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Comment by peter422 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think being an econ professor is quite the position of power you think it is. Source: I have many friends who are professors including econ professors.

The Wikipedia pages of all of these people only relates to their relationship to FTX, they aren't running US fiscal policy.

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Well but isn't the point a cohort favors their own? Rather than any old econ professor I think the impactful part was including "MIT". I think it's fair to say there's some difference between that and an econ prof from a small town community college. Same for the bit about Stanford. It's not an area in my career I'm good at, but I'm aware of the contemporary perspective "its not what you know but who you know". In a large enough company this becomes very obvious.

Which reminds me, I need to update my LinkedIn profile. I wish I knew what to post. This is all I can think of:

Day 1: here's my coffee cup <photo> Day 2: didn't sleep well, oh well Day 2: here's my coffee cup <photo> Day 3: feeling refreshed, thanks certa Day 4: interesting stackoverflow discussion <link> Day 4: here's my coffee cup again <photo>

That sounds about as interesting as watching rocks break down into dust. I get the "what" of social media engagement, but I don't understand the "how". If I did, maybe I would've gone to MIT.

I guess on (one of) the other sides, there's groups of folks working on stuff, like in "circles" where they draw together, or code together--skill up together. Some kind of commonality keeps them gelled toward something. And I imagine there's no audition or interview for that. It just "happens."

You would think the immense reach of the Internet would allow for greater emergent wins, right? Larger network, larger opportunities. Their goal may not be monetary foremost, but their creativity is channeled into those projects.

I guess if we want it, we develop our capabilities to leverage the next opportunity. Without waiting, we create our own luck. Unending practice, making and learning and repeating. Maximizing the luck surface area, as they say.

But it may not happen on our usual timeline. It may happen in the hours between sleep and work, when we're staring at our bookshelves or bookmarks and thinking, "I really gotta do this thing."

> I don't think being an econ professor is quite the position of power you think it is. Source: I have many friends who are professors including econ professors.

I'm baffled you'd pick this hill.

AFAIK, her dad is the chair of the #1 economics department in the world![0]

[0] https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/glenn-ellison

Edit: And her mom (?) is also in the same department [1] with industry connections in pharma/ecommerce.

[1] https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/sara-fisher-ellison

Her dad is the former boss of the chairman of the SEC. That may be the single biggest political connection. But both Sam and Caroline's families are extremely well connected on the Hill.

And the customers who signed up for FTX did so because the girlfriend of the owner is an top econ professor?

And you think SBF will escape accountability due to his connections? He won't

If you think those connections helped him get VC funding, I can assure you they help a lot of people and most do not become multi billion dollar frauds. The fact that he is an upper class white guy is the important part, the rest is you just reading way too much into this.

> And the customers who signed up for FTX did so because the girlfriend of the owner is an top econ professor?

Now, we're switching topics.

I'm sure it came up when they were raising capital. I'd want bios of the management team (and their pedigree) if I'm investing.

If the CEO's daddy is the head of the top economics program in the world, I would view that as a positive.

They were pointing out markers of being an upper-class white guy, so it's strange that you present that as an alternative rather than agreement.

They were clearly implying that his girlfriend father's being an economics professor was somehow a critical part of perpetuating the scam.

The people who were scammed were crypto investors who chose to put their money in an unregulated international exchange. Also many many other exchanges have also fallen apart and their parents weren't economics professors.

Give SBF the due credit and blame for what he created.

The connection is more direct than you might think.

They got millions of VC money to spend on advertising. The advertisement campaign influenced people to put money in an unregulated exchange. The fact that mainstream VCs were putting money into this thing also served somewhat as a signal that this might be legit.

The original (root level) comment actually said "surely they should be questioning the system? In particular the VC's". Did the VCs look at the bios of the founders and CEOs? I can't imagine they weren't at least slightly influenced by this. In the crypto world where a major risk would be regulation by the SEC, I can't imagine having the CEO's dad having a relevant political connection wouldn't be a substantial factor for consideration.

With a little racism sprinkled in by dismissing every other contributing factor.

> The fact that he is an upper class white guy is the important part

How are they picking a hill? Seems like they are just stating an objective claim without putting any judgement to it. Even if it turns out her father had little to do with it doesn't mean she's less of a crook. I don't see any reason to be partisan about this and embrace every single accusation like supreme truth. There's plenty of it as it is.

> Seems like they are just stating objective facts without putting any judgement to it.

Isn't the parent's comment an opinion based on anecdotal experiences?

If you have data to share, that'd be helpful.

Changed it to "claim". My point was that they're not picking a side and that there's no need to get defensive about it.

> Changed it to "claim".

The "objective" qualifier is what's problematic.

It's obvious what I mean. Everyone is clearly bending the truth to create the juiciest narrative but no need to attack people just because they're downplaying the most insane conspiracy theories. This is not a movie script.

You make it sound like the poster is defending her just because they don't agree that the world is secretly controlled by a bunch of economics professors.

He isn’t just an economics professor but is connected politically to several people.

Her dad used to be Gary Gensler’s boss. That’s a conflict of interest given what FTX was requesting from the government (a “no-action” finding).

This is false. Economics and finance professors at major universities all have some side business as advisors to major companies, foreign governments, etc.

I guess they aren’t Econ professors in the top universities of their countries? Such universities basically represent the technocratic arm of their respective governments, some professors are also consultants to the biggest financial institutions (both private and public).

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