I remember watching a city council member in my hometown have to divest from a local business she'd helped get off the ground. She was an expert on the local economy, and suddenly her knowledge was useless. That, right there, is the core problem. A blanket ban on trading individual stocks treats a local hardware store like a defense contract. It’s a blunt instrument. Sure, we need ethics rules. Absolutely. And insider trading should be prosecuted. But banning everything creates a real talent drain. We'd push out skilled, pragmatic people who understand how markets and local industries actually work, leaving only career politicians or those wealthy enough not to care. That’s an unintended consequence we can’t ignore. The real fix is about transparency, disclosure, and enforcing existing conflict-of-interest laws, not pretending an entire class of people shouldn’t participate in the economy. That’s a cure worse than the disease.

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