Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

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> The amount of comments in here who think that SBF is going to walk away scot free is unbelievable. I guess it goes to show how low trust is in the legal system.

I think it's history that shows this and builds this low trust. The 2008-2009 housing and economic crisis had effectively no prosecutions that came to fruition. Bury things in sufficient complexity, and it's easy to get away with it. The thing about Elizabeth Holmes is that she wasn't actually wealthy or powerful. That's why she's going to prison, which to be clear, I agree with but I also think a lot of financial criminals belong in prison. Sam Bankman-Fried is in that same boat, but he does seem to have some strange connections that are a little more engrained than the board members Holmes had. So we'll see. I think he'll be prosecuted and likely go to jail, but I also see it maybe just not happening. I just wish we'd see the same reckoning for other fraudsters who are bit better in hiding their malfeasances.

> The 2008-2009 housing and economic crisis had effectively no prosecutions that came to fruition.

Because it was not a crime at that point to bet against common sense.

> Bury things in sufficient complexity, and it's easy to get away with it.

Yes, but that's why there's the whole system of independent government institutions, staffed by specialists, and they are supposed to understand the complex aspects of economy/society, recommend specific actions, warn legislators, publish summary statistics, ask for better tools, etc.

And as is tradition these institutions are themselves used as political tools, are suffering from regulatory capture, are underfunded, and ineffective.

Just as the SEC was "asleep" the FDA/FTC was too.

*But* it's very important to not forget that, even though everyone wants magically better institutions, just making laws stricter and other "brute force" solutions don't lead to better institutions, they lead to more government control over society, which is rarely a net positive.

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> I just wish we'd see the same reckoning for other fraudsters who are bit better in hiding their malfeasances.

Yeah, but that's mostly consumer protection. Which is soooo laughably missing nowadays. Amazon gets away with filling the planet with junk. People already don't want to spend effort on safety if it would come at the cost of some individualism.

> I think it's history that shows this and builds this low trust. The 2008-2009 housing and economic crisis had effectively no prosecutions that came to fruition

They must have been busy prosecuting and seazing assets from thousands of debtees.

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