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Comment by avalys | Hacker News Reader

I enjoy his column particularly because he talks about all of this scheming and maneuvering in a straightforward and neutral way.

I can decide for myself if something is immoral or offensive or whatever, I don’t need my news sources to decide that for me.

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I also think he approaches this like a lawyer, where what is right and wrong is constantly evolving and people are always testing the limits of it. People will keep on finding surprising ways to try beat the system, the system will always try new ways to prevent it but those ways will have unintended consequences. I think this has to be interesting to you if you want to have a good grasp of it.

My favorite thing related to this is how it's always hard to know who exactly is "wrong" without reading the whole thing most times.

The reality is that media helps define what is normative and what is not. Describing bad behaviour and abuse of the law, without calling it out as bad, helps normalize it.

Matt Levine's columns often goes one step beyond the "neutral way". They often describe them as cool ingenious schemes done by smart people.

I guess it's hard to infer tone in a newsletter, I always saw his descriptions as a use of understatement to really draw out how evil some of these things were or in other cases to pass over the small time crook and focus on the systemic issues.

I can see it the other way too though, now that you mention it.

They are cool ingenious schemes done by smart people — who sometimes happen to be criminals.

That's why people watch heist movies and play GTA, too.

Not sure Matt Levine has the power to change what is perceived as cool by western culture.

When he talks about the bankruptcy/CDS/default shennanigans (eg Hedge fund offers bailout to avoid default in exchange for ophaning credit etc), he does not take a stance on right and wrong.

Why? Both sides of the game are Informed. This isn't screwing over the dentist, it is fund A outthinking funds B and C. Is it a social good? Don't know, nor does he (seemingly). So why bother pretending

You realize there's a difference between "the media does (attempt to) define norms" and "the media should define norms", right?

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