981–990 of 1001 posts
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True. But americans love to waste their tax money and put harmless (in a physical violence sense) people like him behind bars instead of doing something useful for society. In 10 years he'll be free and start the next scam with the couple of millions he's probably hiding somewhere.
That's quite a definition of harmless you have there.
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Prison is also a deterrent for future offenders, if everyone is knows/feels all they will loose is their license to practice finance then you will have lot more financial crime than there is.
Is there any evidence this actually works? My understanding was that "prison as a deterrence" was largely ineffective.
You cannot stop murder, rapes, petty theft etc with punishments you can deter white-collar crimes which are executed with a lot of forethought as this is a critical decision making factor.
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To be clear I meant loosing financial license is not same as loosing medical or legal license, no one is spending 10 years of education and hundreds of thousands of to get one, so it is not much of deterrent to threaten loosing it.
An 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…
You think a 25 year sentence is impossible to recover from? I think he can still leave a meaningful life coming out in his mid 50s.
An 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…
It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…
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Purely speculation on my part, but I tend to feel similarly, and I think the reason is that the mugger includes a physical threat of violence. Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of humans and would just sit…
I think humans also feel no anger towards deadly diseases. Maybe it is more comparable to that. However, I do know that people can feel very ashamed from scams like phishing attacks and caller scams.
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Yeah, I agree. This should fall under “caveat emptor”. Everyone using unregulated exchanges (which IMO should be an option for everyone) should recognize that they are subject to additional risks (and benefits). The government shouldn’t outlaw free climbing either. It’s your own fault if you treat a bunch of foolish kids with millions of dollars the same way you would an onshore FDIC-insured regulated bank. Canada Bi…
Climbing pedant checking in. I think the type of climbing you're referring to is free-solo, that is climbing alone with no partner or protection from falling. "Free climbing" is climbing using only hands and feet for upward progression but typically involves the use of protection (gear, ropes, and a partner) to save you in the event of a fall. It's called "free" because the climber does not use metal tools, hooks, pi…
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What’s with the sudden turn to “haha everyone was wrong in the past” on here? There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. What’s the point?
A lot of people confuse cynicism with wisdom, and that sets people up to be susceptible to bigger problems. For example, if you believe the legal system is corrupt and dysfunctional, it’s very easy to passively tune out and not support reform efforts because you think they’re pointless. We see this a lot in politics where accusations of corruption are used to conflate people who are orders of magnitude apart – a good…
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I'm an indirect victim via BlockFi (headed by Zach Prince), which did business with FTX and lost my money as a result. I held 33 ETH in a BlockFi BIA account, and only recently got 4 ETH back. I don't know if I will ever recover the rest of my funds. I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich, and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has bee…
>So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got, just on the hubris alone. I don't want to rub on your wound but you need to take some responsibility as well. You knew crypto was risky. You knew many exchanges have scammed and went under, taking their customer's funds with them. It's arguable that every crypto exchange is shady and it's inevit…