> that if you're willing to ignore the rules of society that most people agree to, then it's pretty easy to take advantage of the system.

That's exactly the thing. He didn't ignore the rules. It's expected that founders lie, and the super-rich in charge of these giant investment funds are supposed to be the smartest people in the world, that's what entitles them to command the huge resources they do.

The game we agreed to was that these fund managers were supposed to efficiently allocate capital to worthy causes. Neumann made it extremely apparent that there's no guarantee that some rich banker will allocate anything efficiently at all. The bankers already skewed the system, Neumann beat them at their own game.

That doesn't make him a saint, it doesn't even may him "good", but I still think it's nice that SoftBank got fucked.