How is it theft? I'd really love to see that explanation.
Ask any Enron employee.
I can give you an example. If a CEO knows his company's SPV's are going to blow up in his face in the near future, and he decides to start off-loading his company stock, he is stealing from everyone who buys that stock since they do not have the same information he does. He has perverted the price discovery process of a free market system.
Technically this argument makes sense. But if you were standing on railroad tracks and a train was barreling towards you, are you going to just stand there and let it kill you?
How does a sane rational person sit and literally watch their money evaporate in front of them knowing full well that it's about to happen?
Do we ban corporate executives, board members, officers, etc, from owning stock in their company to prevent this from ever even being a situation? Because it stands to reason that those people are going to have significant information before the retail market does.