's "dishonest" about it? Someone spots an opportunity to buy something in a foreign market for cheap and sell it in the U.S. for a profit. Good business strategy. If the manufacturer doesn't like it, they can raise the price in the foreign market or lower it in the U.S. market. Creating some artificial legal barrier to prevent import/re-import of products forces Americans to subsidize the development of these products for the rest of the world. It's BS.
This is especially pernicious in the field of prescription medications and medical devices. Why should a dose of the SAME drug that sells for 25 cents in Canada be sold at $25 in the USA? Someone should be taking advantage of the price differential by buying the drug in Canada and selling the drug for $5 in the USA. We're not talking about counterfeits. This is the same drug from the same manufacturer. The company that makes the drug can choose not to sell it to Canadian or European businesses at all OR they can choose to sell it to everyone at the same price. A fair market price. Once it's sold however, there should be no law against shipping it right back to the U.S. retail market.
Such laws are garbage.
What? You mean some people in NY think they're smarter than the FDA with regard to the food products they want to consume? That DEFINITELY has to be illegal!
"The decision in Kelo was based on eminent domain being within state jurisdiction, where the taking was allowable according to Connecticut law, instead of federal jurisdiction."
It's absolutely ridiculous that the Courts invoke the idea of "state powers" when it's convenient for them, but at other times insist that Constitutional protections (as per the 14th Amendment) supercede state law. Women have a Constitutional right(even though there is nothing about abortion in The Constitution) to have an abortion that no state can legislate against, but a state law can take precedence over the Fifth Amendment? WTF?
What happens when the USA starts a war with Iran and THEN China decides to invade Taiwan? Maybe the North Koreans (the remaining axis of evil nation) would jump in and invade the South using conventional forces?
I don't think China is a military threat to USA soil, but if the US military spreads itself thinner than it already is by war with Iran, China could easily exert military dominance over the region.
"the "doomsday" scenario about China "cashing in" on US debt is unfounded"
They don't need to own the majority of US debt, they just need to be a major holder.
Maybe it's not "Doomsday", but if China suddenly dumped more than a $1T in U.S. Treasury securities, it sure would raise hell with the financial markets. Imagine the sheer "panic" that such a dramatic move would produce? I can easily picture it being enough to trigger a shutdown of the stock exchanges as the algobots go berserk on one another.
A massive sale would also mean prices drop, yields spike and the ability of the US government to roll over short term debt at such absurdly low interest rates is impaired, at least temporarily.
Hard to believe that they'd just do it for no reason, so it's difficult to imagine what things would be like if relations had already deteriorated to the point where they would dump US debt as an act of aggression or retaliation.
Would you suggest that we assess taxes on the whole population so that we may hire government bureaucrats to micro-manage labor relations between parents and children? Would you ban children from working in a family business? How about washing dishes and cleaning at home?
I worked in a family business and also doing seasonal labor on a lot of different farms, orchards, etc. We busted our asses, and on rare occasions worked until we were probably in violation of many child labor laws. Such is hay season and harvest season however. It's actually a very rewarding experience to put in 2 or 3 sixteen hour days to get a big job done. Nobody that I know felt genuinely abused or went on strike. The work needed to be done, so we did it.
I can't imagine living in a country where we have government interfering in this. Sounds like 1984 come to life.
"I'm not for burdening small business and am for burdening large corporations with regulations that ensure fair competition, safe drinking water, and similar."
The problem is that a big corporation can hire a legal team and a regulatory compliance officer to deal with regulations and/or frustrate the regulators. A small business owner has to navigate 1000s of pages of regulatory nonsense while also trying to run the business.
Then you have the regulators themselves, who, in my experience are generally power-tripping little bureaucrats that like bullying small businesses. The 10 year encounter between my family business and the army of government bureaucrats shaped my views on government forever.
Every regulation you pass to combat big business almost surely burdens the small business much more severely.
Maybe if lawmakers would pass readable bills and bureaucrats didn't enforce the laws to the exact letter, it would be more effective.
The blatant erosion of our civil liberties over the past 20 years is exactly why I will not trust the government with ANY new powers. These people, regardless of party, have gutted the Bill of Rights.
-Patriot Act and extensions
-Warrantless Wiretapping and ex-post-facto legalization thereof
-Indefinite detention of US Citizens
-Military Commissions Act
-FISA Extensions
-Assassination of US Citizens
-NDAA
I accept some of the climate change science, but there is no way in hell I am going to support granting the federal government more power to regulate energy consumption. I won't support any new taxation to give these criminals more wealth to waste, or support any efforts for them to seize power to control PAC money or campaign financing.
The federal government and its minions have declared themselves enemies of the citizens of the United States. I want to see them stripped of power and starved of wealth.
P.S.
Any federal government employee reading this is invited to go **** themselves.
To hell with taxes. You know as well as I do that the U.S. Congress would build in exemptions to protect Wall St. so that the tax mainly affects the little guy. Like, only the first 1000 transactions in a year are taxed. So, you get hit with the tax on everything you do, while some big firm pays the tax only for their first business day of the year.
There are a couple of simple ways to fix the HFT problem. Make a rule that all market orders must remain open for some minimum time, like 10 seconds. i.e. orders cannot be submitted and canceled in a microsecond. That, or the exchange imposes a penalty on a certain number of orders that don't get executed. Say 10 cents for every 1000 orders. Would never affect a human trader, but would be expensive for the HFTs that submit millions of orders that they have no intention of executing.
I don't think you quite understand the difference between automated trading and High Frequency Trading.
The HFT algorithms submit millions of market orders and then cancel them before a human trader could possibly act.
Suppose you submit a bid for a stock at $10/share. If the ask price comes back at $9.95 (from another human) that 5 cent difference is yours. HFT algorithms are skimming those surpluses off the top. Suppose a firm using HFT really wants to to sell a stock $9.95. Rather than putting that price out as a sell order, they submit and then immediately cancel orders at $11, $10.99, $10.98 etc. until they hit your $10 bid. They've just stolen 5 cents that would be yours in a market that was an honest mechanism for price discovery.
If you don't have enough food, water, medicine and other necessities for you and your family to survive for at least 30 days without going to the grocery store, you're a fool.
Any number of things short of a Mad Max scenario could cause a prolonged interruption to the supply chain. Natural disaster? Disease outbreak? Major fuel shortage?
You don't have to be an obsessed survivalist with a fallout shelter in the mountains to prepare for unlikely, but entirely possible events. It would take you about 4 hours some Saturday morning and (depending on the size of your household) a few hundred dollars to make basic preparations. Worst case? You eat the food and drink the water. Best case? You save your and your family's lives.
In our current steady state, I think you're right about the distribution, but that steady state isn't going to last much longer.
Over 40 MILLION Americans currently on food stamps.
Ben Bernanke debasing the currency to finance exorbitant federal deficits (QE1 and QE2 sparked the last round of soaring food prices).
Drought conditions potentially impacting this year's harvest.
What happens when the monthly food stamp allotment (or for that matter a SS check) will no longer provide enough for basic subsistence?
Consider the possibility of a war with Iran and its effect on oil prices coupled with the intimate relationship between food and petroleum products.
I think there will definitely be widespread civil unrest, and empty stomachs will be the precipitating factor.
The Dachau concentration camp in Germany was created in 1933 whereas Auschwitz in occupied Poland was not built until 1941.
How did the Germans know in advance that Dachau should be given code '003' to leave room for two camp names that preceded it based on alphabetical order?
Somalia was ruled by a military dictatorship (government) for decades. The government was overthrown by violence. Then, the government of the U.S. conducts a military invasion to make it safe for corporate exploitation and has been continuously interfering in Somalia ever since. Including a U.S.-backed invasion by Ethiopian forces, and a series of drone and missile strikes. Gee, I wonder why the country hasn't flourished?
"An uneducated person is one easily controlled!"
And a person that endures 12 years of government mandated obedience conditioning is difficult to control?
Your accusation about libertarians is a strawman.
Corporations are creatures of government. Government has granted then special legal privileges, most importantly certain legal immunities. Even the most ardent libertarians agree that a tort system is necessary for a society. The officers and owners of a corporation are not legally responsible for their decisions, it's small wonder that abuses occur.
Why do you think we need government to provide infrastructure? Aren't roads just subsidies to automakers and the petroleum industry? Would CO2 emissions, pollution, urban sprawl and other environmental problems be so serious if government had not FORCED us to divert resources into roads? What about the number of deaths and injuries in traffic accidents?
Re Somalia, you can't expect a nation that endured decades of rule by a military dictatorship (government) to blossom into paradise after the violent overthrow of the regime. Especially when the US government launches an immediate invasion under the auspices of a humanitarian mission and has continually intervened in the country ever since. Somalia might be populated by warring clans, but how many foreign countries have they invaded and how many foreign civilians have they murdered in the last decade?
What happened to those Wall St. speculators when their bad decisions were about to destroy their companies? Along comes GOVERNMENT to bail them out and force everyone else to take responsibility for those decisions. In a libertarian world, you take responsibility for your own actions. Half the problems with the U.S. economy are a direct result of propping up a failed financial system.
I don't reject science. I reject the idea of giving government any additional power. They've done enough damage.
Summary:
"those who subscribed to one or more conspiracy theories OR who strongly supported a free market economy..."
Article:
"people who agreed with free market economic principles AND endorsed conspiracy theories"
Who the hell are they talking about?
1. People who advocate free markets AND simultaneously believe conspiracy theories.
2. The sum total of (people who advocate for free markets REGARDLESS of their other views) + (people who believe in conspiracy theories REGARDLESS of their view on free markets)
???
That's not about quantum mechanics, it's about string theory.
The first episode does have some nice qualitative discussions about relativity and quantum mechanics as background info however.
Excellent series and interesting book.