Comment by a4isms | Hacker News Reader

Comment by a4isms | Hacker News Reader

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Incompetence is, “I had no idea companies have standard methods of bookkeeping and accounting, or that I could have hired people skilled in these matters, like CFOs, accounting firms, or managers with any experience whatsoever working in business and/or finance.”

Malice is, “I knew how businesses are supposed to be run, but I accidentally on purpose chose to run my business in a way where nobody could exercise oversight, and while nobody was exercising oversight, I engaged in a pattern of trades and deals that enriched me at the expense of people who trusted me.”

SBF is a grown-ass adult. He knows that when people trust you with their money, you have a moral obligation to handle it competently, or hire people who know how to handle it competently.

He and his backers know how to run a business such that the shenanigans he actually pulled would get flagged. He chose not to do so, and his backers chose to look the other way. And then he coïncidentally used the lack of oversight or standard controls to steal billions of dollars from his customers.

Believe whatever you like, but don’t expect the rest of the world to nod along in agreement.

At the risk of splitting hairs, I'd point out that 'malice' usually refers to someone hurting people with the intention of causing pain. I feel as if what you're describing is selfishness, not malice.

I definitely think SBF should do jail-time. The read I got from his Twitter interview, after the fact, was that he went into this with the goal of personal riches and glory and ultimately failed, not that he went in with the intention of making people poorer. Do you agree there's a difference? In short, I think:

Incompetence + Selfishness != Malice

Malice is just the intention to do evil, it depends what you categorize as evil.

If the bar is "primarily intending to hurt other people", then I would agree this wouldn't qualify. If the bar is "primarily intending to enrich oneself, knowing that enrichment comes exclusively from hurting other people", we hit that one.

All this is true, yet Bearings Bank managed to collapse because one of their employees hid shenanigans in an incomprehensible spreadsheet (I don't think he even needed to hide the cells).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barings_Bank#Internal_control

I’m not sure what point you’re making.

Let’s say I make a car. Cars are supposed to have brakes, lights, airbags, crumple zones, and so on, I don’t do any of that, manage to sell my cars for much less than my competition, and I get rich. Then thousands of people who buy my cars are injured or killed.

Alice argues that this is incompetence on my part. Bob says it’s malice, because I went out of my way not to hire anyone who knows anything about making cars or safety or regulations, and my entire business model is doing things those people would have flagged.

Chuck then says, “You know that thousands of people die every year in cars that have all those safety features.” What point is Chuck making? That if even one person dies in a car with safety features, they can be safely ignored by an entrepreneur who doesn’t want to deal with building them into cars?

I’m honestly bewildered. Yes, malfeasance sometimes happens when there are controls in place. People falsify reports, or game derivatives to make risky trades that would normally be flagged. But having no controls at all is not justified by the existence of rogue employees.

I’m tempted to claim you’re supporting my argument. Nick Leeson was convicted of crimes and went to jail. I suggest that FTX’s “rogue trader” was SBF himself, the person responsible for choosing not to have any controls over the business.

If you are arguing that FTX is to be treated like Barings Bank, I suggest you’re arguing that SBF was malicious, and ought to do jail time.

SBF added a backdoor so that even their own poor internal auditing would not log him shuffling customer money out of FTX into Alameda.

That's not incompetence. I know what I call it, and it starts with "alleged".

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