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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

His brother was heading some “Guarding against pandemics” non-profit that he was involved with. I believe there was one California proposition they were heavily funding related to it.

I don’t know if it was started in earnest or if there was some ulterior motive.

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Non-profits are just money laundering machines for the rich with sometimes unintended positive side effects

Not always, but too often. Humane Society International does all sorts of verifiable charitable work, for example.

Good doesn’t cancel out the bad

Even further: debatable unproven good doesn't cancel out the immediate unmistakable bad. Sponsoring a regulation with stolen money is also self-serving (political influence), plus we don't have any data available to say that the regulation resulted in any societal good. We do know, though, that the stolen money negatively affected millions of people.

Equally: indentured servitude in restitution isn't a valid rehabilitation strategy. It doesn't deter nor contract ones thinking to doing criminal activities. The only thing we can do it weigh punishment to severity of the crimes. SBF will soon find out what value that is.

This sounded like more bad actually.

Yes but the article talked about EA and how giving to causes blindly ignoring means is kinda the M.O. of it all. So "good" (giving) doesn't cancel out the "bad" (robbing customer funds).

I realize this, I was just saying the "good" also seemed just as bad as the bad. Specifically to cause that seemed opportunistic and fear based driven.

Good and bad are subjective. Based on humans and guard railed by laws. What one considers good, another can consider it bad. There are arguably objective good and bad’s but in the case of behavior, it’s subjective. Polluting the planet is objectively bad. Funding a political cause is subjectively so.

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