This comment reminds me of something Popehat wrote about Aaron Swartz:

> In short, Swartz's team seemed to view this as an unjust and broken application of a system to an undeserving man, not recognizing that the system is rigged and unjust and broken from the start. That's common among smart, educated, fortunate people. As I have discussed before, my fortunate clients are the most outraged at how they are treated by the criminal justice system, and most prone to seeing conspiracies and vendettas, because they are new to it — they have not questioned the premise that the system's goal is justice. My clients who have lived difficult lives in hard neighborhoods don't see a conspiracy; they recognize incompetence and brutal indifference and injustice as features, not bugs.

https://www.popehat.com/2014/08/07/the-allure-of-unquestione...

And most of the news organizations bought it hook, line and sinker (ignorantly or willingly) because it sold advertisements.

But there are an awful lot of other crooks out there taking advantage of as many or more people, and often getting away with it with very little consequence.

I may not like him, but being dislikable shouldn't have that much effect on punishment.

Can you explain why?

If you think it's immoral for the profit motive to be in play when it comes to healthcare, then fine. But to single him out like he's some kind of extreme amoral outlier or something seems really unfair.

Most people got the drug for free or at an extreme discount, and he spent all the profits on drug research. What he did is pretty much how the entire pharmaceutical industry works.

But that’s the problem. You can’t really have rule of law and increase someone’s punishment because, well, they’re an asshole. The amount of legally-defined harm he caused is trivial. You can argue they’re putting every possible punishment they can on top because he was a dick who raised the price of drugs and is seemingly 4Chan incarnate.

(But oh man is that little pharma bro manlet so punchable. So, so punchable.)

The thing is, Shkreli is a provocateur. He says and does things to elicit a reaction from people. He very clearly said one too many stupid things and as a result of it, they are throwing the book at him VERY hard here.

Whereas with someone else in his position, there probably would have been a quiet settlement for time served with little to no fines (as there are no real damages that I can see) there's literally no way that they can do that here. There are WAY too many eyes on this case for them to cut him a deal even if such a deal is de rigueur and that is 100% Shkreli's fault. He pushed and he pushed and he pushed till he built up so much bad karma that he literally ended up in jail. Even when he does things that, when you look into them REALLY deeply are perhaps good (like the Epi-Pen fiasco), he comes off 100% as an arrogant asshole who deserves condemnation anyway.

I'd like to expand on my previous response: Saying things you don't believe for no better reason than that you enjoy pissing people off is loathsome. Whether or not he deserves jail time, he's still an asshole, and "provocateur" seems unnecessarily euphemistic.

The word you're looking for is "troll."

His punishment is not even known yet, the sentencing is not due for another seven weeks.

Perhaps you meant it more broadly, then where do you see injustice being done? Is the evidence made up? Was the jury rigged or unduly influenced? Was he deprived of legal counsel?

But that’s a bit of a problem. You get one high-profile conviction of this rent-seeking troll, and not as much attention towards more systemically harmful actors. So, a bit of a “finite legal resources” model and a bit of “bread and circus”.

But it’s a half-argued argument. I’m glad to see financial engineering narcissists get karmic Justice.

But in the case of people being uncooperative and showing no remorse the system was designed to be able to allow the judge to give them the maximum sentence. He did everything possible to ensure that outcome.

Im all for the removal of politics but can you remove the dumb stuff at the same time. That would be cool.

I would hate to live in a system that worked by the letter and just said "Well, can't touch him, he didn't TECHNICALLY break any laws...."

Like what if you had a stalker who wasn't TECHNICALLY violating any of the terms of his restraining order but was doing everything in their power to make your miserable anyway? Is it a disgrace for the law to find a way to stick it to them?

If you don't uphold the civil rights of the loathsome, then those protections won't be there to protect the righteous.

It's worth remembering that while Shkrelli is super unlikeable, at various points in history, so were Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, etc.

They were jailed because the system was broken. And it would be better if the system was NOT broken.

In absolute terms, it was bad that those people were jailed, but with respect to the system, it was good that those people were jailed because it served to highlight the clear disconnect between the laws and what was right and wrong to society. It's unrealistic to expect institutions to make changes without going through the process. If Rosa Parks never went to jail there would have never been the protests which brought about change.

If you think the actions by Shkreli should have strong punishment, it's a bad thing if Shkreli gets the book thrown at him artificially. You're not setting precedent and you're not fixing the system. Someone in the future will do something similar and, depending on the court, they'll get off with a slap on the wrist. You should root for things to be done by the book so that everyone can realize, "hey, this book sucks!" and it gets changed through legislation.

If you don't like the system, we have something called legislature to change it.

But we do live in that system. That's how Google and Apple pay no taxes.

Rules have to mean something. Retroactively changing the rules because you don't like the outcome is like having no rules at all.

Your mindset is terrifying.