His premise is something similar to what I was going to write and then didn't for brevity - the general justification touted for Soros doing what he did is that the British government were incompetent and deserved what they got - it's equivalent to saying the drunk deserves everything he gets because he should have known better. A third party's incompetence isn't a moral justification for your proactive exploration of their incompetence.
So in your mind, there's no difference between engaging in a transaction that both parties enter into willingly, fully in control of their faculties, and robbing a drunken, passed out individual? Because that analogy holds those two things to be equal.
When we abstract away the situation, then it all seems simple - we assume both parties (the BoE and Soros) are willing, aware and self-motivated actors in control of themselves.
However, there WERE other parameters. George Soros clearly believed the government to be incompetent/incapacitated (up against a wall), and took full advantage. It's also a zero-sum game where the loser isn't a single, self-motivated individual - it's a body of taxpayers who aren't explicitly consulted or perhaps even aware of the transaction, which calls into question the "willing, self-aware" parameter. Idealised financial transactions end with "win/lose", whereas ruining a whole economy like that results in years of decreased quality of life for other individuals, which has a moral implication. Soros was undoubtedly aware that his transaction would disadvantage a huge number of people, but did it anyway. He could have acted in such a way that netted him lots of money (a million, 10 million, 100 million) whilst still minimising taxpayer losses, but he didn't at all.
So in pure, simplified transactional terms, yeah fair game. In "big picture" we-are-all-human-beings terms, there's a huge moral hole here.
Sure; I won't argue that it was a jerky thing to do. However, being jerky doesn't make it criminal, and when you say "this is analogous to mugging a passed out rich man in the gutter", you are saying that it's criminal.
Was the British government up against a wall? Yes, but only because they put themselves there. They said "We will buy British Pounds, all you want to sell to us". George Soros said "Well, damn; I bet I can get a lot of pounds. Let's do this." and it turned out that George Soros's ability to borrow pounds was greater than the government's ability to buy them. How is an entity, full of ostensibly smart people, who continually say "Bring it on, I'm not done yet" the same or even similar to a drunken, passed out man? How is somebody who says "You will buy British Pounds? I have some pounds right here; would you like to buy them? Oh, you would? Well hold on, I'll be right back; I bet I can get some more!" the same or similar to somebody who sees a passed out man and slips off the dude's watch?
If a car dealer knowingly sells you a lemon, is it a consensual exchange? I don't think was Soros did was absolutely unethical, but its ridiculous to pretend that it was squeaky clean. One party thought this to be an ordinary transaction; the other party knew it would debase the currency.
Two parties took a bet, as in a poker game. They each though they were doing the right thing. Turns out, one of them had a winning hand and one of them didn't.
But since everyone knew the nature of the game, and everyone knew they were making bets, why is it unethical?
Really, I would think more anger should be placed on the politicians who got monetary policy so drastically wrong. Or maybe anger is wrong - maybe I should say "learn from this". Because heaping anger on someone who outplayed you is a great way to mask the fact that you need to learn.
Its not that I think Soros should be "blamed" per say, it just doesn't speak highly of his character. He put profits before the wellbeing of the British people. Clearly he doesn't feel an ethical obligation to them. I would have.
But you're right. Judging Soros gets us nowhere, drawing lessons from this does.
Keep in mind that the dealer was making the offer to sell, so it's like a push pull or drag sale.
So dealer makes an offer saying "We will give you $10,000 for any clunker, no quantity restrictions, if it has wheels and starts we'll give you $10,000" so Mr. Soros thinks to himself, this is a rediculous offer and starts buying everything on craigslist for less than $10,000. He rolls up with 100 lemons and the dealer buys them, then has a press conference saying he has $15 billion dollars on hand an will buy all the lemons in the world for $10,000 a piece.
So George Soros goes and finds $30 billion lemons and it turns out that the gov't couldn't (or didn't want to) come up with $15 more billion for lemons. Yes, the tax payer got fleeced, but the transactions were made in good faith by people who thought buying lemons for $10,000 was a good fucking idea, and was elected on a fucking platform of buying lemons for $10K.
