Thank you very much. We appreciate it. A$$?ole.

I recently added Acquired to my go-to podcast short list and picked the Enron story from 2022. The story comes out hot on the heels of the FTX scandal/tragedy/fraud because of their similarities (and why the regulation that came after it helped prevent other Enrons). It's a long episode (1h 50m) but it's narrated so well and the story is so riveting that I didn't even notice. Theres this passage that I found interesting about half-measures and how they can and will be gamed (emphasis mine):

The state of California decided that they didn't want to go full free market. They'd put in lots of safety measures that ended up being the opposite of that, because usually when you add a new mechanism into a free market, it can be played in a variety of different ways.

On the one hand, it seems reasonable to have controls in place. On the other hand, it entered a lot of new rules onto the playing field for these traders to exploit, so people would run experiments to test if they were exploitable, they would see the results, and then they would go hard, and they would be rewarded for going hard. A company is not on the right side of history when memo starts circulating on the floor with names like Death Star, Fat Boy, Get Shorty, and Ricochet.

Surely there's a lesson here.

Another Acquired episode I recommend is the one about Intel which is relevant if not for the recent departure/firing of Pat Gelsinger.