Live data from Hacker News

Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

hindenburgresearch.com

201–210 of 230 posts

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You own a company. 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 3. Your company is therefore valuable, making you super wealthy. Which part of the above is unethical?

You don't become super wealthy without doing something shady or being a greedy asshole. It's just not possible to beat out the competition and accumulate that much wealth without taking morally questionable shortcuts. Here's a short list of things that super rich people do: - screwing someone over - treating people like robots - lying/deception - taking advantage of people in poorer countries - taking advantage of ta…

You saying that this is required is not proof that it is so.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#202
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You own a company. 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 3. Your company is therefore valuable, making you super wealthy. Which part of the above is unethical?

This is very reductive and #2 is immediately a large leap.

A large leap in what way? That companies have a hard time producing useful things, or that those useful things are valuable?

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You own a company. 2. Your company produces something hugely useful / beneficial for society; in other words, it produces something hugely valuable. 3. Your company is therefore valuable, making you super wealthy. Which part of the above is unethical?

You are addressing a seperate claim to the one made. The actual claim is that there are no ethical super-wealthy people, not that such a thing is a logical impossibility.

I guess my issue is that the claim was not demonstrated in any way whatsoever besides "because I say so", so I assumed that the poster must think that it is a logical impossibility – otherwise how could they be so certain?

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are addressing a seperate claim to the one made. The actual claim is that there are no ethical super-wealthy people, not that such a thing is a logical impossibility.

I guess my issue is that the claim was not demonstrated in any way whatsoever besides "because I say so", so I assumed that the poster must think that it is a logical impossibility – otherwise how could they be so certain?

A thing can have a probability of zero, while being logically possible.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 is actually two steps: 3a. Your company is therefore valuable. 3b. Your company being valuable makes you super wealthy. 3b is unethical.

3b is not a new step, that's just a repetition of step 1. Are you saying you believe ownership of a company is unethical? It seems to be that statement needs to be justified with a little bit more than "because I say so".

Well, there's plenty of ways to reduce one's wealth. Taxes, charitable donations (MacKenzie Scott), more ownership of the company by employees, and so on. But no, I don't think it is ethical for people to be billionaires.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my issue is that the claim was not demonstrated in any way whatsoever besides "because I say so", so I assumed that the poster must think that it is a logical impossibility – otherwise how could they be so certain?

A thing can have a probability of zero, while being logically possible.

I'm not seeing any probabilistic models either.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3b is not a new step, that's just a repetition of step 1. Are you saying you believe ownership of a company is unethical? It seems to be that statement needs to be justified with a little bit more than "because I say so".

Well, there's plenty of ways to reduce one's wealth. Taxes, charitable donations (MacKenzie Scott), more ownership of the company by employees, and so on. But no, I don't think it is ethical for people to be billionaires.

What exactly are you objecting to when it comes to billionaires, though? The nominal wealth? The relative wealth? Whichever metric, where is the point where it goes into "immoral" territory and what is the justification for choosing that point over another?

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same government is still in power. It is the Labor government in Queensland, for anybody that is wondering.

Yes. Our biggest problem in Queensland is that Labor aren't very good, but the opposition (LNP) is much worse and are basically just an absolute joke - they were a complete disaster last time they were in power (and voted out in a huge wipeout the very next election), have a lot of far-right crazies, are incompetent and extremely ideological. Minor parties like the Greens are getting more traction because of it, and…

That LNP government was absolutely amazing. They managed to go from absolute majority to losing an election in a single election cycle. Campbell Newman (the premier at the time) managed to pretty much piss off every voting bloc in the state. All done in three years. Cannot remember any other politician that was able to do that.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#209
i might be the only one to think this, but the relationship between Adani and the current administration (mainly the PM) has been an open secret. iirc the book "billionaire raj" (2018) also talks about this.

besides the shady ways of raising initial capital, the main crux of the issue with the rise of both Ambani and Adani empires rely on getting favours from local administration. Adani was able to catapult to a big position in the country because of winning contracts from the state administration when the current PM was the CM of the state.

for now, this remains the reality for those who want to set up conglomerates in the country, especially involving infrastructure and commodities.

Re: Evidence that Adani Group has engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's plenty of ways to reduce one's wealth. Taxes, charitable donations (MacKenzie Scott), more ownership of the company by employees, and so on. But no, I don't think it is ethical for people to be billionaires.

What exactly are you objecting to when it comes to billionaires, though? The nominal wealth? The relative wealth? Whichever metric, where is the point where it goes into "immoral" territory and what is the justification for choosing that point over another?

I'm objecting to the idea, ethically, that a single person can own so much money. 1 billion is far beyond what anyone needs to have a comfortable life.

Whatever the line is, 1 billion is clearly on the other side of it. I'm not interested in sorites paradox-ing the question beyond that.

Post reply on HN