Suffering consequences for crime is, to most people, an element of justice. That form of justice also has the benefit of deterring other would-be criminals. There are those who believe there is no deterrent effect. They're idiots.

Is there any place in the world where it isn't that way? Honest question.

How could SBF pay his victims back fully if he doesn't have enough assets?

How can he pay them back if he's in jail? I'm not saying he shouldn't be sent to jail, but the whole concept of expecting someone to pay someone else back by being in jail has always just struck me as strange.

>Is there any place in the world where it isn't that way? Honest question.

Yes, many cultures don't have this Old Testament idea about justice, as if they take delight in seeing the prisoner suffering. This is more about sadism than justice.

This is how they can be OK with treating criminals humanely, not focusing on revenge and punishment but rehabilitation, not having the death penalty, giving lighter sentences, etc. Or even to have prisons that look more like motels - like the Nordic prisons.

Seems like you’re pretty far off on a tangent? What does this have to do with SBF?

And if you think the US prison system is bad, wait until you see…. Well everyone else’s except a handful of Western European countries prisons.

"If you think I'm a slow runner, just wait until you see my son's primary school class!"

Compare yourself to your peers. What's the point of merely trying to be better than Rwanda.

Have you ever even been to Rwanda? Or are you just talking out of your ass?

You don't need to have visited a place to be informed about some aspect of it, or to have a good enough idea based on related facts about it and the region's track record to use it as an example in casual conversation.

In any case, here you go: "Prison conditions in Rwanda today remain harsh and harrowing – especially for those incarcerated for daring or perceived by the authorities to challenge the government’s narrative. Today Rwanda’s prisons are overcrowded at 174% of capacity – with the second highest incarceration population rate (that is, the number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population) outside America, according to the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. The institute listed Rwanda’s total prison population at just over 76,000 – out of a national population of a little over 13 million. Rwanda’s prisoners include thousands detained in connection with the 1994 genocide, the report added".

or

"significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions"

I think you're under the wrong impression that when the parent said "Rwanda" they meant Rwanda specifically, and they didn't just use it as a stand-in for "well known third world country" with the understanding that such countries usually have horrible prison conditions.

All but a handful of very sheltered countries have horrible prison conditions.

Rwanda also has had a history of murdering vast numbers of folks, very recently, because of religious affiliation.

My point is, what’s up with the ridiculousness of these claims?

>Seems like you’re pretty far off on a tangent? What does this have to do with SBF?

Seems like you're pretty far off the subect of the subthread? Have you read what we're discussing in this subthread? It's not SBF specifically.

Even so, if you want to see how it still ties to SBF, see the glee with which people elsewhere on this post comment about "life in prison" and throwing away the key for what is basically financial fraud.

>And if you think the US prison system is bad, wait until you see…. Well everyone else’s except a handful of Western European countries prisons.

That's a pretty low bar.

90%+ of the rest of the world is a low bar?

For a western country, especially one with such pretentions of being a superior one, the "home of the brave/land of the free", constantly preaching as hollier than thou, and so on?

LOL, next question?

Uh huh. Good luck with that in real life. Nothing in this thread or in my responses ever made such a claim. You’re the one being ‘holier than thou’ and trying to make ridiculous claims.

>Nothing in this thread or in my responses ever made such a claim

Which is neither here, nor there. I didn't say you made such a claim, or that somebody in this thread did.

Just pointed that it's a be low bar to being content to be better than "90% of countries" when that means being at the bottom of all your western peers.

And that it's especially ironic given than Americans do make superioty claims, quite often, from lowly folks, intellectuals, and artists, to official statements by POTUS.

It IS a low bar, and it IS especially ironic given the expressions of superiority - regardless of whether you or others in this thread share them or not.

Maybe early access to his next scam some of them would probably do it. lol.

Suppose your brother committed a crime. Do you care more about him being punished, or about him turning his life around and making amends for his actions?

Maybe from that perspective it's easier to understand why some other closer-knit societies don't value punishment as highly.

Is that really true though? Singapore, for instance, is notorious harsh, but few would call it

Action without consequences is action undeterred.

As many folks with problem family have had to learn.

Even in societies that put less emphasis on punishment, there are still consequences.

I wonder who told you otherwise.

You seemed to, or is your rebuttal not a rebuttal?

A rebuttal of which statement?

My comment tries to explain a different mindset to someone who seemed surprised that it exists at all, not directly answering their honest question, but rather trying to create understanding of that different way of thinking.

There's no rebuttal here, because there was no statement that could be rebutted - assuming that was actually a honest question I replied to.

Examples of these closer societies might be helpful, and how they do things differently.

> Examples of these closer societies might be helpful

Pretty much all of Europe.

The US are often take as an example of an exceptionally individualistic society - in every sense of the word. It's also one of the most punitive countries in the world (the most punitive by some metrics). It's really not hard to find places that are both closer to the other side of the spectrum and less punitive. Drop a pin on a map.

Scandinavia is not "all of Europe".

Correct.

Look. I am not an American and your answer doesn’t tell me much. A name of a country that you think is somehow representative of the international mainstream and the features of their justice/penal system that are an improvement would help me understand your point better.

Norway, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Austria, etc. Pick one. Compare them.

Or ask something specific, no one here is going to give you a full run down of every European nation's penal system along with the US one for you to compare and contrast.

But they are going to be made whole, or nearly so. It may take a while, but the guy they brought in to untangle FTX is the same guy that untangled Enron. He's said that FTX always had enough assets to cover its obligation, at least on paper, it just sucked at keeping track of them.

He never said FTX had enough assets to repay its creditors. Even worse, many of FTX’s assets are worthless (the FTT tokens are a prime example of this).

What he said was he had never seen a company with such atrocious record keeping. BTW, the US government would not have charged Sam Bankman-Fried with fraud if the money was all there.

Those are separate issues -- whether crimes were committed, and whether depositors will be made whole eventually. If some of the bets they illegally made end up paying off, enough to reimburse the people who trusted them, that doesn't mean it was legal or ok to take that money to make their own bets with in the first place.

And while John Ray did say they were bad at record keeping, he also said that “This is just old fashioned embezzlement, taking money from others and using it for your own purposes,” he said. “This is not sophisticated at all.”

That’s reflected in sentencing guidelines. The more serious the crime the higher the sentence. Expecting to walk away from a crime of such magnitude is just not realistic.

Sometimes, it’s important to make an example out of criminals, so that future criminals are deterred. Thus, strict punishments are a social necessity.

We do have a passion for vengeance in America. I think that feeling is what defeats prison reform, what politician wants to be seen a soft on crime?