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Comment by __loam | Hacker News Reader

I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done.

> I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done.

How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years? Would you be giddy if he were being flogged, or hanged? As long as there has been recording, flogging and hangings were common punishments and usually defended as "justice has been done." Incarceration really isn't far from medieval punishments.

I'm by no means suggesting that nothing should be done, and maybe 25 years in prison is a just sentence (that's debatable, but for moving forward let's assume it is), but it still leaves me with a sick feeling. I just can't relate whatsoever with feeling "giddy" over it.

> How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years?

Said human is responsible for the financial ruin of thousands of people. It's entirely likely that some small portion of those people committed suicide.

White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed as SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions. The maximum sentence was 110 years so he got off pretty lightly here and it's entirely possible he serves less than 25 years for good behavior.

So yeah, I'm excited to see an at least somewhat positive outcome here. A criminal was held accountable for their actions.

> White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed as SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions.

Eg, Andy Bernstein got charged $200, scaled down to FAANG engineer salary for insider trading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39838351

Genuinely, thank you for your reply. I appreciate you sharing your perspective :-)

I don't entirely disagree with your point, and I see the real harm done here. But if I were a juror on this case, I'd have a really hard time being a part of taking away a full third of another human beings' life for what he did. There's no doubt that he knowingly did something wrong, he hurt people, and he deserves some level of punishment. But when I really think about what he did relative to the potential for 25 years in prison, that strikes me as barbaric.

I'd be able to do it easily and sleep at night like a baby.

How many hours, days, weeks, months, and years did he steal from the people who bought crypto in FTX? Most of them were workers, using their wages (which means trading their working hours for money) to buy crypto. How many years of their time did he lose?

If there was real justice in the world, they'd take the amount of money he lost, divide it by the average hourly rate of the account holders, convert that to years, and then make him serve each and every single one.

I think treating petty criminals so badly and going easy on white collar criminals is barbaric. A third of his life is nothing compared to the damage he caused. I find it incredible that you would feel sorry for him.

> I think treating petty criminals so badly and going easy on white collar criminals is barbaric.

Where do you see GP arguing that we should treat petty criminals as badly as we do?

SBF’s actions caused more damage than many violent muggings. If /u/kbos87 would support letting dozens of muggers to go free to (say) halve SBF’s sentence, then I take the argument seriously and will rescind my positions here so far.

It‘s not a third, it will probably be 1/6 in practice. And what should it be? 3 years? 5? If it‘s just than it will incentivize others to try the same. In fact many do, I know plenty of crypto guys running a bunch of dodgy offshore companies, there is a long tail.

If you think 25 years is too much, I don't think you actually understand what he did, how many people he did it to, and why what he did was bad. Think about the years of savings he destroyed.

Our prison system is undeniable terrible but we also so rarely see white collar criminals get what they deserve. Most of these guys get a slap on the wrist and somehow fail upwards.

And he's almost guaranteed to serve a smaller portion of that time for "good behavior".

It's amazing how light a setence Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes got compared to this. She may have actually killed people.

Many people see justice served as a win for society, a reason to be hopeful that the future will be better. One life out of billions is valuable only to that person and their immediately family, it would be odd to feel sick over someone else getting punished for defrauding so many others of their life savings.

> it would be odd to feel sick over someone else getting punished for defrauding so many others of their life savings.

that's a pretty extreme strawman of my position. Don't you think there's some spectrum between 25 years of prison time and no punishment? And if you don't, then how would you feel about flogging or hanging as I mentioned above? Does it seem odd to you for someone to feel sick about a public hanging in the town square, even if the person is guilty of the crime?

> some spectrum between 25 years of prison time and no punishment

That isn’t the range at hand. SBF got something between what prosecutor and defender asked and much lower than theoretical max.

  Max:        110y
  Procecutor: 40-50y
  Defender:   6.5y
  Actual:     25y

Very lenient and it doesn't set a deterrent at all for people like SBF. Basically you can go off the charts on the sentencing guidelines and commit 3 counts of perjury in court and still have the same Expected Value as if you stopped the crime at a smaller scale

Not sure I agree. 25 years in prison is life-ruining. Even if he ultimately gets out in 10 (or whatever), his life will be forever changed for the worse because of this, even with rich parents who will get him back on his feet after he's out.

I think the kind of person who would see this sentence and think "eh, no big deal if that happens to me" would probably still not be fazed if he got a significantly longer sentence.

> How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years?

The guy is a massive fraudster who not only cost thousands of people their savings, but - maybe even worse - he did significant damage to crypto finance reputation.

He was an already wealthy entrepreneur who could’ve at any point chosen not to be a massive fraud. Actions have consequences. Good riddance.

There's a difference between feeling satisfied that you believe justice has been done, and feeling "giddy".

I think it's awful to have positive, happy feelings when bad things happen to other people, even when those people deserve it. I'm not saying I'm totally immune to feelings like that, but I try to work on my attitude. These sorts of feelings are a stain on one's soul (for lack of a better word, as I'm not religious).

Giddy is maybe the wrong word but I am happy about it. He has acted indifferent during the trial which makes it likely that he could become a repeat offender. This was a strong motivation behind his sentence. If the judge is right in that, and who am I to not believe so, then it is probably correct to remove him from society for 25 years. This is an extremely dangerous individual who may lead hundreds or thousands to financial ruin and is indifferent about it.

Because he is a scamming, unethical asshole who would did profound damage to society.

> Incarceration really isn't far from medieval punishments.

Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be done in this case?

I, too, am dubious that 25 entire years serves justice. On the other hand, many victims' entire life savings wiped out, hard-working people impoverished. How do we deter or redeem, here?

To answer my own question, in an ideal world, SBF would voluntarily work every day to pay everyone back.

> Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be done in this case?

Great question, and very hard. I don't really have a concrete answer, but generally speaking in my ideal world justice would focus on restoration to the victims. I concede that we may need some aspect of "punishment" to serve as a deterrent, but I think that punishment should benefit the victims, not the state. For example, stole $10k from somebody? Pay them back $25k. There should be no victimless crimes IMHO, and if "society" is the "victim" we should approach that one very skeptically and there should be very clear causation. For example, a dad who takes a few hits on a cannabis joint before bed is not "harming society" even though that has been the justification for draconian drug laws for decades.

I also fully concede that real life is going to be a lot messier and more nuanced than what I've captured, and that such a system would require a large mindshift from society in addition to just systemic reform. It may take a while to get there.

Disclaimer: If I actually had any ability to influence this I would want to spend a lot more time stuyding it and examining current research/science, and it's quite possible my opinion would adjust based on evidence.

I think part of the issue and what the judge didn't like is he doesn't seem to have any remorse.

Sure, and that certainly means any rehabilitation would be harder, and we'd be right to be skeptical of the results of that rehabilitation (as in, is he just pretending to be rehabilitated).

Ideally, a much higher-tech system would have highly tailored solutions for incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration. (There should be no considerations for "retribution".)

I'm conflicted on whether incapacitation should continue only until rehabilitation is achieved, or also until restoration is completed.

Prison is just a really blunt instrument for incapacitation, and sentences are a really blunt way to predict how long it would take to be rehabilitated.

> Ideally, a much higher-tech system would have highly tailored solutions for incapacitation

This is pretty interesting. If a person could be anesthetized for the entire sentence and then revived at the end of their period of incapacity, would that be acceptable?

Of course not, that would render rehabilitation impossible.

Oh, I understood "incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration" as a sequence of activities. Like after a period of incapacitation, rehabilitation is performed on the human and then restoration.

What types of rehabilitation activities would you suggest for SBF during incapacitation? Would it include job training for an alternative career since he is unlikely to be allowed a fiduciary role in the future? As I understood it, he had a great talent in video gaming.

Apologies, I intended incapacitation as not unconsciousness, but finding a narrowly-tailored way to prevent the offender from re-committing the crime, in order to protect society. Ultimately, rehabilitation is the answer on how to do that, but until rehabilitation is completed, some manner of incapacitation or restriction is necessary.

I don't know enough about SBF's crime, which is very complex. But for white collar crime in general that isn't wanton indiscriminate violence, imprisonment seems like it is inherently punitive and thus wasteful, unless it's in a place that is highly focused on rehabilitation (education, therapy, etc).

> a narrowly-tailored way to prevent the offender from re-committing the crime

Like having to stay in a special room without other people who might be victimized? That seems more humane than wearing restraints all the time.

I have no idea where you got "wearing restraints".

I'm confused by your use of the word incapacitation here. You don't mean incarceration?

I interpreted it as literally “remove the capacity (to continue committing crime)”. Incarceration is one means of achieving that, but possibly not the only, and I feel like the OP was trying to draw that distinction.

I don’t think they were meaning incapacitation as in rendered unconscious.

That's right, thank you. I didn't realize it wasn't commonly used in this context, and completely forgot about its other meaning. :) Yes, ideally the concept of "protecting society from the offender re-offending" should be narrowly tailored to only prevent those offenses, and only if those offenses present risk to surrounding society.

SBF lost billions of dollars. How does one work to pay that all back, especially with his crap reputation?

The difficulty of doing so doesn't obviate the necessity of doing so.

At worst, he works for the rest of his life with his wages heavily garnished. If he holds investments, he'd be required to liquidate and surrender some percentage of them periodically.

Of course, someone in his position could just live off his parents and not play ball. So you'd need a contingency for that. Maybe prison still does have a place, but only for people who refuse to even try to make amends for what they did?

If I had the answer to that I'd be a billionaire.

Justice is not opposed to empathy. Everyone should look at SBF and feel empathy, and think, "losing the prime years of my life as he will would be horribly painful. Maybe I shouldn't commit fraud and steal thousands of people livelihoods like he did?"

Last I checked he’s not going to Treblinka. If you’re feeling sick about this you obviously need to read the court case and look into what low security federal prison is like.

Don't spare too much of a thought for SBF. He won't go to the same prison you will.

I'm not giddy or anything like that. Our prison system is terrible, and our legal system is often unjust. But I think I'm... satisfied? that a white-collar criminal is experiencing consequences for what he's done. Too often these sorts of people get away with a slap on the wrist at most, and go on to commit more grift.

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