Comment by Joeboy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Joeboy | Hacker News Reader

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There are surely two separate issues here? One is whether it's bad to eg. take first world crypto investors' money and use it to stop hundreds of thousands of people dying of preventable diseases in developing countries. Personally, I think not really, or at least it'd be an odd thing to be upset about? Happy to hear the arguments in favour of huge numbers of preventable deaths.

Where that narrative gets problematic wrt SBF is that, aiui in the eyes of EA "leadership", "too many" EA individuals choose to allocate their donations to boring global health causes, rather than building the movement or weird long-termist stuff. So with that in mind, the obvious decision was to take the friendly billionaire money and put it into those "important" areas. Which means now, we have a popular and hard to refute characterization of EA as an organization that raises money for itself and weird causes normal people don't care about. But, like I said, the majority of EA money goes towards global health, ie. stopping people dying.

One is whether it's bad to eg. take first world Professional software developers' money and use it to stop hundreds of thousands of people dying of preventable diseases in developing countries. Personally, I think not really, or at least it'd be an odd thing to be upset about?

I think you're making that comment with the idea that it's self-evidently wrong? Do I understand you correctly?

I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths" part. I don't get how on earth people weigh that as less important than the financial welfare of relatively well-off people in richer countries. Maybe this is some basic failure of humanity on my part.

The problem (and I think roughly the point being made) is that if you follow that logic through, then surely almost everyone here should have the vast majority of their possessions & wealth taken, to fund the equalising up-lifting of others.

Charity and world aid is in a continual discussion & discovery of what we collectively think is 'good enough', helping people get to something that is perhaps 'not disaster', but nevertheless falls far short of the standards the gifters expect for themselves.

'Possessions and wealth taken' and 'fund the equalizing up-lifting of others' co-occur, but that doesn't mean the latter is justifying the former. People who play the markets know they're taking a risk and willing to gamble on being smarter than their competition, they're consenting to have their money go to someone with better judgement than them and that's what justifies having their wealth taken. The winners of a game like that are exactly who I'd want funding the 'up-lifting' part. That doesn't mean it's kosher for the smartest person to expropriate every above-average person's money when they aren't willing to gamble with it.

Did SBF take the wealth using better judgement or did he take it using dishonesty and fraud?

My impression is that it's the dishonesty and theft that people have a problem with, not just being clever and outwitting people in the speculative gambling game.

And when those people get the impression that the EA movement is okay with getting money dishonestly as long as it's given it to a worthy cause, they take issue with EA.

Edit: Just thought of an analogy. Some charities do raffles, right? You can put money into the pot for a chance to win a prize, knowing that a proportion of all the money people put in goes to the charity.

But what if the charity sold a bunch of raffle tickets and then announced that they would not award a prize and all the money would go to the charity? Or what if it came out that the prize was rigged to go to someone affiliated with the charity? In this case I don't think you can say, "Well, those people chose to gamble so they consented to having their wealth taken."

To my admittedly shallow understanding SBF was gambling with his clients' money and lost. I wouldn't say any charitable work he did would justify the theft, but I also have no qualms about Binance crashing his token so he'd be caught in the act.

To put it in point form, I'd say -SBF had bad judgement and bad morals -SBF's clients had bad judgement and bad luck -Binance had good judgement and good luck, and if the people who make it up do a lot of charity work, they have good morals as well. That doesn't help SBF's clients of course, but I do think they consented to a game where a reasonable person would have known this was a possible outcome. I would think most EA folks would tend to agree with how I've characterized it, but maybe someone more versed in that subculture's overton window can clarify.

> SBF was gambling with his clients' money and lost

> I do think they consented to a game where a reasonable person would have known this was a possible outcome

I think you might be confusing the two different types of clients who were involved here.

My understanding is that SBF initially lost money that had been entrusted to him by investors in his "please gamble with my money and give me the winnings" company (Alameda). I would not call that fraud and I agree that the Alameda investors consented (foolishly) to this use of their money.

The problem is that after SBF lost the money of Alameda clients by doing risky gambles that went wrong, he tried to cover it up by stealing money that had been entrusted to him by clients of his "please hold onto my money for me so I can conveniently trade on your platform" company (FTX).

I don't think the FTX clients consented to SBF's use of their money to do gambling. They put their money on FTX so they could do their own gambling.

While I think FTX clients should have known better than to put money on a crypto exchange for safekeeping, that doesn't change the fact that their money was misappropriated nor does it excuse the fraud.

Ahh the "she was practically begging for it with that short skirt" argument.

> The problem (and I think roughly the point being made) is that if you follow that logic through, then surely almost everyone here should have the vast majority of their possessions & wealth taken, to fund the equalising up-lifting of others.

And if not software developers why not? Who gets to chose which grift is a grift and which is an honest living?

> I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths" part.

So you agree - software devlopers, who make vastly more than the average person should have their wealth siezed to save those people? Or are you the one being glib aboout saving lives?

Have you ever been close to anybody who died? If you have prevented that, and then you multiply that by a few hundred thousand, do you not get close to a place where rich people's investments not panning out doesn't seem like something to get too upset about?

It's interesting to me that there's a kind of horseshoe effect here with the "rich people must be protected" on the same side as the "rich people are evil" people.

> do you not get close to a place where rich people's investments not panning out

Rich people like software developers

And investments like every cent they earn

Absoultely 10000% happy with taking every cent of it and saving as many lives as possible. Why are you against this?

Humans have very strong instincts against exploitation by peers. I think the appropriate answer here is: "Sure, let's seize the wealth of approximately everyone in a western country." Singling out a particular group, even though it's less seizure in total, raises people's hackles for reasons entirely unrelated to whether redistribution is a good idea.

Like the around 88% of American drivers considered themselves to be above average at driving - everyone also believes that they are the exception. As for redistribution of wealth, even many multi millionaires consider themselves to be on the poor side of the wealth divide.

> > I find it really weird that people are so glib about the "hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths" part.

> So you agree -

You're quoting someone else there, not me (GP).

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