341–350 of 633 posts
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>I quite like Martin. I talked to him a few time on YouTube, whilst he was live streaming. He's a sociopath, of course you liked him. That's what those kind of people do. Build confidence and exploit people.
Nice armchair psychology. Do you have more?
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There was a joke floating around somewhere (Matt Levine I think?) that one strategy to avoid a jury trial proceeding was to become so publicly infamous that it would be impossible to select an unbiased jury. Clearly didn't work out for Shkreli in this case.
Nah that's stupid. It might delay your trial but do you really think they would just say "oh ok we won't bother"? Of course not - they'd just go ahead with the least biased jury they could find.
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The YouTube video of him doing an Ebay Analysis [1] was very interesting I thought, both from a technical point of view and another look at his character. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSf5YhYQbw
Watching Excel power users is really fascinating.
There is definitely something mesmerizing though about watching someone conjure complex data onto a screen seemingly by magic and a few key strokes though. Although really it is just memorizing a ton of hot keys and a bunch of buried menu shortcuts.
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Well, that's true, but the article seems to suggest that his brash persona/public conduct made it hard for him to win the case.
There was a joke floating around somewhere (Matt Levine I think?) that one strategy to avoid a jury trial proceeding was to become so publicly infamous that it would be impossible to select an unbiased jury. Clearly didn't work out for Shkreli in this case.
There seems to be a misconception regarding what Shkreli was found guilty of. The legal case here has very little to do with the pharmaceutical pricing controversy - it is a separate case based on a separate hedge fund that he managed. The gist of it is that he took people's money to start a hedge fund, lied to investors that the fund was doing fine when the hedge fund went belly up, but ended up returning everyone's…
That will be a footnote at sentencing. Federal sentencing is generally based on intended or actual loss, whichever is greater. Further, the judge is allowed to take into account intended losses from his entire course of conduct, not just the intended losses from the specific counts on which he was found guilty.
In other words, the fact that his investors lost no actual money will have little bearing on his sentence. I don't know what the actual amount he took in was, but he will be sentenced for a multimillion dollar fraud scheme, and because he went to trial and lost, he'll get nowhere near the minimum. The government likes to punish people for making them expend the time and effort of a trial (in 2012, 97% of federal cases ended with a guilty plea instead of a trial [1]). He's probably looking at 5 years at best.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443589304577637...
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It's a check/balance against state power, i.e. the judicial system. Many countries have used this method for centuries. It's not ridiculous because the idea is that (the diverse selection of) your peers are equal to you in most ways, so are able to fairly judge you. A judge still has a lot of power and usually ultimately the decision goes to them as far as sentencing etc.
Right. But thing is, they are not actually equal on specialised matters? I understand that it works when you're dealing with things like murder. That can be relatively clear. But how about hacking? Securities fraud? Money laundering? Tax fraud? These are all highly specialised issues that the average person knows nothing about. No average person, unless they have an interest in it, will be able to make a good call on…
Also, none of these subjects are so difficult and complicated ordinary people cannot understand them. I've never heard of a trial requiring any real deep knowledge, like requiring jurors to have a serious understanding algebraic geometry or quantum mechanics or phenomenology. Hacking can be explained to ordinary people. People are not dumb. People do their own taxes and understand taxes. Trained professionals are not elite superheroes who are the only ones who can understand the world well enough to understand the difference between right and wrong. Untrained people can't do a professional's job, but they can definitely (with some help and background) tell when a professional has committed a crime. This case is easily understandable. I'm not a securities expert but I can make a fine assessment here just from reading an article, even without hours and hours of doing nothing but learning about the specific case and law (which is what jurors get); we all know what fraud is.
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> Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds and the pharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. Shkreli told investors he graduated from Columbia University, that his hedge fund was large and profitable, and that he had hired an auditor, they said. These were all lies, according to prosecutors. yeah seems like a great dude...
Interestingly, his fraud seems to fall into two categories. Lying about his fund's bonafides and status on one side, and working hard to make sure those same investors got what they were expecting by founding a company, making it successful and paying them out from the profits. It sounds like he definitely lied to investors, but he apparently didn't intend to steal their money, and took pains to make sure he did not…
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>He's not human garbage. Yeah, but he is. Spare me the faux "logically objective" pose. There is a reason he's known as the "most hated man in America". His actions have earned him this reputation.
>"Spare me the logic" Yup, this is hackernews alright.
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Shkreli was blunt and open about a sleazy thing that many others are cagey about. That doesn't make him better than them, just more visible.
It exposes it. Not quite as monumental, but a Snowden moment. Remember, congress did squat about the price gouging, because that's what they get paid to do.
All pharma companies are supervillians, and they all corner supplies and jack prices, but they do it more quietly and usually a little slower. Shkreli just went to the endgame faster, and had a villain media portrait. But he is not any different and he definitely did not induce a Snowden moment. I wish he had.
I'd like someone to do a reading of Martin Shkreli as "satirist of neoliberalism", and suggest that the reason so many people hate him so much is that he's a scapegoat for our collective feelings of guilt. Can anyone offer a valid critique of his raising the price of Daraprim, within the frame of neoliberalism , that doesn't just reduce to "that guy's a real jerk!"?
> Neoliberal theory argues that a free market will allow efficiency, economic growth, income distribution, and technological progress to occur. Any state intervention to encourage these phenomena will worsen economic performance.
Another is that neoliberalism is the relitigation of the New Deal.
I like the second more operational definition since it doesn't ignore history.