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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#931

Post by nemo44x »

hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

> Do we really, as a society, need revenge?

Yes - a lot of victims of crimes want some token of revenge. We should honor the victim's wishes within a reasonable way. Revenge brings comfort and closure to many people - it's an entirely natural emotion. People very likely ended their own lives and he ruined the lives of many people due to his rampant fraud. Think about those people first.

Secondly, punishment is a big part of why prison exists. It should, hopefully, dissuade a decent amount of people from committing crimes. It keeps "honest people honest" to some degree.

> Because that's what this is if he gets more than 10 years in prison.

I guess I sort of agree here but not entirely. We grant a lot of trust in elites that have access to these financial apparatus and it can be very difficult to detect fraudulent actions. For this reason, fraud and financial crime at this level should be punished harshly. The most effective way of doing this is to remove an individuals freedom.

I'd agree prisons could be more humane and modernized. Caging people all day isn't the best, especially if they will remain for many years. Some initial harsh punishment (hard labor, isolation for a couple years) followed up by easier rehab incarceration and eventual parole (15 years from now) would suit this particular case IMO.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#932

Post by andrepd »

FFP999 wrote: post #393

> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…

>The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street.

Getting offtopic, but isn't this more an indictment of America's insane car-centric culture? It's ridiculous that you see a major thoroughfare going through a heavily populated zone which is extremely unsafe to cross yet still laugh at students which "almost get hit by cars".

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#933

Post by nemo44x »

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #889
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

People go to prison for three-ish reasons: To reform the criminal, to deter crime, and to offer restitution in the form of punishment to the victims of the crime, and arguably to keep society safe. I feel bad that Sam is going to go away for life, and ideally we'd live in a society where we don't need prison to reform people, but Sam is a case where there is considerable deterrent effect and well as a public protecti…

I assume some people killed themselves because of the financial ruin his fraud created. I have to imagine a lot of people's lives fell apart, relationships were destroyed, families broken up. Because of the choices this man made to enrich himself.

Victims of crime deserve revenge in some part and the state is the mechanism to deliver that revenge. We should always remember the victims of crimes first.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#935

Post by deltarholamda »

siskiyou wrote: post #324

Reminds me of working for MCI-Worldcom. When you think you’re working for crooks, you probably are. Run away.

Worldcom had a business model that was ahead of its time. Show growth, raise stock price, use stock to buy companies, grow, rinse and repeat.

It worked great until regulators disallowed the Sprint purchase because it would have put too much of the long-distance market in one company. (And as we all know, we stress a lot about choosing our long-distance carrier these days.)

Then all of the somewhat shady side-deals became concerning, as WCOM was no longer growing like it was. Then people started looking more closely at the financials. Then it all went kerflooey.

It was ahead of its time because it's not that different from tech companies today, only replace business growth with user growth. Profits? Ha ha ha, don't be silly.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#936

Post by stronglikedan »

hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

> Wouldn't a lifetime ban on all white-collar work suffice? And being forced to pay anything he makes over a certain threshold to his victims?

The administration fees to monitor and enforce all that wouldn't be cheaper for the state.

> what's the point of putting him in prison.

To keep him from scamming more people, since zebras don't change their stripes. Especially desperate ones that would be prevented from working white-collar jobs and forced to pay restitution from what they make at other legitimate jobs. And as others have already said, a deterrent.

> Do we really, as a society, need revenge?

No, but his victims do.

> more humane for him

Oh, poor baby he is.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#937

Post by kelthan »

meowface wrote: post #731
bmitc wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defense really had no option. Several of Bankman-Fried's previous defense teams quit on him due to his behavior. Even in this trial, during a session with just the judge, the defense made an objection to a question, the judge sustained it, but Bankman-Fried answered anyways. His own defense team asked him where had he been this entire trial because the objection was sustained, you didn't have to answer that. Bank…

An odd question, but: why is he like this? Even from the start, before the criminal charges, his press tour was so bizarre. Is he just a delusional narcissist who thinks he can talk his way out of anything no matter what? I feel like even very, very long into his prison sentence he's still going to try to talk your head off insisting it was all a big misunderstanding. And he's going to be denied parole because he's g…

He displays many of the tendencies of a narcissist or sociopath: never wrong, what benefits me is what matters, I'm the smartest one in the room, willing to flout societal norms, frequently lying or shading the truth to benefit themselves. All of this was testified to in court by the people who worked with him.

To be fair, he was clearly quite smart. But...not as smart as he thought he was.

I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so I'm not making a diagnosis, just offering the possibility that that may be what is at the root of the situation.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#938

Post by solomonb »

kawhah wrote: post #890
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

Out of interest did you make the same arguments about Martin Shkreli (arrogant and unlikable child of immigrants who did a much smaller scale scam similar to SBFs but where everyone was eventually repaid in full) and about Andrew Auernheimer (annoying and racist child of a working class single mother who performed a fairly successful hack without any personal gain) and about Brian Salcedo (working class, non-college-…

Or any of the countless lower income offenders who end up with years of jail time for crimes of desperation?

If were going to make a radical policy change in sentencing then it has to be done for everyone all at once.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#940

Post by qingcharles »

hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

Does prison even do what society thinks it does?

It definitely does not rehabilitate as rehabilitation is almost unheard of in most jails or prisons.

Prison is only scary for criminals the first time they enter. Once you've been through the system going to prison a second time is a walk in the park. When I got arrested and sent to prison last year for retweeting a government tweet I walked back in the jail like I ran the place. I knew all the staff, I had my friends there. Even one of the nurses at intake pulled me aside like I was a celebrity and congratulated me for my social justice work. I felt like a boss. Any deterrence factor had long since worn off. And I've only been locked up twice. The other guys around me had been inside dozens of times. One guy had been locked up 70 times.

And we talk about the cost of locking people up, let's say an average of $50K/year in prison costs. People also forget to factor in all the court costs, for the judges, prosecutors, staff etc, probably runs to another $100K+ for a trial. THEN, when someone is locked up they are not generating any income tax or paying any sales taxes. They are not buying any goods or services with their money. There is a huge negative loss there from their lost income and spending to the economy.

Then multiply it by the two or three million who are locked up or on house arrest.

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