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Comment by BigZaphod | Hacker News Reader

It sounded to me like he made a lot of really stupid money choices in his life and blamed all his losses on the IRS, the government, and anyone else of "power" that happened to be nearby at the time rather than taking personal responsibility and manning up.

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I think his distaste was that when he made some mistakes, he got caught and shafted by arcane laws, yet when some richer folks deliberately committed fraud, the government barely did anything about it or rejigged the laws for them.

I'm in no way condoning fraud or corruption or entitlement or whatever, but I think the reason "the rich" often appear to get away with a lot more stuff than "the rest of us" is because, in some sense, as much as you might not like to admit it, they did somehow became rich - and that usually involves years of work and contributions to society either by the person him/herself or their family. So, in some small sense, being rich is a sign of having done something significantly important or useful at some point in their history, and so maybe they are worthy of more benefit of the doubt because of that? Maybe being rich is like a credit against future mistakes? Maybe it shouldn't be that way - but it seems kind of like it is. Perhaps this is some second order effect of humanity itself.

I agree. Life isn't fair. That doesn't stop us from seeing a small percentage of people who believe everything should be fair and just going postal, though.

they can also have more money to buy off and strong arm irs agents.

government employees are just people.

here's a book about this:

http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Rich-Everybod...

Did he not hear about Bernie Madoff?

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