> With a violent mugging encounter, you are blameless
I was mugged a decade or so ago, and while I was certainly angry with the people who mugged me, I also punished myself a bit: I shouldn't have been walking down that particular street at 2am; I'd had a bit to drink and should have called a car. Or I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings; maybe I would have seen them early enough to get away, etc.
The point isn't whether or not the thoughts I had were rational. I don't think the type of crime matters; victims always have plenty of room to assign some blame to themselves, or at least second-guess their actions.
Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of humans and would just sit there and allow a human to club them to death, until their species went extinct. They had no time evolutionarily to develop an innate (emotional) fear of humans.
Physical violence/robbery on the other hand is a long-standing human tradition, and something we are hardwired to react to emotionally (Amygdala vs. PFC, etc). We can of course override our Amygdalas with our PFCs to some extent (in the medium to long-term), but the "gut reaction" core is still there.
Another possible reason (for me at least) is that ethically I have a lot of inner turmoil over violent punishments (which physical incarceration absolutely is IMHO) for nonviolent crimes. Of course reality is much more grayscale than that given that crimes like SBFs could leave a family destitute and starving, which is violence-adjacent if not outrightly violent. A violent sentence for a violent crime intuitively feels a lot more "let the punishment fit the crime" than a violent sentence for a nonviolent crime.
Anyway, I don't have answers, but throwing some speculation onto the pile.
I'm also pretty distant from a mugging that might happen today, but I find myself getting angry about it, so that also seems to contradict the theory that it's about distance (though to be clear, I largely agree with you and I suspect distance is going to be a factor for most or maybe the vast majority of people).
However, I do know that people can feel very ashamed from scams like phishing attacks and caller scams.
Versus someone calling you specifically to cause harm, especially when they can comprehend the harm they are intending to inflict, in your example.
Maybe that's not really "anger," but it kind of feels and seems like it
For me the deep insult that causes anger is if this is intentional, this is a person, they willfully did this of sound mind. Perhaps why a Madoff might make someone angry, but not SBF. In my view, SBF was a step or two removed from a big "too big too fail" 2008 bank that offered an interest rate to account holders by making investments with some risk. It seems to me SBF was operating along similar lines, 8% interest rate if I recall, but his intent wasn't to steal so much as illegally hide risk and hope for the best - and in his case, he was small enough to fail.
I think we adjusted, but we just apply broader context. No one would recommend going all-in on FTX with your life savings. Likely no one involved is really poor and this affected his life strongly. People lost money for their retirement retro vehicle, it's fairly easy to adjust to that.
This not saying it's ok, but its annoyance in effects mostly or should be(I think likely there are may be people, who put too much money, but then again internet financial advisory board all appears and says: HA! Told ya not to do it!).
I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich, and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has been stolen by criminal nincompoops.
My personal values dictate that I be significantly more careful with money when it is someone else's money. Even if you gave me $20 to get you a Burrito, I'll get you the best deal, tip the minimum, and give you your exact change. I'd even give you a few cents more just in case because I don't want to be owing you anything.
So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got, just on the hubris alone.
Sorry, but you can't say that you're "not rich," if you're throwing over half a hundred thousand dollars into cryptocurrency. 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/27/60percent-of-americans-are-s...
I'm sure you're a respectable person, and you might not be wealthy by Valley standards, but you're definitely rich. The median American in the 45–54 age bracket has merely seven thousand dollars more saved for retirement than you had thrown into crypto.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/30/vanguard-how-much-americans-...
That means every tenth person in line at the DMV (a decent cross-section of society) is worth over a million dollars, and if you're in a major metropolitan area, much more.
You should take those headlines with a grain of salt because they grossly misrepresent the studies they are reporting on. Quoting directly from your article:
"The median 401(k) balance is just $35,345."
Most people who have a 401(k) work at more than one company in their career and rarely roll funds over into the new company's 401(k). It's more common to leave it or roll it into an IRA.
All we know is the median 401(k) account balance at Vanguard is $35k. Vanguard doesn't know about these people's other retirement accounts at Fidelity or Schwab or wherever. If their customers hold IRAs at Vanguard, those aren't accounted for. In the case that a person has multiple 401(k) accounts with Vanguard, it wasn't even clear if the account balances are summed together and counted as one account.
tl;dr These reports are always about average and median retirement account balances, which is not at all the same as average and median retirement savings.
I assume retirees prefer greeter jobs because those probably don't require lifting anything heavy, as a stocker or cashier might need to do.
2. Median doesn’t work that well here. They may not live in a median American town. You are probably uber rich in comparison to the median Earthling
I don't want to rub on your wound but you need to take some responsibility as well. You knew crypto was risky. You knew many exchanges have scammed and went under, taking their customer's funds with them. It's arguable that every crypto exchange is shady and it's inevitable that every single one them will fall.
You should also blame the laws because exchanges and most crypto are clearly securities. But our law makers have been slow to respond and have probably been paid off by crypto money.
In fact, the same crypto bros argue that they should NOT be regulated.
When you get mugged you have no choice on what is happening. The actions are being forced physically on you. With FTX We chose to go that way so it somehow feels like we are as much to blame as SBF (and to be honest, we are).
Not literally true - completely innocent people do get victimized - but there’s certainly a reason for the expression.
I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
Banks have steadily become less and less fraudulent over the last century.
Crypto exchanges have also steadily become less fraudulent, but still carry a much larger risk than the financial institutions to which people have become accustomed.
That is what a lot of people have been saying for a very long time now!
I don't mean this in a way to blame the victims of the crypto fraudsters, merely to explain the somewhat exasperated responses by people who feel like they've been trying to warn people who have been ignoring them.
> I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
I mean, why do you think they don't want to be regulated and brag that they aren't? To make you more money?
Especially when prior to FTX's collapse, numerous other crypto exchanges were turning out to be scams or going under, and even back then there was plenty of evidence that crypto was being used and manipulated by nation-states and criminal organizations? And it was practically a meme that crypto was full of shysters and scams?
Comparing putting your money into a too-good-to-be-true crypto hedge fund is nothing like "a bank manager stealing money to pay off his gambling debts." I won't name a culpability breakdown but there is no way you have 0% responsibility here.
US ones are. Shady ass casinos in the Bahamas like what SBF was running aren't though. Exchanges like Coinbase have been operating in the US under heavy US regulations for over a decade, and have never had anything close to a solvency issue. It's absolutely ridiculous that SBF was getting invited to basically write US policy despite FTX not even being a US based exchange.
If I invested it in crypto? I would value it at zero for the rest of eternity.
What is strange about it? Losing money through investment risk is part of the deal when you invest, losing money because the fund manager decides to steal it is not part of the deal.
But there is still a difference between risk and fraud.
Risk would be if joe random tells you he'll "invest" your money in lottery tickets and then give you a 10% return if he wins or nothing if the "investment" goes bad.
Fraud is when he tells you that, but takes your money and buys himself some stuff.
Either way you lost all your money but in the second case you can sue the guy for fraud. In the first case he did as promised and lost the money but you only have yourself to blame for doing a dumb investment.
That's not the whole picture though. If I invest in some risky stock (or even what I thought was not a risky one) and it tanks, sure I feel bad but it's part of the deal so it's ok.
But if I invest in something risky and I lose the money not through investment risk but simply because the fund manager outright stole my money, I'd be very angry.
In the other, you could be left for dead in an alley in Oakland.
That is very crass. Tell that to someone who lost a big chunk of their savings. "Just numbers in a database" indeed.
It’s the next level of risk up from people who buy stocks because the price is going up without checking the fundamentals. If all you do is hang around with other people hyping the same thing, it’s really easy to focus on the “number goes up” part and not want to be the person spoiling the party by asking about value.
Would you say the same if a pension fund ran with your retirement, since it is invested in some stock index, most likely in previous metals, and probably a slice in crypto?
I doubt those who think that in the end victims are partly responsible as there are things they could have done differently, would change their mind.
Remember, the claim isn’t that the traditional finance world is without problems but rather that people who deliberately seek out high-risk investments do share some responsibility when those fail. Someone who trusted Enron’s public audit reports was more comprehensively failed than someone who sought out a company specifically incorporated in the Bahamas to avoid compliance with US regulations!
Who were these hypothetical savers putting their money in a safe place?
Few people should have been unaware of the risks they were taking by investing in crypto.
Certainly not saying they deserve to be defrauded, but I am saying they took obvious risks and then got burned by those risks.
"The very first Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed in 2014". Different reason, similar outcome.
And Bitcoin was down 2/3 from peak when FTX collapsed. Close to losing it all. And enough doomsayers to know any gambler was running that risk.
And countless prior examples in lots of markets showing that speculation in risky assets is very risky!
You often don't know the specifics of why something is risky, so even if a particular outcome was unlikely, that doesn't mean an investment was "savings".
Granted, I haven’t seen any scientific evidence to suggest that a lack of money causes a lack of ability to reason (and thus a lack of responsibility for one’s own actions) but my own anecdotal experience does suggest it
Nothing.
The wealthy stole the commons. They cut down or fenced off the fruit trees, claimed all the common land, poisoned all the natural water sources, and you think it's immoral to steal to survive? Even equivocating it with theft on a grand scale?
Honestly I think your moral compass needs a tune-up, if it ever worked at all. I'm not saying that to be mean - you need to understand this, or you're morally deficient.
We live in a world where scarcity is artificial. That some people need to steal to eat is an indictment on all of us, and blaming the victim is ghastly. Like, did you never even watch Le Mis? People understood this hundreds of years ago. Children understand this.
No circumstance whatsoever justifies such behavior. None.
You heard "point a weapon at a stranger and demand the contents of his pockets".
And, since this seems to be really confusing to a lot of people here for some reason, stealing tens/hundreds of millions of dollars from people is in fact unambiguously worse than mugging someone for their wallet. It's far more violent, and causes far more suffering.
Receipts:
How about from 19th-century literature?
If you have a problem with the way the world works, there is always a non-violent course of action to take to change it. There is no other option. If you think there is another option all you have to do is say so, I’m sure the keepers of law and order and the voting masses on whose behalf they act are equally willing to deal with whatever you choose.
"Criminal behavior" is a construct of human society. Morality is, too, for that matter. I have no problem with someone stealing food to survive. Hopefully they are able to do so without harming anyone else. If someone does get harmed, I won't hold the thief blameless, but I also can't find it in my heart to condemn them, either.
> The consequences of propagating lawlessness are far greater than starving to death.
That's a false dichotomy.
> Unless, of course, you have a self-centered point of view and/or no principles.
That's absolutist, no-true-scotsman, ad-hominem nonsense.
> If you have a problem with the way the world works, there is always a non-violent course of action to take to change it.
Earth's long history would seem to disagree with you, as much as I genuinely do wish you were right about that.
Do you think no one irl ever stole bread to feed their family only to be extremely punished? ...
> No one needs to steal to eat, some people choose to steal rather than earn.
You're wrong. You're a hundred kinds of wrong. That mindset is a deep, deep sickness.
> Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance
If the choice is between stealing and starvation, the moral thing to do is steal. Which is, in fact, the scenario we are talking about.
Not everyone can earn - and in a society where wages have become untethered from productivity for over 50 fucking years, where the social contract is broken and ground into dust, where healthcare and housing are seen as privileges rather than rights, you might start to expect getting pushback on such untethered and inhuman views.
> don’t take your moral philosophy from Disney movies and broadway.
Better than taking it from literal comicbook villains.
Wages have never been tethered to productivity, arbitrage has existed since before there was even a currency. Healthcare and housing has always been and always will be a privilege, your human rights only extend so far as they do not infringe upon someone else’s human rights. Doctors and construction workers cannot be compelled against their will to do work, neither can the collective taxpayer.
My gut feeling here is that this isn't even a moral issue at all, but I've been having trouble articulating that point. You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this.
This one! Our world is pretty backwards! If you can't see that, you must live a privileged, sheltered life.
Do you think a world where medical bills can bankrupt people is not a backwards world? Do you think a world with homeless people is not a backwards world? Do you think a world where we incarcerate people by the millions for smoking a plant is not a backwards world? And these are just a small sampling of things that happen in the US.
If you truly don't believe we live in a backwards world, I don't know what to say. You're just so completely out of touch with the reality we live in that there's no way to have a productive discussion.
Big fat citation needed.
> Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance
That's your opinion and your conception of morality. My moral code isn't so rigid that I can't imagine a world of nuance, a world where things aren't black and white, where things don't fit neatly into little boxes.
There are plenty of people in the world who end up in bad circumstances due to things outside their control. And yes, some of them need to steal to eat. Even if it's just for a little while, so they can work on improving their circumstances. Something that's incredibly hard to do when you're malnourished.
Of course there is - being mugged(or having stuff stolen from you) can ruin your life, not even in any physical sense but psychologically it can be devastating. I've had a bike stolen from my house, I didn't even witness it being stolen or anything, just one morning I woke up and the house was broken into and my bike gone - relatively minor financial inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but for the next 2 years I hated living in that place, I was uncomfortable in my own house and scared of walking around, I honestly felt violated in the sanctum of my own home and couldn't get relaxed around there again. Eventually we moved and in the large portion it was exactly because of that.
So please tell me, even assuming if that person stole my bike to buy bread - how can it possibly have been moral given the impact it had on the life of another person?
It's not the job of an individual to keep their property available in case a desperate person needs to steal it in order to survive.
The implication of what you're saying is that any crime is morally justified as long as the perpetrator is doing it in order to survive, and the victim isn't killed. Which is insane.
That doesn't seem insane to me. I think you've phrased it in a somewhat unfair way. But I don't think doing what you need to do to survive is really a moral issue. Certainly it's best to secure your survival without hurting anyone else. But if the choice is between death and making someone else uncomfortable, I don't think I'd blame someone for choosing life if they have to make someone else uncomfortable or inconvenience them.
Certainly the scales have more trouble balancing when it moves from discomfort/inconvenience toward physical harm, especially permanent physical harm. But also consider that in many cases people do have a choice how they react: a shopkeeper, when confronted with someone stealing bread, can get physically involved and risk their safety for the sake of that bread, or they can let it go and consider it the cost of doing business.
This is why most people recommend that if you get mugged, you don't try to play the hero: you just hand over what the mugger wants, and let them go. Your wallet or phone or laptop isn't worth your life. This doesn't make it ok for the mugger to do what they did, but ultimately what matters is the outcome: do you want to get out of it relatively unscathed, or do you want to risk injury or death? Once you're in that situation, you do get to choose how you react.
Anyhow, that doesn't make it "right" or moral or whatever if the thief ends up hurting the shopkeeper during the theft, but it's hard for me to get too up in arms if the thief has no alternative than stealing food. It's understandable, even if it's a bad outcome.
... You and I both know that your bike wasn't robbed to prevent starvation, making your example completely beside the point. If it had been robbed to prevent the starvation of a human, you ought to feel happy rather than violated - your small sacrifice saved a whole life!
America has more than enough wealth to feed everyone on the planet, but 10 million kids are hungry in the US right now. Someone is stealing that wealth, and it isn't muggers. Try to gain some perspective, despite the daily news telling you to be scared of the poor.
The US even still has tremendous opportunity to build a life and earn money. Stealing undermines one's ability and focus to build such a life and undermines the surrounding community as well.
You clearly think you're a great guy/gal/whatever for thinking that someone should be thrilled to be stolen from and you're oblivious to the nothing-but-more-misery this approach practically generates.
A contrived situation, no doubt (though not mine). But despite HNers claims to the contrary, some people actually do starve to death because they can't earn for a variety of reasons. And, rather than take care of those people, the US vilifies them.
This leads to a society where tech-bubbled freaks get slightly rabid at the notion that it's morally ok to steal to survive - even going so far as to flag such comments.
I laugh, but the tech community keeps putting up these red flags the last few decades, and it's actually worrying. The disconnect from reality is unfathomable. There's people here claiming that stealing bread to save your life is just as bad as stealing 8 billion dollars - that's unhinged on a level that's hard to imagine.
Yes, because they could have just asked and I would have given them food. Literally anyone would I'm sure.
The thief in that case choose the path that inflicts psychological damage, because they were too cowardly to just ask for food. In that case they have literally zero of my sympathy. Thieves are the worst people in the society just after murderers and rapists.
If someone needs to steal something (anything) in order to survive (an actually survival need), hopefully they will be able to do so in a way that doesn't cause a bystander the kind of difficulty you're talking about. Like they could steal the bicycle from a bike shop instead of a person's home.
But ultimately, if it's actually a survival need, I hope if push came to shove, I wouldn't put my psychological well-being (something that, when hurt, can be healed) above someone else's life (something that, when lost, cannot be returned).
Why is it odd? OP said stealing to survive is never immoral, to which I said that of course it is, because theft has a profound impact on the victim, no matter the reason for stealing. People who are victims of theft rarely know why they were stolen from, so they cannot adjust their emotional response as if every thief is stealing to feed their families - and I think acting as if that's a reasonable assumption in any way is well, unreasonable. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
>>But ultimately, if it's actually a survival need, I hope if push came to shove, I wouldn't put my psychological well-being
Sure, and neither would I, but I don't accept that stealing is the moral choice - the person could have literally knocked on my door and asked for food and I would have given them food, and I'm sure majority of people would as well. Again there is a bunch of assumptions there, but I find the whole conversation a bit disingenuous - there is of course actual undeniable theft where the alternative is death in various places around the world, but I refuse to accept that this is the kind of theft most people are talking about here - no one in any modern country is stealing to survive, literally every developed country has programs that will just give you food if you ask - dying from starvation should not be happening anywhere with even a semi functional social system.
Yes, you might decide that breaking your moral code to feed yourself or your family is an acceptable tradeoff, but it's a tradeoff nonetheless. It's a conscious choice. A lot of people in history made a decision to go hungry instead.
Children might see the world in Marxist generics where some ambiguous, but for some reason always "wealthy" people stole all the fruit trees and poisoned the water. Adults usually deal with specifics. Who are all these mysterious people are? Do you think the food just fell from the sky before the industrial age? What do you think happened to the people who stole before the industrial age, hungry or not?
The fact remains that we could feed everyone on the planet... if we chose to. Capitalism just doesn't incentivize us to do so.
You talk about how stealing bread to survive would be "breaking your moral code", but I think it's absurd that we've gotten to this point. How is a society moral if it allows people to starve? I won't say two wrongs make a right, but when society actively allows people to die of hunger, I think those tut-tutting about moral codes need some side-eyes and eye-rolls directed their way.
And we are all culpable to a certain extent, as members of that society. Perhaps those of us who donate our money or time to help those in need are a bit less culpable (along with people who are just scraping by and don't have the money or time to spare). But if we've benefited from that system (as I have), we share some of the blame (as I do). And go further and consider people who actively vote for politicians and policies that remove social safety nets and make it harder for people on the margins to feed themselves. All the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" the US who seem to think that no one deserves any help for anything. It's disgusting.
so, yes, someone who is hungry and stealing bread is the same as someone who is full and stealing bread should get the same punishment.
If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device, and transfer out fiat ASAP.
Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones. Go spend your money at a casino instead.
If that's not true of the stock market, why would that be true of crypto?
Take Apple or Coca Cola for example: They have well established lines of products and lines of business. You know people will keep buying iPhones and MacBooks and AirPods and whatever else Apple makes. You know people will keep buying Coca Cola drinks forever and ever.
The popular blockchains do not create any intrinsic value (Looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum). They are heavy and cumbersome and can't handle planetary scale. Some blockchain solutions promise secure, fee-less transfers (for example IOTA and NANO). In my opinion, those blockchains at least partially implement the true promise of Crypto that, if successful, would be able to replace the existing financial system which is extremely wasteful.
Just think about how much money it costs to implement FIAT: You have to print it, which is very expensive (both notes and coins). You then have to move it around using heavy armored vehicles. You have to secure it in extremely expensive vaults. You then need to keep securing it across the entire vertical: Every business that takes cash has to deal with theft, securing the cash, fake notes, etc. Even credit cards are very expensive to maintain. Cards have to be printed & mailed out all the time. It's all plastic, and it all ends up in landfills. The inks are toxic, as are the metals in the chips. The equipment required to process cards is expensive, breaks and needs to be replaced, is annoying, slow, ridden with fraud and theft and chargebacks and a host of other issues.
I implemented EMV and 3D-Secure for card processing, a few years ago. I also implemented cash processing equipment. It ALL sucks. You have no idea how Crypto is a breath of fresh air compared to those crappy standards and mechanisms that take an insane amount of time and money and bureaucracy to implement and maintain.
A really good blockchain that does secure, fee-less transactions in less than a second and can handle planetary scale, now that is the holy grail! You don't need equipment, you already have a phone. The merchants get their money instantly, and they are done, that's it. They have their money. Done. They need to pay their vendors? They pay them, done! They could even instantly pay their vendors at the moment of sale. Can you imagine how revolutionary that is? how this completely changes the game for commerce?
The entire crypto world has been held back by greedy assholes, tens of thousands of scammers (how many ICOs and rug pulls have screwed countless users?!), governments, government bodies and banks, and unregulated companies that behave irresponsibly with customer funds (for example FTX and BlockFi). Leadership that lacks vision and initiative (Any 1st world country that accepts crypto and leads with it, would make its citizens rich, by definition, on a planetary scale).
-Money laundering becomes impossible to prevent when no entity has control over identity verification of the users.
-All transactions are public, so normal users who won't be trying to lie about their identity lose all financial privacy.
-Undoing transactions due to fraud or simple error becomes extremely cumbersome and ultimately requires re-centralization of authority that crypto supposedly was created to avoid.
But their stock price is (mostly) independent of that. It is indeed true that at least with short-term trading, your gain is someone's loss, and vice versa. There is a difference between cryptocurrency and companies, but there is little difference between trading in cryptocurrency, and trading in traditional company stocks.
What's your opinion of Solana?
There is no company behind crypto currencies that holders get ownership of. There is no product or service to drive profits. There are no dividends, voting power, or anything that gives inherent value to the coins. It's all pure speculation. Just money getting shifted around among the holders - with exchanges taking a cut off the top of each transaction.
In this case though, FTX had their own token FTT that gave people that owned it voting rights in FTX and "staking rewards" aka dividends. It's not worth anything today due to the fraud that SBF perpetrated, but that sure smells a awful lot like a stock to me.
That's a bit of a straw man, as no one claimed they are. "Gambling" is often not a nondeterministic game of chance, either. For example, when I go to a casino and play poker, I'm still gambling, even though there's plenty of determinism and strategy to go along with the elements of chance.
Day traders are gamblers.
Cryptocurrencies will _never_ pay dividends, because they are based purely on speculation. These things are absolutely not the same. Cryptocurrencies only provide gambling.
(Or I did until the SEC said they weren't allowed to do that anymore because they didn't give me enough disclaimer that they might lose my money.)
You're locking up your crypto for this for some period of time, which means you lose liquidity to get gains. During that period of time the coin can crash and you're out of that money.
For stocks, you don't need to lose liquidity to get dividends. For companies generating profit, they don't necessarily need to be parasitic to generate those profits. It's possible to generate profits while also providing value for users.
Take for instance Venmo and the ability to get funds from your wallet into your bank instantly. Venmo is taking risk by doing so, the banks are taking risk to do so. They charge you a fee for this risk. You want your money faster, and they want their risk covered. They're going to eat some amount of fraud by providing this service, but the cost of providing it should cover the fraud cost and offer a small profit. It's mutually beneficial and optional (regular bank transfers are slower, but free).
Lots of SaaS products are similar. They offer a product businesses need, at a lower cost than the businesses would have to pay to build/run it themselves.
Those are profitable things that are just services, like crypto, but businesses also build things that have physical value, like houses, undersea communication cables, etc.
If people stop trading crypto, all value is immediately gone.
really? how can that be true?
In general, the only times a company gets money when you buy shares are if you participate in an IPO, or if an already-public company decides to offer more shares for sale in order to raise some money, and you buy some of those shares. (There are exceptions, but retail investors like you and me usually don't get invited to participate in those deals, though.) The vast majority of shares that trade hands on the markets every day are not owned by the company whose name is next to the ticker symbol.
Companies IPO and sell shares. The company gets paid by people who want to own shares. The company IPOs and sells 1000 shares at $50 each, gaining them $50k which they can then use to buy a new whatever. Then, in a market like NYSE, other people can buy and sell stock. If I think the stock is undervalued I offer to buy 1 from someone at $55. that person gives me 1 stock, I give them $55, netting them $5. The company is not involved in this transaction and does not get anything from that specific transaction.
Now that the price is at $55, the company could decide to sell additional stock, now at $55 instead of $50, but that's a separate event from the transaction that happened previously. So the company does benefit from the stock price being high, but not directly off each transaction.
I've omitted all the details, but I think that's enough to get the gist of it.
HN/VC is NOT the traditional way for companies to raise money.
Buying outside a IPO is called the secondary market. If nobody could buy a share in the secondary market, the stock is almost worthless. Just like your private company with one round of funding and shares. If you can't sell them, they aren't worth much.
You buying the stock raised the price of the stock. Google uses the stock as compensation. The higher the price, the easier they can hire, and the less cash they need to offer to employees while still being attractive.
Network effect, security, are some of the reasons.
And sometimes some people just need the cash, and are willing to sell at a discount.
Because the inherent value includes things we know about such as the assets the company has, but it also includes the speculative future earnings which we can't be sure about.
Yes, and in doing so you've managed to blissfully ignore all the speculation and outright gambling that goes on in the stock market.
I'm not a crypto defender; I think it's mostly useless and a waste of people's time and money. But let's not paint a big rosy picture of the rest of our financial system. That's just not where the truth lies.
Someone who steals food does time in jail.
It's no surprise. After all, these politicians and the owners of such outlets are likely to be a little guilty of ripping people off a few thousand here and there as well...
I think not letting anger factor into it is good, but we also have to make sure the deterrence is there to prevent the inevitable future SBF.
SBF and Elizabeth Holmes deserve their sentences.
Instead, we should see it as lost/ruined human potential. What is worse, violently robbing one bank of $10k, or “peacefully” robbing a massive number of people for billions of dollars?
I sure as hell know what I think, and it’s absolutely not in line with SBF’s sentence. He should rot in Ryker’s with people who have, unfortunately, done less harm but still found their way there.
Many people are in prison for doing less harm and for longer sentences than many white collar criminals.
Scammers deal many times the damage economically than shady car sales man
From your link: "Victims may help decide on the punishment for the person who harm them. They often get answers and an apology. Offenders might receive reduced sentences." -- how about increased sentences because of how the victim feels? No, it's all about going easier on offenders. All the authorities involved are pushing victims to "go easy" on offenders aka bullying, victimizing them once again.
Someone, not a thief, hopefully filled the seat in the master's program Donovan was eligible for.
* That HiddenBrain story was about a VA conviction for felony grand larceny for stealing a bike whose value exceeded the grand larceny threshold ($1000). In that case the victim (an English guy who supported the UK equivalent) emphatically did consent to restorative justice approach and expected a non-custodial conviction could be quickly expunged, but the VA system doesn't work that way. So all his intervention effectively did was spare jail time to the thief, but not all the other consequences.
* Compare to the 2021 Oakland, CA gang-related freeway shooting death of 23mo toddler Jasper Wu [0] in a rolling gunbattle between two rival gangs (one of them using an AR-15) on highway I-880 at 2:07pm in the afternoon, Wu was hit in the head by a stray 7.62mm rifle bullet in the rear of his mother's car. Three accused were charged with murder (one since had charges dropped), but then 4/2023 [1], new incoming DA Pamela Price, in the name of restorative justice, wrote an internal memo of her intention to "bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism"- by not allowing prosecutors to "file or require defendants plead to sentencing enhancements." Not adding the special circumstances charge would drastically reduce any likely sentences, and exclude a life sentence (Price points out that she did add the gang-enhancer, but not the special circumstances charge) [3]. The victim's family were not consulted before Price's decision, and objected. [2] Price sent a series of emails to members of the Asian American community and county supervisors. In one, she claims "certain vocal members of the local Chinese community and media including reporter Dion Lim... misled the public." In another email one week later, Price addresses "Chinese communities" calling many "misinformed" and blamed [them] for "spreading misinformation."
The matter is pretty politically divisive in the East Bay [3]. DA Price refuses to budge on this and there is currently in 2024 a major recall effort against her [4].
These two cases are pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum to each other. They also show how politicized the actions of an elected DA can be, depending on the mood of the electorate that put them in office. They also show that DAs can completely disregard the victim's/family's wishes.
[0]: ABC7News 12/2022: Jasper Wu case timeline: A 13-month investigation into Oakland freeway shooting death of toddler https://abc7news.com/jasper-wu-oakland-freeway-shooting-todd...
[1]: 3/2023 Jasper Wu's family voices concerns over murder suspects' possible shorter sentences https://abc7news.com/jasper-wu-alameda-county-district-attor...
[2]: 4/2023 After meeting with DA Price, Jasper Wu's family is still worried they won't get 'justice' https://abc7news.com/alameda-county-district-attorney-pamela...
[3]: 6/2023 Jasper Wu case: murder suspects appear in court, charges reduced in toddler's slaying https://www.ktvu.com/news/jasper-wu-case-murder-suspects-app...
[4[: Alameda County DA Pamela Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Price
That is only true if you define 'made whole' as giving back each customer the amount of money denominated in USD that they deposited with FTX. That is super convenient for FTX, which has benefited from the spike in BTC value, but not for the customer. To really be made whole, they would need to get back exactly what they deposited. 1 BTC in? 1 BTC out.
It doesn't make SBF less of a criminal but it does make the victims less victimised.
Is that not just victim blaming? This was not an investment gone bad, this was stolen funds. It would be one thing if they lost all their money because BTC value dropped to zero. But SBF stole the money.
If I run about in the road and someone runs me down, I may be the victim of driver, but also my own stupidity.
Suffering the consequences of one's own decisions doesn't automatically infer victim hood by someone else entirely.
They ran about in the road.
Often a victim of a crime could have taken different actions that would have prevented their victimization. That doesn't necessarily make it their fault, or even assign some portion of the blame to them. It's just a fact of circumstance.
A decade or so ago I was mugged by three men while walking home from a bar on a deserted, poorly-lit stretch of street at 2am on a Tuesday morning. It wasn't my fault that it happened, but I could have made other -- better -- choices leading up to that which would have prevented it from happening to me. We can argue whether or not it would have been reasonable to expect me to make those better decisions given my circumstances before getting mugged, but those are still the facts on the ground. I did not need to be walking home; I could have called a car or taken a bus instead. I did not need to be there, at that time, with my judgment, reaction time, and situational awareness impaired. This is about outcomes, not blame.
If I were looking to make some money and had a choice between buying conventional stocks or buying crypto, I'd hopefully consider the risks beforehand. By now I think it's fair to assume that most people who might buy crypto should have heard about a variety of scams, fraud, and outright theft that have occurred in the crypto space. All other things being equal (they're not, but let's say they are), a decision to buy stocks vs. crypto should take into account the expectation that there's a higher risk of losing the money to a scam when buying crypto. Again, that doesn't make it the crypto-buyer's fault when the person/company holding the crypto wallet for them steals it. But it's true that the crypto-buyer could have made different -- better -- decisions up front to avoid the possibility of that outcome.
And the very next reply says these are unregulated schemes. So what does the USG's opinion on BTC have to do with FTX's obligation to return the assets deposited with it, or whether their renumeration constitutes 'making customers whole'?
Given that the USG is the only entity that could legally require these customers be made whole, it has everything to do with it. Depositing US dollars into a FTX account is easy: the government believes in the value of the dollar and will want customers to get back the same number of dollars they put in. A court can and might order FTX's current custodians to do their best to make that happen.
But if a customer didn't give FTX any dollars, but gave them BTC? The USG has no obligation to recognize those Bitcoins as having any particular value, or even any value whatsoever. In fact the government may be incentivized to value BTC deposited at zero, because doing so might free up more dollars to compensate people who deposited dollars, assuming there isn't enough to compensate everyone fully.
Fiduciary amounts are in $. Yes if you deposited 1 BTC expect the equivalent value at the time of your deposit
You might expect to only get the USD equivalent back, but not for one minute does that make you whole. A lot of money was in fact stolen.
It seems like the government is interested in all the benefits of treating it as a security and none of the protections that people deserve
Ignoring bitcoin entirely for a second, I might deposit $1000 in an (unregulated, let's say) investment account. Later that amount -- unrealized, of course -- goes up to $2000. But it turns out it was all a scam and the investment manager ran away with the money. I might think I'm entitled to the full $2000, even though that may have just been a number the fraudster typed into a database, not representing anything real. Or I might argue that making me whole means also compensating me for the lost opportunity cost of keeping the money somewhere else where I could have made, say, 10% in that time. Or I might just recognize that I was duped, there was no investment, my $1000 never actually grew, and that's all I'm entitled to getting back.
Definitely move on, this case had some external closure where most hurts in life don't.
How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years? Would you be giddy if he were being flogged, or hanged? As long as there has been recording, flogging and hangings were common punishments and usually defended as "justice has been done." Incarceration really isn't far from medieval punishments.
I'm by no means suggesting that nothing should be done, and maybe 25 years in prison is a just sentence (that's debatable, but for moving forward let's assume it is), but it still leaves me with a sick feeling. I just can't relate whatsoever with feeling "giddy" over it.
And he's almost guaranteed to serve a smaller portion of that time for "good behavior".
The guy is a massive fraudster who not only cost thousands of people their savings, but - maybe even worse - he did significant damage to crypto finance reputation.
He was an already wealthy entrepreneur who could’ve at any point chosen not to be a massive fraud. Actions have consequences. Good riddance.
I think it's awful to have positive, happy feelings when bad things happen to other people, even when those people deserve it. I'm not saying I'm totally immune to feelings like that, but I try to work on my attitude. These sorts of feelings are a stain on one's soul (for lack of a better word, as I'm not religious).
that's a pretty extreme strawman of my position. Don't you think there's some spectrum between 25 years of prison time and no punishment? And if you don't, then how would you feel about flogging or hanging as I mentioned above? Does it seem odd to you for someone to feel sick about a public hanging in the town square, even if the person is guilty of the crime?
That isn’t the range at hand. SBF got something between what prosecutor and defender asked and much lower than theoretical max.
Max: 110y
Procecutor: 40-50y
Defender: 6.5y
Actual: 25yI think the kind of person who would see this sentence and think "eh, no big deal if that happens to me" would probably still not be fazed if he got a significantly longer sentence.
Said human is responsible for the financial ruin of thousands of people. It's entirely likely that some small portion of those people committed suicide.
White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed as SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions. The maximum sentence was 110 years so he got off pretty lightly here and it's entirely possible he serves less than 25 years for good behavior.
So yeah, I'm excited to see an at least somewhat positive outcome here. A criminal was held accountable for their actions.
Eg, Andy Bernstein got charged $200, scaled down to FAANG engineer salary for insider trading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39838351
Where do you see GP arguing that we should treat petty criminals as badly as we do?
How many hours, days, weeks, months, and years did he steal from the people who bought crypto in FTX? Most of them were workers, using their wages (which means trading their working hours for money) to buy crypto. How many years of their time did he lose?
If there was real justice in the world, they'd take the amount of money he lost, divide it by the average hourly rate of the account holders, convert that to years, and then make him serve each and every single one.
Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be done in this case?
I, too, am dubious that 25 entire years serves justice. On the other hand, many victims' entire life savings wiped out, hard-working people impoverished. How do we deter or redeem, here?
To answer my own question, in an ideal world, SBF would voluntarily work every day to pay everyone back.
I'm conflicted on whether incapacitation should continue only until rehabilitation is achieved, or also until restoration is completed.
Prison is just a really blunt instrument for incapacitation, and sentences are a really blunt way to predict how long it would take to be rehabilitated.
This is pretty interesting. If a person could be anesthetized for the entire sentence and then revived at the end of their period of incapacity, would that be acceptable?
I don’t think they were meaning incapacitation as in rendered unconscious.
What types of rehabilitation activities would you suggest for SBF during incapacitation? Would it include job training for an alternative career since he is unlikely to be allowed a fiduciary role in the future? As I understood it, he had a great talent in video gaming.
I don't know enough about SBF's crime, which is very complex. But for white collar crime in general that isn't wanton indiscriminate violence, imprisonment seems like it is inherently punitive and thus wasteful, unless it's in a place that is highly focused on rehabilitation (education, therapy, etc).
Like having to stay in a special room without other people who might be victimized? That seems more humane than wearing restraints all the time.
Great question, and very hard. I don't really have a concrete answer, but generally speaking in my ideal world justice would focus on restoration to the victims. I concede that we may need some aspect of "punishment" to serve as a deterrent, but I think that punishment should benefit the victims, not the state. For example, stole $10k from somebody? Pay them back $25k. There should be no victimless crimes IMHO, and if "society" is the "victim" we should approach that one very skeptically and there should be very clear causation. For example, a dad who takes a few hits on a cannabis joint before bed is not "harming society" even though that has been the justification for draconian drug laws for decades.
I also fully concede that real life is going to be a lot messier and more nuanced than what I've captured, and that such a system would require a large mindshift from society in addition to just systemic reform. It may take a while to get there.
Disclaimer: If I actually had any ability to influence this I would want to spend a lot more time stuyding it and examining current research/science, and it's quite possible my opinion would adjust based on evidence.
At worst, he works for the rest of his life with his wages heavily garnished. If he holds investments, he'd be required to liquidate and surrender some percentage of them periodically.
Of course, someone in his position could just live off his parents and not play ball. So you'd need a contingency for that. Maybe prison still does have a place, but only for people who refuse to even try to make amends for what they did?
And yet, the damage is done. Feels of anger and vengeance are withdrawals from your balance of available happiness and they don’t actually affect the end result. The money’s gone. Mourn it, accept it, and move on.
I’d totally forgive anyone for wishing bad things on him if he destroyed their investment. It’s better to forgive, but sometimes that’s asking a bit much.
Hilariously with crypto, that's not necessarily true, for better or worse. The change in valuation of underlying crypto assets means that customers can sometimes be made "whole" - meaning they get back the value in USD they put in, but not including inflation and interest, so they're still poorer than they would be, but at least not out the whole amount. It's still not resolved, but it's possible creditors in Mt Gox will be made whole. 1 BTC was worth $760 when Mt Gox went down. Today 1 BTC is around $70k, meaning they have almost $10 billion in BTC with which to pay back creditors.
I'm actually surprised the sentence is this low. This is Bernie Madoff territory.
This doesn't get you your money back. It doesn't even necessarily make you feel better so what's the point? This gets into the philosophy of a criminal justice system.
The noble idea behind the criminal justice system is to be restorative. The offender is to be reformed so they don't repeat their crimes and can become productive members of society. This is why we push for things like education in prison, access to mental health treatment and so on. It's for our collective good. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system in the US is predominantly retributive. We punish to make ourselves feel better. There is a ton of evidence of this and it lays bare other societal issues (eg racial disparity in sentencing).
One big argument is whether heavy sentences prevent others from committing crimes. This has been used to justify, for example, three strikes laws and 10+ year sentences for mere drug possession at the height of the war on drugs. None of this works. Such crimes are the result of over-policing, up-charging by prosecutors and material conditions.
But where it actually works is with rich people. Why? Because you fine a company or a rich person and that becomes the cost of doing business. It's factored in. But depriving the wealthy of their liberty is something the wealthy want to desperately avoid.
Case in point: the Sackler family, who are hugely responsible for the opiod epidemic by knowingly lying about the addictiveness of Oxycontin. If I had my way, the Sacklers would have every asset they own seized and they would all spend the rest of their lives in a prison cell.
Put SBF's sentence in context: this Californian man was sentenced to 10 years for carjacking and robbing a gas station with a BB gun [1]. That's roughly half of SBF's sentence. Who do you think has done more societal harm?
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/los-angeles-man-sentenc...
However you feel about it is the right way to feel about it. Everyone copes with things differently. Regardless, it would appear some type of justice has been done in this case.
SBF's crime is a lot smaller in comparison.
wrt outcome, it seems physical crimes are almost inconsequential in monetary damage compared to "white collar" crimes
I can't help but think of that clint eastwood line:
"It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."
I think physical damage, and also the psychological damage of violence has a permanence compared to money and property "damage"...
Not to make light of anything, but you can always get more stuff. (and over my lifetime I've noticed stuff has been easier to get)
I think there are millions of poor people in the world who would very much disagree with that statement. But I'd hope they'd still agree that their stuff isn't worth their lives.
How about if you chose going to 2) knowing very well that muggings are a real possibility and you should probably not go there?
The harm you received was mostly financial, so the healthy way to recover is also mostly financial.
Some are worse than others, and we have laws, and punishments, etc.
But I believe there is no morality to seeking pain in others; even if you believe they deserve it. It will not raise you up, so to speak.
The same reason why the bigger the company, the more the public lets them get away with.
it might not be "fair", but forgiveness is healthier for you
Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move on? I'm not sure.