Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It may take a very long time to find an impartial jury if the Trump impeachment goes to trial.
Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
391–400 of 633 posts
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
"because it creates a much easier environment for an arbitrary court system to throw people in jail who are innocent and removes other protections like jury nullification. You could look at Japan, which tried to solve its problem of innocent people going to jail by introducing a lay-judge system (kind of like jurors who can ask questions during the trial), for a real-life example of some of the problems you might hav…
You're right the US has a huge incarceration rate, but jury trials have nothing to do with this, since in the US trials functionally do not exist. I don't remember the numbers exactly (and they are changing and they differ by state/federal) but something like 1-5% of people thrown in jail actually go to trial.
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
You lol. I took that as incredulity. Is there such thing as a perfectly competitive market irl? There's a canonical example used by the Mises Institute -- water after a hurricane. I watch a lecture half a decade ago. I don't have perfect information. Far from it. It was convincing. A stripped down model which made gouging look ridiculous. I think it's debatable.
>Is there such thing as a perfectly competitive market irl? Wikipedia has the requirements for a perfectly competitive market, if you look at them you'll see that there certainly can't be many markets like that. I'd say the closest thing you're liable to run into on a day to day basis is gasoline. There's a lot of stations, you probably drive past a few everyday so you've got good price information, you know what the…
Mises is a big clue. I like to hear both sides. I've got some Marx to learn before anything else (econ). Maybe with a focus on the Frankfurt School.
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but the solution is not to wish that people like Shkreli don't raise prices on their drugs. Instead, we need to reform the US healthcare system to stop problems like this. Many drugs of similar kind, as Shkreli would point out, have a similar price. The difference is that those drugs are owned by faceless pharmaceutical companies with PR teams. Shkreli was an obnoxious person who was doing an obnoxious thing an…
Why did you think his defense was a good one against fraud? He lied to people who gave him their money. That is what fraud is. The outcome does not matter.
That wouldn't be fraud though, because, among other things, you aren't damaged by it. You might be damaged by it if you sent me your money, and I actually used it to buy myself sugar cookies, but you didn't.
What I'm trying to get at is "harm" or "damage" is typically a component of a fraud case. In this case, the defense of "My investors didn't lose money, but actually made back multiples of their initial investment" seems very strong to me.
Shkreli had a company which failed and lost investors money. Rather than break the bad news, he lied to them, started another company, made more money, and paid back his investors. I may have the details wrong, but from this article, that was my main takeaway.
The point about damage goes to intent. Did Shkreli lie to people to take their money and make himself rich? Or did he lie to people to get a working productive business and pay off his investors? The fact that he did the latter implies his intent was the latter.
If I were an investor, I'd be upset that the initial investment failed. I'd be litigious if I realized he had lied to me. If he lied to me and returned my money with profit, I'd just stop doing business with him in the future.
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People shouldn't be able to be convicted because they're assholes (even if they are). He wasn't convicted because he was an asshole. He was convicted because he broke the law. I think the fact that he was acquitted on 2 of the 5 counts is evidence that the jury made a determination based on facts, rather than their feeling towards him. That being said, in a trial in the US, the judge applies the law, and the jury d…
>He wasn't convicted because he was an asshole. He was convicted because he broke the law. Well, yes and no. They only bothered looking for his other crimes and prosecuting his because he became unpopular. That's disturbing. What if I'm the victim of financial crimes by someone who didn't piss of Congress and the public? Where's my justice?
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patrick Rice gets it free for life after a Reddit AMA. Google not work for you, or were you trying to stonewall the discussion with Rush Limbaugh tactics? http://nypost.com/2016/02/02/i-was-a-victim-of-the-pharma-ja...
There's that one, very public, case. That happened after the entire ordeal blew up, and happened after shkreli had said that people got it for free if they needed it It's not nothing, but it's not exactly impressive either
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
>He wasn't convicted because he was an asshole. He was convicted because he broke the law. Well, yes and no. They only bothered looking for his other crimes and prosecuting his because he became unpopular. That's disturbing. What if I'm the victim of financial crimes by someone who didn't piss of Congress and the public? Where's my justice?
The judicial system mostly prosecutes people who have not managed to piss off Congress and the public.
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
>When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money. 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…
I disagree. I think it will be a major factor at sentencing. First the fact that he did give them their money (with a significant return on it) back to the people well before the government got involved (meaning it wasn't a PR show) to me means there was never any intent for them to actually lose money. I think the judge will see it the same way. Because if that weren't true, he would never have repatriated the money…
In this case, because of the amount involved, the guidelines will call for a substantial prison sentence (well over 5 years). There is actually a loss table (again, we're talking about the "intended loss") that determines a certain number of points for the loss [1] (plus 7 points for the "base offense level"), and that number of points is then used with the sentencing table [2] to determine the sentence. The judge is of course free to depart up or down from the guideline sentence, but the sentencing range determined by those tables will be the starting point. The odds that he will receive no prison time at all after having gone to trial and lost are effectively zero. The judge will likely cut him some kind of break because nobody actually lost anything - his lawyers will argue that he showed remorse after the fact by eventually making his victims whole - but that will have a minor effect at best. My best guess, having watched many of these things play out, is 4-6 years.
[1] https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines-manual/2016-...
[2] https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines-manual/2016-...
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#399Conspiracy charges are always weak, if you can afford a constitutional law to argue on expression grounds.
Has he expressed interest in appealing?
Re: Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure maybe you can explain what you mean by the phrase: "pricing something correctly"
What someone will pay & what someone will sell @. Normal basic econ. Edit: (I can't seem to reply) I think non-gov monopolies are ok. You'd make a ton of money in your example, & then be able to create more drugs. Generally, I think it's good for talented people to get resources. Superior resource allocation.