37. On Speculation:A Means of Unjust Enrichment That Should Be Prohibited

Speculation in real estate, stocks, gold, tea, futures, antiques, news, information, and all other forms of speculation share a common motive: to reap windfall profits through manipulation. Without this incentive, speculation would not exist. At its core, speculation is a means of unjust enrichment.

Unjust enrichment should either be restricted or prohibited. Speculation falls squarely into the category that must be banned. For society, speculation brings only harm, no benefit whatsoever. Its core tactic involves collectively inflating prices to drive the speculated asset far beyond its intrinsic value. Once prices rise, the earliest speculators profit. Once individuals profit from speculation, the示范效应 of these gains continuously attracts more participants. As the number of speculators grows, the price of the speculated asset deviates increasingly from its true value, bringing the bubble closer to its inevitable collapse. Speculation reaches its peak when the asset's price becomes prohibitively high for new entrants. At this point, with no new participants to sustain the momentum, the price can no longer rise. Once upward momentum stalls, early speculators begin selling off their holdings. The price then enters a relentless downward spiral, ultimately causing the vast majority of speculators to suffer losses. If the capital involved is substantial, the collapse of such a bubble often triggers economic crises that directly threaten the entire society.

Despite being repeatedly fleeced by speculation, people persistently engage in it. The root cause lies in humanity's unalterable self-interested nature. Speculators who exploit this flaw can repeatedly plunder those seeking unearned gains.

Faced with this self-serving nature that cannot be overcome through personal effort alone, democratic nations must employ legal means to prohibit all potential speculative activities. At the first sign of speculative tendencies emerging, governments should implement strict monitoring; upon determining that speculation is imminent, they must immediately take measures to curb its momentum; and once speculation is confirmed to have begun, governments must take decisive action to disrupt its progression while holding the instigators legally accountable. In short, democratic governments absolutely cannot tolerate the existence of speculation.

For citizens, each individual must recognize that seeking unearned gains through speculation inevitably means others gain without effort. Consciously refraining from all speculative activities constitutes a fundamental civic virtue in democratic nations.