Allowing public officials to trade individual stocks creates an obvious and unnecessary conflict of interest. Officials are supposed to make decisions in the public interest, yet allowing them to personally profit from companies affected by those decisions creates a direct financial incentive to prioritize their own interests. This is not simply a matter of hoping officials will behave ethically. A well-designed system should remove avoidable conflicts of interest rather than rely on individuals to resist incentives that should never have existed in the first place. Preventing public officials from trading individual stocks does not punish them or restrict legitimate political activity; it simply ensures that the people making decisions on behalf of the public have no personal financial stake in the outcomes of those decisions. The standard should not be, "We trust them not to abuse their position." It should be, "There is no reason to give them the opportunity to profit from it in the first place."

The fact that other avenues for corruption exist does not invalidate this ban. Those are legitimate concerns, but they are separate problems that may require separate solutions. The relevant question is not whether banning individual-stock trading eliminates every possible conflict of interest; it is whether allowing it creates a conflict that could reasonably be prevented. My argument is that banning individual-stock trading removes one direct avenue for potential corruption, while allowing it preserves that avenue and can exacerbate the very conflicts we are trying to reduce. The existence of other ways for officials to abuse their positions does not make this particular restriction pointless. In fact, I don't see a meaningful benefit to allowing public officials to trade individual stocks while they hold positions of public power. The proposed alternatives—transparency, disclosure, recusal, and oversight—can address some problems, but they don't eliminate the underlying financial incentive. A ban does. Therefore, the relevant objection should not simply be, "There are other ways officials could be corrupt." The relevant question is whether banning individual-stock trading creates greater problems than allowing it. If it doesn't, then removing an unnecessary and avoidable conflict of interest is the more rational policy.

We mostly agree, so the disagreement comes down to whether this ban creates more problems than it solves. I don't see evidence that it does. A solution does not have to solve every problem—or even most problems—to be worthwhile. If a policy removes a significant source of corruption while creating fewer or smaller problems than it prevents, there is a rational and moral case for implementing it. The other problems you've raised are legitimate, and I agree that they also deserve solutions. For example, Singapore provides a real-world example of addressing concerns about recruiting and retaining capable public officials through substantially higher compensation for senior political positions. Transparency is another separate issue: the U.S. already has significant financial and tax-disclosure requirements, while in the EU, publicly determining what senior politicians actually own can be considerably more difficult. But none of that explains why this particular ban should not exist. If officials who can no longer trade individual stocks simply find other avenues for conflicts of interest, that does not make the ban worse overall. It means the other avenues also need to be addressed. The relevant comparison is not "ban individual-stock trading versus eliminate corruption entirely." It is "ban individual-stock trading versus allow this particular source of conflict to continue." So I agree that private equity, real estate, family businesses, transparency, recruitment, and other corruption risks are legitimate concerns. What I don't understand is why those concerns are being used as an argument against solving one specific, avoidable conflict of interest. Unless the ban itself creates greater problems than it prevents, the existence of other problems is not a reason to preserve this one.