The fact that a person can spend a life in jail without having physically hurt another person is grotesque, though his case is obviously not the most egregious.
I’m also not sure why there’s a sense that the crime has to be violent to deserve such a sentence. Imagine if I methodically went house to house, ensuring everyone was safely out of it, and then liquidated the house until there was naught but a hole. And I did that thousands and thousands of times.
Is a life sentence about punishing people for causing harm? Or is it about preventing future harm?
We already see that calculus in many corporate wrongdoings. It is not beneficial for the rule of law.
A number of the victims of Madoff's fraud committed suicide. Sure, Madoff didn't pull the trigger.
But he sure as hell enticed them to put their life savings with him, and when they were retired, had no real prospects of any new income, and were suddenly destitute with no hope of recovery, Madoff sure put them in that utterly hopeless situation, with the same end result as if he had pulled the trigger.
As they say: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.".
Many people are relieved and rightly so, that Madoff spent the remainder of is days and died in prison.
Same for SBF.
He has physically hurt people. There will undoubtedly be a body count which can directly be associated to SBF's actions.
He have made lots of people losing years of their life. It’s fair for him to lose his.
Morally, hurting people is categorically worse than stealing money.
That's also not a fact. It's just something people sometimes agree on. But it's not always a useful crutch.
See the other replies like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789096 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34788866 They explain what I was trying to express better.
Regarding number 2 - what happens when the money you steal was necessary for someone to survive, or causes such disruption and heartache to enough people, it adds up to more than if someone died?
Right now, things are abstracted enough, we just can't see the actual impact of these large frauds. But it's not uncommon for someone to commit suicide, marriages to end in divorce, kids to be severely impacted (sorry, no College fund for you anymore!), etc.
I Would rather be a victim of violence whose effects disappears after week (i.e. no long-term effects) than victim of theft of money equal to my yearly income.
Ironically for SBF, Effective Altruism itself equates such actions with murder (or at least manslaughter). And his actions were culpable too. This was not an accident or a misunderstanding or human error or bad luck. He stole (and squandered) billions.