When do the parents go on trial? I can't see how they make it out of this without at least having all their ill-begotten assets stripped.
I don't think that would work today, but what we have today doesn't work either.
Fence in a few hundred thousand acres of wildlands.
Send sentenced criminals in with a minimal backpack of survival gear, a waterproof survival manual (including a minified calendar), and their exit date and fingerprints engraved on a piece of metal (maybe their firestarter).
You showed repeatedly you didn't want civilization, so here - you get what you chose.
Man the walls with military or national guard troops who rotate out regularly (makes it hard to corrupt them) - come within 500 yards of the wall (interior or exterior) anywhere but a defined ingress point and you'll be shot after due warning.
Approach an egress point from the interior with any other people and you all get shot. If you can't show that it's your exit date promptly on reaching the egress point, you'll be given five minutes to get clear or be shot.
I'm no longer as convinced it's a good idea, and I'm sure the logistics are massively harder than I'm making them sound. It's certainly harsh and merciless.
Still - there is a certain elegance to it.
It is a very Heinlein plot device, now that I think of it.
I think the concept works much better if it's wilderness, though. Even a ruined, abandoned city has an endless supply of the artifacts of civilization, so those imprisoned don't really get to understand what it is they've chosen.
1: https://coinscreed.com/ftx-creditor-claims-break-50c-as-buye...
Conversely, it’s a private company and scarcity of opportunity to get in is also a thing. So it’s entirely possible someone will pay more than the previous round just to get in.
Basically we don’t know until the investment bankers have done their jobs.
I know zero details on where exactly the money ended up, but I have to imagine someone dumb enough to try and pull this off would have also effectively shredded a huge chunk of the stolen funds.
FTX was an exchange. It was an attractive exchange partially because many things traded there offered tight spreads, ie difference between prices quoted for buying and selling. The tight spreads came from Alameda. Alameda was another entity connected to SBF.
The problem was that Alameda wasn't actually competent enough to quote tight spreads and make money off them. So they lost many to savvier customers. FTX lent money to Alameda to keep them afloat. But that money was never paid back.
There's lots of other things that went wrong. But this is probably the most ironic part: a large part of FTX's clients' lost money went to FTX's clients. (But not the same clients who lost money. And lots of money was lost in other ways.)
Because, at least for Americans, there is a retributive mindset. "You did wrong, now I want you to hurt"; ergo, when it happens, they consider it justice.
As opposed to repairing the victim's situation and/or attempting to reform the actor/criminal into a more trustworthy/desirable member of society.
How could SBF pay his victims back fully if he doesn't have enough assets?
What he said was he had never seen a company with such atrocious record keeping. BTW, the US government would not have charged Sam Bankman-Fried with fraud if the money was all there.
And while John Ray did say they were bad at record keeping, he also said that “This is just old fashioned embezzlement, taking money from others and using it for your own purposes,” he said. “This is not sophisticated at all.”
Yes, many cultures don't have this Old Testament idea about justice, as if they take delight in seeing the prisoner suffering. This is more about sadism than justice.
This is how they can be OK with treating criminals humanely, not focusing on revenge and punishment but rehabilitation, not having the death penalty, giving lighter sentences, etc. Or even to have prisons that look more like motels - like the Nordic prisons.
And if you think the US prison system is bad, wait until you see…. Well everyone else’s except a handful of Western European countries prisons.
Compare yourself to your peers. What's the point of merely trying to be better than Rwanda.
In any case, here you go: "Prison conditions in Rwanda today remain harsh and harrowing – especially for those incarcerated for daring or perceived by the authorities to challenge the government’s narrative. Today Rwanda’s prisons are overcrowded at 174% of capacity – with the second highest incarceration population rate (that is, the number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population) outside America, according to the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. The institute listed Rwanda’s total prison population at just over 76,000 – out of a national population of a little over 13 million. Rwanda’s prisoners include thousands detained in connection with the 1994 genocide, the report added".
or
"significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions"
I think you're under the wrong impression that when the parent said "Rwanda" they meant Rwanda specifically, and they didn't just use it as a stand-in for "well known third world country" with the understanding that such countries usually have horrible prison conditions.
Rwanda also has had a history of murdering vast numbers of folks, very recently, because of religious affiliation.
My point is, what’s up with the ridiculousness of these claims?
Seems like you're pretty far off the subect of the subthread? Have you read what we're discussing in this subthread? It's not SBF specifically.
Even so, if you want to see how it still ties to SBF, see the glee with which people elsewhere on this post comment about "life in prison" and throwing away the key for what is basically financial fraud.
>And if you think the US prison system is bad, wait until you see…. Well everyone else’s except a handful of Western European countries prisons.
That's a pretty low bar.
LOL, next question?
Which is neither here, nor there. I didn't say you made such a claim, or that somebody in this thread did.
Just pointed that it's a be low bar to being content to be better than "90% of countries" when that means being at the bottom of all your western peers.
And that it's especially ironic given than Americans do make superioty claims, quite often, from lowly folks, intellectuals, and artists, to official statements by POTUS.
It IS a low bar, and it IS especially ironic given the expressions of superiority - regardless of whether you or others in this thread share them or not.
Maybe from that perspective it's easier to understand why some other closer-knit societies don't value punishment as highly.
As many folks with problem family have had to learn.
I wonder who told you otherwise.
My comment tries to explain a different mindset to someone who seemed surprised that it exists at all, not directly answering their honest question, but rather trying to create understanding of that different way of thinking.
There's no rebuttal here, because there was no statement that could be rebutted - assuming that was actually a honest question I replied to.
Pretty much all of Europe.
The US are often take as an example of an exceptionally individualistic society - in every sense of the word. It's also one of the most punitive countries in the world (the most punitive by some metrics). It's really not hard to find places that are both closer to the other side of the spectrum and less punitive. Drop a pin on a map.
Or ask something specific, no one here is going to give you a full run down of every European nation's penal system along with the US one for you to compare and contrast.
Sometimes, it’s important to make an example out of criminals, so that future criminals are deterred. Thus, strict punishments are a social necessity.
EDIT: A lot of folks think financial crimes are pretty much victimless crimes, and thus financial criminals deserve leniency. However, just because we can’t see the harm doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. SBF has probably reduced hundreds of not thousands to penury. Those people will pay the price for his wrongdoing, possibly for the rest of their lives.
"Justice is the ethical, philosophical idea that people are to be treated impartially, fairly, properly, and reasonably by the law and by arbiters of the law, that laws are to ensure that no harm befalls another, and that, where harm is alleged, a remedial action is taken - both the accuser and the accused receive a morally right consequence merited by their actions"
Anyway, a law institution certainly has an incentive to push their own agenda when it comes to the theory of justice.
I think the historical use of justice has nothing to do with the victim being made whole - and not sure that word usage is a useful concept here.
Oh is that why our justice system is so terrible at actually reducing crime?
Many other countries—especially countries nearly as rich as us—manage a lower crime rate with a lower proportion of spending on policing and lower sentencing times. I have full faith we can improve on those systems, too—there's boatloads of evidence showing that financial safety nets invested in over decades is a much more cost-effective way of reducing crime.
Regardless, even in justice theory there are other ideologies, such as restorative justice. This is not just idle windbagging.
We can compare to other countries and see their rates of crime, but such comparisons are difficult to make accurately because you are judging all social differences at once, not just a different legal system. Including things like how much lead has the population been exposed to, effect of poverty and sense of community. Things far beyond the legal system.
Why are you comparing it to a lack of a justice system rather than to a more competent justice system?
> We can compare to other countries and see their rates of crime, but such comparisons are difficult to make accurately because you are judging all social differences at once, not just a different legal system. Including things like how much lead has the population been exposed to, effect of poverty and sense of community. Things far beyond the legal system.
Poverty is absolutely a part of the legal system—it takes the legal institution of private property, for instance, to ensure wealth stays unequal.
Can you ever make them whole? Even if you pay them back all their money, there is the period of time without, the fear and pain from losing it, and similar that cannot be undone. For other crimes, there is often a victim whose state can never be fully reverted. If this is our view of justice, then justice becomes an impossible thing which can never be achieved. Does such a stance risk people eventually no longer chasing what can never be acquired?
SBF did not do himself any favors with his smug attitude that caused the judge himself to scold him several times during his examination. If he was a little more remorseful I could’ve seen some more leniency but the Judge did not like his attitude from what I could read following his testimony.
Would be shocked if he got less than Holmes.
SBFs fraud totals were much, much higher than Holmes, and the federal sentencing guidelines indicate he'll be going to jail for much longer.
Quite complex certainly
In what way? Deciding the sentence may be complicated, sure; mostly due to the fact that the US system (ideally) wants to be lenient on first-time or very occasional offenders and strict on habitual offenders. (Which isn't always how it works, sadly, due to judge biases)
However, once you receive your sentence, it's relatively simple. You get a charge or multiple charges with a length of stay and an eligibility for parole condition. It then gets marked "concurrent" (time in prison, after the sentencing date, for other crimes counts towards its requirements) or "consecutive" (its time needs to be served independent of other charges). From there, you start with all of the consecutive terms lined up in order of severity and the concurrent ones stacked alongside.
There are sometimes other terms for release, but they're usually enumerated pretty well.
That all being to say, your answer doesn't really answer the person who's asking. It's relatively easy to figure out the release date and minimum parole date from that. In fact, both are usually listed clearly on their sentencing documents.
> This is life in prison, correct? I know he hasn't been sentenced but all counts is easily several life sentences at the federal level.
There is no a sentence yet. Deciding the sentence has yet to happen, so OP's answer to the grandparent is 100% correct: it's foolish to try to calculate the sentence right now, we just have to wait and see.
If anything, you comment goes to reinforce OP's point: you yourself list 3-4 different variables that need to be determined for each charge.
The guidelines are 618 pages long. There are considerations for the person's history, for their pleas, for the # of counts, for the type of crime, for the victim impact, for the felon impact, for the societal impact, for precedent, for the type of intent & hundreds of other things get mixed in to the judgement as well. There's a good reason this will only be complete by March next year.
https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manu...
Meh. This is society taking revenge on an individual by locking him up and offering him no chance for redemption. Maybe that's the best form of "justice" we can do for now, but let's not celebrate it too much.
Personally, I feel like someone like Allison Mack did way worse crimes than the uggos in the FTX polycule, but I don’t know enough about the sentencing statutes here to know if they’ll get more time or not. I feel like they will, but we’ll see I guess.
A few token condemnations for the headlines is all it takes.
edit: Also seeing 110 years, TechCrunch said 115 here: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/02/sam-bankman-fried-found-gu...
I'd rather go to prison than go on probation. I know a cop that feels the same way.
The people that think he got off easy don't know how awful probation is.
This is from NC, but look at "Common violations": https://www.browninglonglaw.com/library/common-violations-an...
Miss an appointment because of a car accident? Probation violation.
Miss a court hearing due to traffic? Probation violation.
Don't pay fines or restitution because you're broke? Probation violation.
Miss community service because you're sick? Probation violation.
Not employed because the economy is in the shitter and no one will hire a felon? Probation violation.
There are so many ways to get fucked that are out of your control and the punishment can be prison anyway.
So it's all the downsides of prison - because you can still end up there - but with a bunch of extra life disrupting headaches that are super stressful because the consequences are harsh. And you have to pay for all of it yourself.
Like I said, I know a cop that would take prison over probation.
A cop.
Isn't snark supposed to be against the rules here?
Why do you think the convicted (their representation) push for probation over jail time?
Probation sucks. The only thing it sucks less than is prison.
Source: friends on probation who have changed the way they live and friends that didn’t.
Yeah. The fact that they're in probation in the first place is probably because they have a hard time acting like adults in the first place and haven't past the stage of "kid throwing a fit" except in an adult's body
> The people that think he got off easy
He got off easy, give me a break..
FTR, I’ve been on probation and therefore must vehemently disagree with your uninformed second-hand opinion.
This strawman fallacy ruins any credibility the rest of your comment might have had.
Because it doesn't look like justice. It looks like revenge. The US justice system doesn't mete out justice, it provides revenge.
Under a punitive justice system like we have in the US—sure. It doesn't seem to have improved anything at first glance, though.