Bernie Madoff has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#201

Post by daniel-cussen » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

etripe wrote: post #181

ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

> You can't put Exxon in jail. If a corporation is a legal person with inalienable rights (as the SCOTUS seems to have decided on), but is intangible and immortal at the same time, what can you do? Any of the below: * freezing assets (=~ reclamation) * seizing accounts (=~ civil forfeiture) * suspend a business license (=~ locking them up) * introduce a revenue cap (=~ prison labour) * remove lobbyists (=~ losing vot…

Order the company to operate out of a prison complex, under guard surveillance, with monitored phone calls, the works. Every employee must go there for his entire shift, no telecommuting.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#202

Post by jcbrand » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

hudon wrote: post #84

tim333 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If society or the powers that be see fit to generate infinite Bitcoin But not real ones. It's like saying you can make infinite Mona Lisas with a colour photocopier.

No. Real ones. The supply cap is just decided by a coded algorithm. That algorithm can change and the social consensus can and will accept that change. Democracies moved off of the gold standard didn’t they?

It won't be the real one, it will be a fork.

Not everyone will accept such a change, so the original 21 million version of the network will still exist and will by many be considered the real bitcoin.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#203

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #33

Madoff made his ponzi scheme last 17 years with a limited network. Imagine how long a ponzi scheme accessible by the whole world could last. Possibly forever (or at least longer than my lifetime). I am thinking about Bitcoin here.

lol it's called fiat currency.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#204

Post by jcbrand » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #87

tim333 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If society or the powers that be see fit to generate infinite Bitcoin But not real ones. It's like saying you can make infinite Mona Lisas with a colour photocopier.

Who decides what is a "real" bitcoin? This is the point parent commenter is making. The only difference between Bitcoin OG and Bitcoin Cash or Segwit or any of the others is some kind of vague consensus that everyone agrees to pretend one magic bean is more special and valuable than the other, less-special magic bean with the same name.

The real Bitcoin will be the one that the market prefers.

Why is Gold coins more valuable than copper coins?

Why is the original Bitcoin more valuable than any of its forks?

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#205

Post by paulpauper » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

>There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

not true. people did go to jail for their role in the 2008 banking crisis

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#206

Post by dcolkitt » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:04 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

> the whole subprime disaster... no one went to prison and people really should've

This is a pretty common sentiment, but nobody can really articulate specifically who should go to prison and what crime they committed.

Being stupid, arrogant, reckless and willfully ignorant with money is not illegal. Just because hundreds of billions was lost does not mean that there's any criminal act. Major companies, and even financial institutions, fail all the time without there being any sort of crime.

It's easy to fall into the trap of looking for mustache-twirling villains when you see a broken system. More likely the real culprit are misaligned incentives and dysfunctional institutions. If you actually dig into the details of the subprime crisis, the latter story is the much more plausible one.

If you disagree, you have to specify who you think were the criminal masterminds behind the crisis. And more important, you have to show that you can prove criminal action and intent beyond a reasonable doubt. (And don't forget any would-be defendants will have access to the best legal defense teams on the planet.) I've never heard anyone actually present this case instead of just giving vague platitudes about how "the bankers should go to jail".

The only real candidate for viable criminal prosecution are the mortgagees themselves. Many fraudulently misrepresented their income, assets or employment on their applications. And it would probably be hard for them to claim that they weren't aware. (In contrast the mortgage brokers could always claim they didn't bother verifying income because they genuinely trusted the applicants. That's obviously BS, but criminal liability is held to a much higher standard.)

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#207

Post by paulpauper » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

yummypaint wrote: post #62

soneca wrote: post #33

Madoff made his ponzi scheme last 17 years with a limited network. Imagine how long a ponzi scheme accessible by the whole world could last. Possibly forever (or at least longer than my lifetime). I am thinking about Bitcoin here.

The nature of ponzi schemes necessitate exponential growth, even if the doubling time can be made long, perhaps on the scale of years. This places a short bound on how long they can last. The US has about 1/20th of the worlds population, so that's less than 5 doubling periods before you run out of new marks. Maybe an additional decade or two at best?

compounded interest has exponential growth and is as risk free of an investment as one can find.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#208

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #97

tim333 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin isn't really a ponzi scheme though, just an asset that gets bid up. In a ponzi you pay in x and are promised x+50% or some such and the scheme fails when there isn't money to pay out x+50%. With bitcoin you buy for price x and sell for price y which may be higher or lower. Different thing. It can't fail, just go up or down in price.

Eh, I'm comfortable calling Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme because all profits extracted by early investors come from later investors. That's, like, a very specific and applicable definition.

[deleted]

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#209

Post by bedhead » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #141

cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

This is one reason why CEO pay has skyrocketed: hazard pay. Something goes wrong, even if the CEO had no idea about it, and who gets vilified and maybe even prosecuted? The CEO. Just saying...there are trade offs for everything.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#210

Post by bsanr2 » Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #122

I was always fascinated by how violently people felt toward Madoff. Madoff reminds me of a character in a Woody Allen movie. Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors. In Dosteovsky, the perpetrator feels real guilt, confesses, and finds salvation in God. In Woody Allen, the perpetrator gets over his guilt and lives happily ever after, avoiding punishment. In Madoff's case, the perpetrator dies in prison and his famil…

I think the general understanding is that the visceral animosity has to do with the nature of the betrayal. His fund was shopped around largely to other wealthy people in his community; they thought they were making money hand-over-fist (particularly for all of the charities and whatnot they could have just been funding directly), with an "in" that people outside couldn't access. Finding out that Madoff had actually lost all of their money wasn't just a hit to their pocketbooks: it struck at the solidarity of their community, at their sense of self and goodness, at their egos. In short, it stripped them of everything that being part of the fund was supposed to magnify. It's not just embarrassing, it's devastating; all of your psychic and material fallbacks have been wiped in one fell swoop. When something like that happens, you don't want to admit that you were taken for a fool; you need a scapegoat, and you need him to be a demon.