Hacker News Reader

Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

Statistically speaking there's assuredly at least 1 person in this whole fiasco that lost most to all of their life savings, stolen from them, by this guy.

This is an extreme form of violence, not physical but definitely psychological, your whole life of work savings was wiped out and taken by this guy.

Holding the view you hold is why white-collar crimes are viewed so leniently compared to what you'd call violent crimes. Just because the effects of it are more abstracted away doesn't make them lesser, people might commit suicide over this. They might never recover the amount of money lost for the rest of their lifetime. It's a perpetual torture for those who got the shortest end of the stick. How is that non-violent?

View on HN

It's not my view that he hasn't been charged or convicted, it is an objective fact.

What is the definition of violence?

> behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

> What is the definition of violence?

You've already conceded that words can hurt people (Alex Jones), so why are you trying to backpedal that now?

> words can hurt people (Alex Jones)

Equating money losses with violence dilutes the term, and has a history of slipping into hurt feelings and blasphemy being tantamount to violence. There are crimes which may rise to the severity of violence. That doesn’t make them violence. Alex Jones incited violent. He, himself, was never violent. SBF perpetuated a massive fraud. He has not been connected with any violence.

I don't believe Alex Jones ever incited violence. SBF destroyed the net worth of a lot of people.

Yeah. I see SBF coming up with some sort of self-exculpatory bullshit to a fairly hostile line of questioning; something unlikely to hurt anyone other than maybe SBF

I don't see him excusing himself by explaining that regulators aren't real, they're just actors playing a role in an evil New World Order conspiracy to take people's guns away, and if he does, I don't see the NYT Dealbook summit attendees being the sort of people that turn up on their doorsteps as a result. And FTX is far too dead for him to harm people's wallets any further by persuading them to park their money in it.

Are you suggesting that if any words can harm people, all words must be considered harmful?

I'm saying Bankman-Fried has hurt a few orders of magnitude more people than Alex Jones, and allowing him to give interviews and flippantly defend himself is going to cause a lot of emotional trauma.

I think some people have different feelings about their murdered children than they do about stolen money. YMMV.

This is where we get into dark, murky questions.

Is 1 murdered person better or worse than the long term impact of two or even one person becoming destitute enough that their movements have long term impact on another?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com