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kkowalczyk

I'm mystified by 'blame the victim' tone of your comment.

Does any old lady deserve to be taken advantage by scumbag lawyers or accounts?

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The victim here is the masses of 19th century mine workers discarded in the production of her fortune.

Because there can be only one victim, right?

Because the slight of losing 0.001% of one's wealth in a non-violent manner is comparable to the loss of thousands of lives, right?

Whoa, how about not putting words in my mouth, dude. I didn't say it was the same.

Did the old lady deserve the wealth of the indians who owned the land from which the copper was taken?

Do you live in the U.S.? If so, it's likely that any property that you or you employer own was also taken from the Indians at some point. Maybe your ancestors even lived off slave labor. Are you offering to give back your own ill-gotten wealth?

I live in Canada, and yes, I advocate for land/property/claims of genocide and other disputes between civilized nations to be put before a court of competent jurisdiction such as the ICC so that they may be resolved in accordance with international law.

I would be more than happy to return any property judged by such a court to be ill-gotten to any rightful recipients of it.

Sure, nobody deserves to be taken advantage of, rich or poor. But being taken advantage of is a fact of life. It's pervasive in nature. Moreover, it comes with the territory of inheriting wealth.

It seems odd to me to feel bad for someone who had this problem only because she inherited a bunch of wealth she didn't earn. That's not a question of what she "deserves" but rather who "deserves" our sympathies.

> But being taken advantage of is a fact of life

Hello? Beth Israel is a non-profit teaching hospital in New York City that is over 100 years old. that they might have a role in bilking an elderly patient is shocking, plain and simple. (I've been there as a patient myself.)

not to mention exposing the corruption of attorneys, doctors, and various caregivers - people who are supposed to, by virtue of their professions, put the client or patient's interest first.

would this have been a scandal if it were for someone's entire life savings at $100,000? $1,000,000?

at what point on the financial scale does someone become worthy of taking advantage of? some arbitrary metric, where a person is deemed to have "earned" their wealth?

i'm sure this type of thing happens on a smaller scale. we don't hear about it because there aren't enough juicy details to make a 300+ page book. if we're going to talk about who "deserves" our sympathies - imagine it was a family member, then answer accordingly.

> at what point on the financial scale does someone become worthy of taking advantage of?

You're missing my point. You're focusing on whether the actions of the caregivers are justified instead of focusing on our reaction to what happened. People do bad things all the time, surely you don't feel outraged every time it happens.

So why feel particularly sympathetic for someone who inherited a tremendous fortune, then didn't do anything to protect it, despite having every opportunity to do so? I can say "who cares?" without justifying the actions of anyone involved.

I think the GP's point here is that we rely on/trust certain institutions to not take advantage of anybody, no matter whether they "deserve it" or not. When they do, it shakes the trust we have in them that they won't take advantage of us. This isn't a story about an old aristocrat; it's a story of a bunch of institutions that were more corrupt than we thought.

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