I believe that stealing from financial systems should be less harshly punished than stealing directly from people, small businesses etc.

Whole point of financial system is risk management, while corner shop owners should not deal with theft risk at all.

I bet more than one corner shop worker had money in FTX.

Sure. If you put your money slightly outside regulated banks, you implicitly accept the risk of losing it.

I mean yes it's true that JP Morgan isn't going to go bankrupt if they cash some bad checks but at the end of the day that's money that could go to opening new branches, hiring employees, paying bonuses or depositors more interest. The cost to society is the same it's just distributed over a larger number of people.

> That's not too much to ask for, or expect, really.

Please tell me what reality you live in and how to get there. Hell, just look across this site to see all the advice that ethics are for those who like staying poor.

It's quite simple, you take a clear eyed look at the problems in the world and you say, "I don't need to accept this, this can and should be fixed." You'll no doubt encounter people saying silly stuff like you cited, because some people operate on the basis of "the most cynical take is the correct one;" you ignore these people and continue to focus on the problems at hand. Similar to how, if you want to start a business, there are likely people in your life who will shoot down every idea that you have; you stop asking those people's advice.

One challenge with that approach is if you're not careful, someone might start identifying you as a threat because of that behavior, and start attacking you using the BS and lies that a great many others are susceptible too (or outright violence).

What we're seeing now is the part of the larger cycle where folks get more and more insistent that they're warped world view is correct (and it wouldn't surprise me if we get more violence than we got on Jan 6th later because of it), since they can't acknowledge that they're wrong and something bad is happening because of it, which will cause more bad things to happen.

It is imperative more people stand up and provide counter-pressure, because otherwise they will win.