I don’t think there is any crime whatsoever that imprisoning someone for more than ten years would be reasonable or productive. If jailing someone for a decade doesn’t do it, nothing will. It seems purely vindictive at some point. The justice system should not be vindictive.
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
331–340 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.
Hopefully no-one bet their life on unregulated extremely risky investments.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#333SBF is 32 years old - 25 years isn't a death sentence for him Parole is available after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't serve 100% There's still a chance for him to get something out of his life post jail
It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole for federal sentences.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#334SBF is 32 years old - 25 years isn't a death sentence for him Parole is available after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't serve 100% There's still a chance for him to get something out of his life post jail
It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole for federal sentences.
From the article:
> There is no possibility of parole in federal criminal cases, but Bankman-Fried can still shave time off his 25-year sentence with good behavior.
> "SBF may serve as little as 12.5 years, if he gets all of the jailhouse credit available to him," Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN.
> Federal prisoners generally can earn up to 54 days of time credit a year for good behavior, which could result in an approximately 15% reduction.
> Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates can reduce their sentence by as much as 50% under prison reform legislation known as the First Step Act.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole for federal sentences.
There is, however, pardons. He'll probably need to wait about 2-4 terms, but eventually the bribery ... uh ... mercy will go through.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#336To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…
> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. The value of a single human life is not infinite. In engineering and public policy, a value like $10 million / life is typically used to make trade-offs. SBF stole funds far in excess of that. Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably people wind up dying early from things like stress,…
It is impossible, I think, to come up with a "ranking" of crimes that everyone can agree on. And because that's impossible, anyone can always point to a sentence of someone else who received too little or too much in comparison.
I understand the desire to scale sentences by impact. But, I personally think it would be reasonable to give SBF the same exact sentence even if he had defrauded people out of twice as much or half as much money.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#337Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#338To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.
I thought the “lost” money was simply due to poor accounting and actually found. > Kaplan said he had found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion. https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent... Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their money. It’s also que…
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#340An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done. As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we could be Caroline…
FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every paragraph, but his description of SBF was: a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his elders), his naive utilitarianism without any deontological/virtue…
Which is where it’s bullshit arising out of the incentives of access journalism.
The Heinlen quote is more meaningful: you won’t be Sam. (If you’re in the set of people who could be Sam, the conversation is different.) But you might fall into his orbit.