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Comment by patrickk | Hacker News Reader

It's worth watching his entire finance series and even his chemistry series if thats your thing: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...

Yes he acts like a giant dick, but he's got great knowledge of how to analyse an investment, and recommends great books and so on. If his life would've turned out a little different and he was less publicly abrasive, he could've been celebrated as a child prodigy or an investment wizard...sort of like this Japanese trader cis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-e1MxcjFDk (an amazing guy).

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Yeah, everyone condemns Martin Shkreli, but having watched the video Benjammer5 linked to, he seems like a regular bright dude / techbro (ugh..). I would not be surprised that a significant number of people who lambasted Shkreli, if given a similar situation, would end up making the same choices for that $$$.

I have found that most people make horrid moral decisions when it comes to money/career. They go into this weird denial, or fall back on, "Hay--it's legal!". I've had my fill of people like this, including a particularly greedy sister.

It seems like ethics, and morals are just missing in some people, and most of these people wear ties, and do it all in a legal fashion.

I have watch a few of his videos months, maybe a year ago? It seems like it was a while ago.

I watch his videos for two reasons; He was obviously opening up his life to the world, and I was curious to what this guy was all about.

I came away with, like myself, he seems to have a real lack of friends. And like myself, he definetly needs a girlfriend. Not someone he could buy, but an honest caring relationship. I definetly got the feeling he wanted people out of his league, and it really bothered him. Maybe I'm completely wrong?

So, on the topic of people making horrid decisions when it comes to money, I recommend a movie called "The Box" inspired by a sci-fi short novel by Richard Matheson called "Button! Button!" (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Z...). Not a spectacular moving, but two hours or so well invested, I believe.

>I have found that most people make horrid moral decisions when it comes to money/career. They go into this weird denial, or fall back on, "Hay--it's legal!"

I was just having a discussion with someone last night who was complaining about executive bonuses (in health insurance specifically), and how he thought that was unfair. He then went on to describe how he's moving into government work for the high pay, low effort, and how he would try to do the same pension spiking practices that's got California in so much trouble. After all, it's not illegal.

Were it not my house, I feel like I might have put my head through a wall.

definitely

> If his life would've turned out a little different

You know you can say the same thing about Pablo Escobar, and Hitler, and many others. Just because someone has an innate talent at something, perhaps even a genius, does not make them worthy of the rhetoric "if only things had turned out a bit different for them...". People do what they do, we shouldn't question what they could have done.

Stipulating that Shkreli is guilty of securities fraud, theft, and is a dick of a person, it's still awful to compare him to people who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds or millions.

I wasn't making any direct comparison, just making a general point using well-known historical figures.

In fact ... You induced Goodwins Law.

Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches 1"—that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will ...

If Hitler had a video series about how to do public speaking, I would watch that, and I hope every politician would.

His method is known. This is why the study of history is important.

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