Sam Bankman-Fried is not a child
newsletter.mollywhite.net
newsletter.mollywhite.net
As someone who's turning 50 soon, 30 seems like several lifetimes ago for me. Age is this weird thing and you only realize it more and more as you get older.
Even if sequestering worked better than it does, I think there are a lot of other subtle influences from mainstream consensus that affect all the participants in the process.
But unlike OJ, political figures and the media higher-ups weren't nearly as personally invested in the outcome of the case.
Sam Bankman-Fraud is unique because he somehow managed to ensnare a good portion of those higher-ups in his scheme, so naturally they really want to do some damage control.
That approach is hierarchical, and it looks like this:
That didn't happen. (It's pretty firmly established that it did.)
And if it did, it wasn't that bad. (It was tens of billions of dollars.)
And if it was, that's not a big deal. (Again, it was tens of billions of dollars.)
And if it is, that's not my fault. <- ("But he's just a kid" rhetoric.)
And if it was, I didn't mean it. (Media has been pivoting harder towards "honest mistake" these days.)
And if I did, you deserved it.
Expect to see the media further pivot towards something resembling "honest mistake" (note that they're doing this already) before settling on "and that's why we need onerous regulation of cryptocurrencies" (which, unfortunately, has a chance of being taken seriously by the government because it affects currently-sitting politicians and not just the people whose dinner parties they attend).
I wonder if that started as “just send donations to mainstream political parties”…
On the contrary, shoplifting, maybe being assaulted at gun point even so that your iPhone is stolen. That feels threatening and real, that's something people have seen or know of someone not too distant that has experienced it. It's easy to understand the gravity of the crime and so it becomes more difficult for people to dismiss it.
But that's public opinion, what's the excuse of educated journalists? SBF has committed some of the most egregious financial crimes in history and he needs to be made responsible.
However, I have seen (and agree with) quite a bit of analysis suggesting that a person in their mid-20's with limited experience in the world of finance should not have been given this much money to work (gamble) with. He didn't just make a lot of money on crypto; he was given a lot of money by VC investors, who should have known better. The emphasis on his youth is, I think, meant to suggest that the investors were not doing their job, which is after all to determine whether a person should be given money to invest, and if so how much. Someone who plays video games during a pitch, unless they are pitching their new video game, should not have been given other people's money.
Even describing him as “mid-20s” when he was 27 when he started FTX is a deliberate and slightly misleading word choice that reporters use to buttress the version of the story they think will drive clicks. I don’t think reporters are trying to let him off but I think they’re taking the bait on the version of the story his team thinks lands the softest with the general public.
On top of that, the author’s contrast of his treatment to how actually young people of color are treated by the police, legal system and media is totally valid.