The problem isn't that a rich guy can make bail. The real issue is that so many poor people are trapped by bail bonds they can not meet or which put extreme financial strain on a family that is barely making it to begin with.
Part of it is that the bail bond industry can afford lobbyists, and probably a bigger part is that "tough on crime" grandstanding by politicians is nearly always a winning strategy. It is too easy to claim a politician that advances any kind of reform will be pilloried as someone who is trying to put savage criminals back on the street, your street.
To play devil's advocate, extremely high profile white collar criminals like SBF are objectively less likely to reoffend while on bail in a way that would harm regular citizens than someone arrested for any violent or gang-related crime. His victims deserve justice too, but the odds of him defrauding more people while on bail now that this is widely known, he's under constant surveillance, and his/FTX's assets are frozen, is incredibly low.
Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes and the like are all scumbags, but if you give me the choice between living next to them, or someone arrested for almost any other crime, I'm picking the fraudster that depended on their now ruined public image to defraud people.
You conveniently cite heinous crimes such as robbery and assault.
One third of incarcerated folks in the US are there for possession charges. Not intent to distribute, just possession. No bail hence incarceration. How is a person carrying weed a bigger threat to society than a scammer like SBF?
This is a common myth. The percentage of people locked up in the US for drug offenses in general is only 20%. The share of those there specifically for possession is much lower still:
I guess it's a question of personal interpretation - but to me those two numbers aren't different enough to quibble over. Also, given that this is about bail, not convictions, it's at least arguable (right?) that the proportional arrest numbers are more relevant than the proportional incarceration numbers.
In any case: it's clearly a minority, yet a sizable one.
> I guess it's a question of personal interpretation - but to me those two numbers aren't different enough to quibble over.
Which two numbers? The only number I quoted is 20%, and that's for all drug inmates, not just possession. We don't have the numbers for possession, but they're surely much, much lower.
I meant the numbers you quoted. The site you link to does have some numbers on pretrial detention, and by the looks of it drug-related offenses there too are a minority of those jailed, but a sizable one. They're careful to list various caveats, so let's not overinterpret the numbers; there may be overlap or overcounting; and if you're trying to discern possession vs. other drug related offenses surely that's yet another wrinkle which a cursory skim doesn't answer anyhow.
This is a straw man. The person you replied to never suggested that a person carrying weed is a bigger threat than a scammer.
To return to topic: yes, a person arrested for carrying weed is more likely to do the same again while on bail than this guy is to repeat his fraud while on bail. The fact that it makes no sense to incarcerate people for small time weed possession is a completely different matter.
If you're buying weed and you trust your supplier who just got bailed then you'll keep buying from him. Don't think anybody is looking to invest with SBF right now so his opportunity to repeat offend is much less.
I think at-w’s point still stands - a neutered fraudster is amongst the least likely to reoffend or pose danger. Now, flight risk might be another matter.
With flight risk being accounted for in his bail being set at $250 million, surrendering his passport, and agreeing to remain confined in his parents' home. Those are incredibly strict bail terms for any crime, and clearly factor in his immense wealth.
I'm not sure the 250$ million is relevant here - he did not have to post anything like that, so if he's willing to throw his parents under the bus and rates his chances of escape highly he can leave without ever paying that bail.
Additionally, an interesting question with regards to money is if he's stashed some of those customer funds somewhere. If he has, then even 250 million wouldn't necessarily be an insurmountable barrier since billions are missing. Of course regardless of whether he has access to such stolen funds he'd never need to post the bail as it's unsecured; he'd either abscond and not pay 250 million, or stay and not need to pay in the first place.
> so if he's willing to throw his parents under the bus and rates his chances of escape highly he can leave without ever paying that bail.
Suppose he owns the $400+ million in Robinhood equity that he, FTX, and others are currently in a legal battle over. That asset would be within the reach of the automatic default judgement in favor of government that comes with bail forfeiture, even if SBF had fled to a country without extradition.
> One third of incarcerated folks in the US are there for possession charges.
This is a wildly inaccurate stat, where on earth did you get it? The number of people sentenced on just a simple possession charge is minuscule. Almost always, it's because the underlying crime was violating their parole/probation from a different charge in the course of the arrest.
Likes of SBF or Holmes should be punished more harshly. They had access to all the resources in the world, the resources poor people dont even know exist. They were educated from the institutes not everyone can afford. They never had to worry about next meal. They have all the high profile contacts. And what did they choose to do? To fraud people. Your comment simply reeks of elitism. Imagine a poor all clean chap comes to you for a job. You wouldn't offer him any, given the logic in your comment. What will he do next? Commit another crime. Most common people dont commit crime out of choice. They are forced to commit crimes again and again.
In Most cases, it is the society which forces them to do shit. The same is not true for SBF or Holmes. They chose to fraud people out of choice.
Indeed, serious fraudsters can be worse than some violent offenders. But your whole comment is pointless and ignorant because bail is not supposed to be punishment. Bail is to secure the person’s reappearance at court and, especially when it is denied, to protect the public from a dangerous person. Punishment comes after you’re found guilty.
So is having to contest a criminal trial at all. But the alternative is to have people flee before their trial, or continue to terrorize the public. The right to a speedy trial is the backstop to all this.
What’s your objective definition of someone’s likelihood of reoffending? Further, he still has phone and Internet privileges — does this impulsive man even seem like he can help himself?
I base that estimation on his offense being entirely reliant on a corporation (whose assets are now frozen), his own personal reputation (which is now destroyed), and his crime not alleged to involve violence in any form.
Morally, I think people like Madoff are worse than many gang members or low-level violent criminals. That doesn't change the fact that they are far less of an immediate threat to the people around them, particularly now that they have been exposed. A confidence scam fraudster who has been exposed is a bit like a paraplegic murderer. They may be morally reprehensible, but they're effectively unlikely to reoffend in a few months awaiting trial.
If you honestly would rather live next to the average person arrested for assault or robbery than Bankman-Fried while both await trial, be my guest, but you can probably understand why others might feel differently.
Like many things, cash bail is effectively "discriminatory" in that it tends to hurt poor criminals more than white collar ones. That still doesn't mean discrimination is the primary reason it exists, or that that somehow negates any of its benefits.
> Morally, I think people like Madoff are worse than many gang members or low-level violent criminals
Out of curiosity, why do you think this? Grand theft of wealth based on fraud doesn't strike me as morally worse than gangbanging, armed robbery, human trafficking, etc.
(To detail my own calibration, I would say someone like Henry Kissinger is morally worse than low-level criminals. Typically I think it goes theft < violence < warmongering, etc.)
Off the top of my head I'd look at who their crime affected and to what degree, why the perpetrator did it, whether it was premeditated or done in the spur of the moment, what other options the perpetrator had, etc.
Someone who is intellectually mediocre, grows up around violent scumbags, and ends up robbing others instead of working a job is reprehensible, but I would say less so than a Bernie Madoff who was already wealthy, highly capable, and decided to defraud people of their life savings over decades. Madoff is not someone like Martin Shkreli bullshitting wealthy investors out of some portion of their wealth, he's someone who ruined people's lives.
People often discount "economic" crimes that they can't directly see the harms of, like insurance fraud, welfare fraud, tax cheating, corruption etc. That's easy to do in places like the US, but becomes more obviously problematic in places like Southern Italy or Argentina whose economies have gradually been destroyed by a widespread acceptance of corruption, cheating and "economic" crimes.
Not GP but I might throw in my opinion. While you focused on the crime itself GP focused on the person committing the crime.
That way I can agree to both of you. While the crime of fraud is less morally wrong than armed robbery to me, the person committing the robbery very likely has a very different background and less choices. It might seem to be the only way to feed their family or a very natural way as they were grown up with it. While for fraud its about having more and more money, mostly for living a luxury life.
Rationally, this all ought to make sense. But, somehow, people still flock back to the confident fraudsters, even when they know they're fraudsters.
There was a guy in Russia who became famous as the organizer of the largest financial pyramid in the country's history; it all fell apart very publicly, with many people losing their savings, and the guy was on the run for years until finally caught and convicted in yet another highly publicized court. That's it, right?
But literally as soon as he was out of prison, he starts a new company. Same exact name as before. And he openly advertised it as a financial pyramid this time! One year later, he walked away with millions more. And they couldn't even sue him for it because he was completely honest about the finances!
Then he went on to do the same shit but with crypto in other countries: India, China, Nigeria, Peru, Ghana, Thailand...
It wouldnt surprise me if somehow a substantial part of the population is convinced he did nothing wrong, is being prosecuted by the reptiles/deepstate/etc, and would gladly hand him over more money. The past years have shown that we cant rely on common sense.
Agreed on the basic point that he won't win any more confidence games.
I think the main thing is that we haven't seen what he might do now that he knows for sure that he's (by default) headed for a lifetime in jail.
It seems that before the arrest, he was pretty delusional / "high on his own supply" and believed he was going to somehow talk his way out of trouble, as he'd ostensibly been doing for so long.
So the thought experiment now is: do we believe that there's anything nefarious that he could do now, that he'd stopped himself from doing back when he was still trying to maintain an illusion?
For example, he could have various wallet private keys (secretly?) memorized [1], and could take steps to move the funds to new wallets.
TBH the idea that his (fiat) transactions are limited to $1k is a little laughable for someone who until recently, and perhaps still, has access to billions in crypto.
Don't the bail conditions forbid all financial transactions, even if they are in some shitcoin? Touching his wallets would violate that. So he could move funds around, but risk bankrupting his parents in doing so. The ultra-high bail means it would be hard for him to compensate them.
It's a possibility. But the way I understand it, he thought he was somehow above board with what he was doing. At least recoverable, eventually above board. Having dark wallets would not have been consistent with that.
Of course, that's what he wants me to think. I'm ready to learn that my take is too naive. But so far, evidence of a bigger plot is missing for me.
They also are objectively more likely to have the means to flee out of jurisdiction. If a criminal is deemed extremely likely to commit violent crime on bail, they simply shouldn't get bail, the amount they pay or are able to should be moot
>They also are objectively more likely to have the means to flee out of jurisdiction.
That is explicitly factored into the decision of whether to grant bail and determining flight risk. It's probably not going out on a limb to say SBF's $250 MILLION dollar bail had something to do with his wealth and the flight risk it presented, and isn't standard procedure.
>If a criminal is deemed extremely likely to commit violent crime on bail, they simply shouldn't get bail, the amount they pay or are able to should be moot
This is also how it works right now. Sometimes established systems have gotten some things right in their thousands of years of development, even when they're not perfect. Presumably nobody's arguing the pudgy crypto fraudster who has never been so much as accused of a violent crime is "extremely likely to commit violent crime on bail."
What about a non-violent crime? Let's say guy is breaking into cars. Police catches him (they don't anymore, but let's assume they did). He probability that he's going to do the same is about 100% as soon as he is out. And tbh, there's no reason for him not to - if they are going to ever get him to court, he's going to jail anyway, he can't afford a decent lawyer, but in the meantime he'd need to live somehow. So there's little reason for him not to re-offend immediately.
> are objectively less likely to reoffend while on bail in a way that would harm regular citizens
I'm not so sure that's true... do you have data to support that? I can think of some counter examples pretty easily off the top of my head -- Billy McFarland, Michael Avenatti, etc.
Comments like this are really bizarre. It's like asking for "data" that says looking both ways before crossing the street is a good idea and reduces the frequency of pedestrian fatalities. Your two examples further OP's point. Those two people are asshole fraudsters, but they don't present a physical danger to people around them.
> Comments like this are really bizarre. It's like asking for "data" that says looking both ways before crossing the street is a good idea and reduces the frequency of pedestrian fatalities.
Since when is it "bizarre" to ask someone if they've based their assertion off of hard data? I replied to at-w's fairly remarkable claim that white collar criminals are less likely to harm people while out on bail than non-white collar criminals. That assertion is not a forgone conclusion like the wisdom of "look both ways before you cross the street". Clearly it's reasonable to ask the poster if they're basing their assertion off of some hard data.
> Those two people are asshole fraudsters, but they don't present a physical danger to people around them.
We're talking about the propensity to harm others while out on bail. Harm is not limited to physical harm. The two examples I gave were of white collar criminals who continued to defraud/extort others while they were out on bail.
Comments like this are bizarre. If the claim is that a) is objectively true then you'd better have data to back up that claim otherwise your claim is not objective.
The question was "likely to reoffend". Somehow you reduced this to "present a physical danger". SBF is not accused of physically endangering people, so the term "reoffend" is not a reference to physical violence. It's a reference to defrauding people (the thing he's accused of right now). Your parent already posted examples like Billy McFarland, who immediately go on to defraud more people when they are let out on the street. This very obviously is a danger with SBF as well.
It's hard to believe that the likelihood of a criminal reoffending in the period awaiting trial (what bail relates to) is higher for someone who depends on committing violent crimes to support themselves than someone that's followed around by the media constantly, depends on their now ruined reputation to run their scam, and has never even been alleged to have committed any violent crime?
I believe many/most white collar criminals are morally reprehensible people who often deserve far greater punishment than even violent criminals for the harm that they do. That doesn't change the fact that in the generally brief period awaiting trial, they are far less of an immediate threat to those around them than even a low-level violent criminal.
Oh god Avenatti that scummly little weasel who somehow became the darling of corporate press and twitter and talk shows? I can't believe so many fell for that so badly, there were even "serious" opinion pieces from these hacks out there about how he should run for president. It was obvious just about by looking at him that he was a grifter.
He was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the media saw him (and the Daniels case) as a way to finally take down Trump, so of course they didn't look any deeper into who he was than necessary.
The fact that bail bonds are even a private industry... ...I don't get it.
In my country, technically there's a bail bond of $500 due to an archaic law, advanced to you by the Police, and you have to pay them it if you breach bail conditions.
In reality, if you breach bail, your arrest will become high priority, and you're very likely going into the remand wing once arrested until you can appear in front of a judge, and then you'll also be facing a charge for breaching bail, in addition to the charges you already faced.
And breaching bail is an offense that nearly guarantees that the judge will remand you into custody until your trial date, which could be 3 - 6 months away.
So there's no need for monetary bonds, because the existing consequences are severe enough.
You can pay your bail yourself. Say a judge gives you a $5k bail. You give the government 5k and they hold it until your case is complete. Then they either return it or they deduct your fines etc from it and return anything left.
Most people don’t do this. They go to a bail bond company, which charges them $500 and then puts up the 5k for them. They get the 5k back when the defendant shows up and keep the $500.
People do skip out on bail pretty regularly, so there’s no guarantee the bondsman gets his money back. But he’s invested in finding the skipper at least as much as the government. At least in theory. The US generally doesn’t go after people very hard for skipping out on bail, they just wait until you get detained for some other crime and then arrest you for having a warrant out. Well, sometimes they still let you go after that.
Most Western’s police forces are completely dysfunctional. France isn’t able to deport a non-French imam performing hate speech on French soil and living at the same address for months[1]. Police and prison forces are often caught performing lip service against both terrorism or white collar crime, practically all the cases of terrorism now include an attacker who has been liberated 2 to 50 times after murder attempts[2], and police/prison forces seem to be using law to excuse liberating obviously-dangerous people rather than using law to keep them in.
So, the theory that if you break bail, you become arrestable, needs to meet actual practices in that country. Let’s hope the US govt sees enough political interest in finishing SBF to actually ensure he doesn’t flee.
Hmm, true. Often in my country bail conditions involve a curfew usually from 9 or 10pm, and Police will turn up at your stated address at 10:01pm, and if you're not there, boom, breached, arrest warrant.
But, given the fragmented nature of policing in the US, I can see how what works here might not work there.
I think the worse effect of the bail loan system is that for anyone who doesn't have enough cash on hand to cover it now has to pay the loan fee (or sit in jail and miss work, etc). If your bail is $100K and you need to take out a loan for it, that's $10K out of pocket regardless of whether or not you're found guilty. I would guess that half the people in this thread could just pay it and walk, and for the other half it would be devastating.
The problem is bail though. Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy.
No, the problem is not conditional release (bail), or even the financial penalty (bail amount) that is assigned in advance in the even the conditions are broken.
The particular conditions may be problematic, especially when they (say) require, in practice, either a deposit or other security in the full value of the potential penalty or a contract with a licensed bail agent (which some states, and the federal system, generally do not.) But…
> Bail bondsman are a life saver to a person who can’t afford their bail and have to work in the morning. Obviously being rough comes with the job, but most bondsman aren’t villains they provide a service during a time of bad policy.
…except that bail bondsmen are a major force lobbying state governments for the policies which create the need. They are working very hard to set up, and preserve, the conditions that make them seem like lifesavers.
It's easier to take away than to give and help. So I don't blame them for that mentality, but it would definitely be great if society worked to lift the poor up more.
It is absolutely not easier to take away than to help. When trying to take away you must fight the will of those you plan to deprive. Whereas while helping you can often expect cooperation.
It’s great to lift up the poor, but up to what extent? Poor will still be poor, so what’s an acceptable amount of poor we should allow where they just have to deal with it?
>Lift up as many people as possible. It’s a fallacy to think that there must be poor people.
To illustrate this point, in our current era of the mega rich, we also have record low levels of poverty.
Wealth isn't a zero sum game. It's possible (but not always the case) for a billionaire to create more than a billion dollars of wealth for other people.
Wealth is not a zero sum game. But it is not possible for one person to create a billion dollars of wealth for other people. What creates wealth is actual productive labor, not some kind of vision.
If one person creates a new process to make $3 widgets cost $2 and sells a billion of them, while paying his manufacturers $1 per widget, he made $1 billion dollars and each of their 1 billion customers are $1 wealthier.
What happens in practice is that one guy in a lab invents a new process in exchange for his paycheck, and then some very different guy in a suit gets to collect the money off that invention.
Probably not technically due to poor being a relative term but we have a lot of discussion these days about housing for the poor which is obviously important but there's a lot less talk about the poor starving (and really, there's more talk about the poor having an unhealthy amount of calories). I think it's important to keep perspective that we are actually making great progress on providing a higher quality of life for the worst off.
It's true that there will always be a lowest class as long as there's income. Currently, in the US there's a percentage that skip meals, heat/A/C etc or work multiple jobs. OP might be referring to minimizing or eliminating the necessities those people go without.
Yes. Standards change over time. The acceptable level of poverty is not something morally objective, but rather dependent on the available technology/energy/capital.
But then you're back to the original question: is eradicating all poverty even possible?
A tech like AC is not available to everyone all at once. It starts out very expensive and gets cheaper over time. It may end up cheap enough that it can be ubiquitous, but before that point there must be a time that only most people can afford it.
If you then include it in the must-have category before the point of ubiquitousness, you will never get rid of poverty. Whereas if you include it after the point it's a pointless exercise, because everyone that wants one already has it.
Yes, to some degree we'll always be lifting the bottom line up as the top line rises. That said, we're not doing that now; right now we're still trying to get people fed and supply shelters.
If the "standard" for poor is changing over time, then the goal of eradicating poverty can never be achieved. For me, it has to be static: Basic shelter, food, health, and safety. It's a set of criteria that I believe most reasonable and non-idealistic people can agree on to be a universal starting point.
The fact that we're not providing the above basics universally to all citizens right now, as a matter of priority above all else, is a damning critique of government and one of the main reasons that set me down the path of anarcho-capitalist thought.
There are a few points that could be made. The primary point is that even though they might score low on some metric, the people of Bhutan are pretty much all well-off and happy. The king decreed democracy not long ago. It's a kind of "existence proof" that people can pretty much be alright.
Consider a couple of other stats from that site:
> the proportion of population with access to electricity in 2020 was 100%.
Sure, but that’s the answer to “can poor people more or less be alright “. Which while interesting is orthogonal to the question of “can a society exist with no poor people”.
Fair enough, but I feel that, at that point, we're getting into semantic weeds over the definition of "poor", eh?
For concreteness, I'll say that I would define "poor" as not having the capability to satisfy the lower tiers of Maslow's hierarchy. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ) By that standard Bhutan isn't poor despite being technically a Third World nation.
I think it’s axiomatically true that if you change definitions at will then anything can mean anything. I don’t think that’s useful for enhancing understanding.
Depends on your definition of poor. If bottom 20% is poor as per some definitions, then you’ll always have poor.
If it’s enough calories and roof other your head… Then we have very few true poor. Especially if we don’t include those who are there due to choice and/or mental illness.
> If it’s enough calories and roof other your head… Then we have very few true poor. Especially if we don’t include those who are there due to choice and/or mental illness.
I mean if we are only using the most convenient definition it's easy to say we have few poor people. If you are eating only rice everyday in your rusting trailer somewhere in the Midwest, you're poor.
And yeah, when that happens, your mental health is not going to be great.
There’s no convenient or not definition. But we have to agree on one before we start discussing if we can fix it. If we define poverty as defining bellow median, we won’t ever get rid of it.
Mental health as in mental health issues making people make decisions where they end up on the streets. Many homeless people were living normal lives when their mental health deteriorated.
People up to middle class generally have money issues. There's probably some level of deeper assessment the court could do to determine impact if people are willing to share financials.
At the end of the day, the goal is to create enough incentive for someone to stay and face justice. Anything that furthers that goal without marginalizing people is a good start.
This chain so far is disdainfully reductive. Resource scarcity creates a zero-sum game, so you can't give without taking. People aren't trying to punish rich people so much as force their hand into helping those that they rest so comfortably upon, given the total lack of meaningful initiative.
The best we get is this "effective altruism" bullshit, which is just regular billionaire puppetry with a shiny new coat.
No, things (e.g. transactions in the economy, contracts that get signed, tax & transfer payments, etc) are almost never zero-sum. They are usually positive-sum, and sometimes very negative-sum. Almost never zero-sum.
They appear to be zero-sum if you only focus on the raw dollars that change hands in a transaction. But they're not zero-sum in the utility that's created, which is what matters for any meaningful analysis.
What resources are the rich hoarding? Does Elon Musk own 500 pairs of pants that could otherwise have clothed other poor men? Is he hoarding 500 tons of grain that should be released to starving country? He burns tons of jet fuel, literally, but so do an equivalent load of 300 vacationers on a jet to a holiday destination (and they do not produce the same GDP increase, to boot). Is Jeff Bezos monopolizing the I-5 freeway, SeaTac airport, or clean air in Seattle? What are these resources that are being 'hoarded' by the rich and denied to poor people exactly? And how is an average American living in a 2000 sq ft house 'hoarding' a resource a homeless person could be living in? Should the average American take in a homeless person so that his 'hoarding' of resources is lessened or alleviated?
They’re hoarding capital instead of distributing it to their workers. Furthermore, they’re utilizing shared resources for their companies profit without paying proportionally.
Wrong on that score too. To 'hoard' capital is to take it and put it in the equivalent of a mattress. I assure you, the family offices of these billionaires are doing anything but hoarding capital: huge chunks of it are invested in various vehicles. And the idea that billionaires should simply give away their wealth to their workers is widespread, but wishful thinking. The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society.
> The average person who wins a lottery (the equivalent of the recipient of a billionaire's largesse that you envision) pisses it all away in a few years, rarely deploying it for his own benefit, let alone that of society.
I want to point out that first of all, this isnt even a good comparison, because nobody is talking about just giving people a massive lump sum of cash. Its about putting the money back into the workers creating it, as well as public welfare systems to ensure future safety nets.
And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy.
That's called taxation, and the billionaires you are referring to pay all the taxes that are due. None are behind on any tax bills AFAIK.
Of course it is easy to say 'put money back into workers creating it'. But the labor market is just that - a market, and no-one is being forced to give away their labor for free or less than it's worth.
If the tax code is riddled with tens of thousands of exceptions that incentivise a gazillion different behaviours, again, that's the will of the people asserting itself via the tax code. It's much harder to unpick those, right? Thus the highly enlightened conversation about making billionaries illegal and such.
> And second of all, even if we just gave the money away and people "pissed it away", the money is still being circulated and put back into the economy.
Yeah, that worked out great and totally did not result in historically high inflation that will now cause a recession with massive job losses (thus hurting the cause of the workers it purports to support). Also, the inflation is totally not a tax that will be paid mostly by poor people or those on fixed incomes.
They're not hoarding grain or iron or silicon or network bandwidth - in fact the only reason they got rich in the first place is because they allocated these physical resources effectively to serve a wide group of people. (See AWS for example. The average computer runs at maybe 10% utilisation for 2 hours a day; whereas theirs are at a high utilisation 24/7.)
As you rightly said, the things that Bezos, Musk and Gates are "hoarding" is capital in the literal sense.
Their net worth isn't made of gold coins sitting in a swimming pool doing nothing, but car factories, server farms and massive logistics networks.
The US Budget was $1.65 Trillion. If a couple billion fed every hungry child in the country (and yes, it would), childhood hunger would be a solved problem. And in the US, it mostly is a solved problem because of a combination of state and federal benefits that deploy money towards feeding and heating needs of poor families. There is also a child tax credit that outright put money in the hands of families with children (last year, I think?). All of that is already happening without your proposed (forced) transfer of the 1%'s wealth to their workers.
It's very easy to demand accountability of billionaires and supremely difficult to collectively hold our political leaders responsible. The law doesn't require billionaires to be accountable to the general public beyond obeying laws and paying taxes that are due, but our public representatives have higher standards to live up to, and our focus should be on them, not billionaires. All the wealth of American billionaires would add up to a couple years' federal budgets (or perhaps less than a year of federal and the top 4 populous states' budgets).
EDIT: The City of Los Angeles apparently spends ridiculous amounts of money on a per-person basis to 'solve' the homelessness problem (https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...). This is just one example of ridiculous rent-seeking government bureaucracy and nonprofit hucksters. Money is not the problem, lack of accountability is.
What are you talking about? Are you claiming that redistributing wealth doesn't redistribute resources? If not, what is the actual claim you're making?
- The recipients get a greater share of existing resources.
- The changed demand changes supply accordingly. So there might be fewer private jets produced but more food produced, for instance. Thus future production changes too, and the economy is reshaped.
In GP's example, capitalism has made food production cheaper and less labor intensive so that more people can get it, relatively.
But for me, your example is capitalism in the sense that people do it of their own free will. They give up their time and resources to help others without coercion or compulsion. Capitalism is freedom to me, and a natural state that exists outside of the state where people can interact freely with one another. What they do with it is another question entirely.
Others, however, equate capitalism with greed and evil though.
Human nature to help one another doesn't exist because of capitalism though. In tight-knit Amish communities for example, communities come together and help each other out. Or under feudalism, for example, I'm sure people still helped out other people with no coercion from time to time.
What? You're talking about a dude who's net worth is sufficient to purchase the entire state of Wyoming (land and structures) and you're, with a straight face, going to insinuate no hoarding is taking place? Fascinating.
Ah, the good old fixed pie fallacy. Too bad it's a complete bunk. It'd be so easy if we could just break into Elon Musk's house, take out all the resources he is hoarding and distribute it among the hungry and end the poverty forever. Some people even tried something like that. Many times, in many countries. Nothing but a lot of blood (and I mean A LOT), a lot of poverty and a lot of suffering comes out of it. Some of those countries are still suffering from the consequences of these solutions, and probably will many years ahead.
You're completely wrong. Redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor works wonderfully. It's called the welfare state, and countries that do it best not only have much lower poverty than the US, they invariably have greater GDP per capita per hour worked than the US too.
Redistribution does not rely on fixed pie fallacy. The idea that the root of poverty is "hoarding" does.
Also, somehow you seem to be under an impression that the US does not implement the welfare state paradigm. Did you ever look at the budget and see how much is spent on mandatory and discretionary welfare programs? The fact that it did not fix poverty should give you an idea that maybe it's not Elon Musk being too greedy that is the problem here.
The root of poverty is hoarding. Poverty is a shortage of money - we can fix it redistributing money from rich to poor, but we don’t do this because rich people don’t want that and would rather hoard it.
The US has some good welfare state elements, but overall it’s very bad and far inferior to places that do it well. The consequence is vastly higher poverty rates.
Taking money from people who aren't spending it and giving it all to people who will spend it all immediately doesn't fix poverty. It just causes hyperinflation.
No it doesn’t. The Nordics don’t suffer from hyperinflation, in spite of their much larger welfare states.
Redistribution increases demand in the short term, but in the longer term production shifts accordingly to match. Which really is the whole point: Changing the economy to produce more of what ordinary people need.
The origin of the entire opioid epidemic comes from a company looking to enrich itself. You can't raise the bottom when the top is pushing the folks at the bottom, drowning them and taking the life vests from them to sell for pennies.
> It's perfectly possible to think that some ways of generating wealth for yourself are immoral, without thinking that all such ways are immoral.
Ironically, SBF's mom wrote about that and even made a claim that if se has any sense self awareness would make her question her entire career given how her son and his colleagues turned out [0]:
> The reality is that we are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck. The differences among us are differences of degree that do not admit of categorical division into the normal and the abnormal. A morally serious inquiry into the requisite meaning of free will needs to face some basic facts about this society—for starters, that in the United States parental income and education are the most powerful predictors of whether a three-year-old will end up in the boardroom or in prison; that most abusive parents were themselves victims of abuse and neglect; that the norms of one’s peer group when growing up are powerful determinants of behavior; and that traits of emotional reactivity and impulsiveness, which have a large genetic component, are among the more robust predictors of criminal behavior. Such an inquiry would also need to address what evidence would suffice to conclude that Smith could have behaved differently. Is it enough that someone in a similar situation once pulled herself up by her own bootstraps? That the average person does? And how can we be sure that the situations are in fact similar in relevant ways?
> The origin of the entire opioid epidemic comes from a company looking to enrich itself. You can't raise the bottom when the top is pushing the folks at the bottom, drowning them and taking the life vests from them to sell for pennies.
Furthermore, it was the Sacklar family who used it's wealth to protect its self from personal liability, despite it being a family operation, and avoided some much needed Civil lawsuits in order to put harsher Corporate Laws in place and instead let Perdue pharma take the bulk of the fines [0] and they only had to kick some in an offer a contrite apology for all the death and misery they profit(ed) from.
I'm as anti-CCP as they come and I'm very vocal about it, and I see them as an illegitimate group of thugs and cronies who should be overthrown; but to think that US Pharma, with the help of paying politicians for favourable laws isn't to blame for the opioid crisis is outright delusional.
Moreover, its been suggested by those with ties with the major Mexican drug cartels who supply the US--and have added precautions to help ID contamination--that the rise in fentaynol is coming from domestic sources as poverty has risen dramatically since COVID and made things worse for so many, and thus US based drug dealers (be it of American, Chinese or Russian lineage) have been cutting their drugs with them in order to either stretch them as demand has exceeded supply due to the wide reach [1] on social media as a lucrative but short-lived cash grab, or in order to attract more serious addicts who built tolerances is a more likely scenario than the CCP trying it's hand at re-creating the addiction tactics used in the Sino-Anglo war--they're too busy destroying it's economy and rattle-sobering in the Taiwan straight.
This says it all:
> “Drug dealers are using American innovation to sell lethal products,” executive director Paul DelPonte wrote. “Social media platforms bear some responsibility for these deaths.”
Honestly, it's as if the core story of Breaking Bad, which was a dramatized critique of social divides within the US medical system, law enforcement and hyper crony Capitalist system, has been entirely forgotten despite it being a land mark series of the 2010's that exposed some of the obvious hypocrisy of the US Society.
The truth is if the US had any real interest in solving any of this, they'd likely offer free testing of drugs for users without punishment but since it mainly affects poorer people they really have no interest in doing so since the war on drugs, and homelessness is such a cash cow to funnel public funds into NGOs and non-profits; ironically the very website/DNM the FBI took down (Silkroad) had a reputation system to solve this in addition to a licensed Chemist (Dr.X) who DPR paid [2] to keep it's members safe and who is now serving multiple life sentences in a Super Max prison for doing something innovative to reduce unnecessary deaths and violence in drug deals and a pubic health service!
Ross was many things, naive most above everything else, but this goes to show that it isn't a lack of talent in the US to try and address the immense drug issue it has (and continues to get worse) but rather self-interest, regulatory capture and the Industrial Prison Complex an an entrenched legal system to blame.
It’s not like that anymore, at least in places like Seattle. Everyone gets bail, even if they skipped bail a few times already and have outstanding bench warrants. And of course, people in those situations aren’t rich people, but mostly the unhoused. The northwest bail fund in particular helps out even on minor bail that are handed down (which aren’t denied even if they’ve skipped bail on a few charges already).
How is skipping bail not an automatic jailable offense?
Anyway I looked up Washington law and it seems the problem is that everyone has a right to bail, even those who are a great risk to public safety. Judges should have some discretion here.
Cash bail is a horrible, unjust system, but some of the replacements that have popped up are no good either, especially because they make people think that cash bail is the solution and you end up with society regressing.
It appears judges hands are tied by Washington law. Only individuals accused of capital offenses can be denied bail. I agree, this is lunacy.
Yes, what California has done is you cannot set bail at an amount someone cannot post, but judges can deny bail for those deemed a public safety threat or those who have skipped bail. Individuals are assessed based on “risk to the community” and whether they get bail is based on that. Seems reasonable to me.
The issue is bail in general, if we run under the assumption of “innocent until proven guilt (as determined by a jury of peers)” then bail is immoral.
We could argue most people would make a run for it; I’d argue that a trial should be held more quickly. No prison time for more than it takes to schedule a case with a judge. Arrest the person, have a trial starting within a week or so (or don’t arrest).
Part of what happens today is, they set a high bail. Lock people up for months to years without a trial, then people agree to a plea deal before the trial starts. It’s a way around due process. Imo a direct violation of the 8th amendment.
Bail used to make a tad more sense when there wasn’t an organized police force but random citizens arresting you. You could post bail to farm for the season, or what have you. Then they’d have the trial when the judge held court again (after he farmed his fields).
I think bail is immoral, mostly. It should be replaced by a system where being let free is the default, but if you are deemed a threat to public safety, then no amount of money should secure your freedom (and you should have a right to contest such a ruling and a right to a speedy trial etc etc).
Ken's media partner Josh Barro sums this up in a way that makes a lot of sense to me:
This is, in various ways, unfair. But the point of the bail system isn’t doing
justice. It’s ensuring that people show up for trial.
I hear a lot of movie theater plots about SBF evading trial, but he's a goober, and whatever happens, he's going to wind up in prison, and the threads here about his bail are in retrospect going to read a little silly.
I agree it's not about doing justice. But I still think we need the overall system to be just. I don't object to pretrial people getting home confinement generally, and I can grudgingly accept it here on the theory that the Feds must be pretty sure he's not going to pull a Ghosn. [1] But I have real questions about exactly who isn't getting this kind of generous treatment.
Objective of the justice system is to give defendants who are presumed innocent as much Freedom as possible. The chances of I'm alleged white collars Criminal spinning up a new Ponzi scheme before their trial date is low.
The chance of a alleged drug Smuggler or violent Criminal reoffending before trial is higher.
While the justice system should be blind to the economic situation of the defendant, that doesn't mean it has to be blind to common sense
But if we just look at the chances of reoffending, I think confinement to one's parents house with an ankle bracelet and frequent checkins is more likely to prevent drug smuggling than further financial crimes. Most drug smugglers at least can recognize that what they did is a crime, so they appear to be ahead of SBF here.
And my question here is really not just about broad categories of crime, but about specifics of the situation. What do the stats look like for, say, cherubic and well spoken young white men from upper-class backgrounds compared with other groups? I know that I as a youth got away with a lot, and I suspect it was due to factors like that. Seeing SBF get the soft landing here makes me wonder how things go for people who don't look and sound like him.
applied in the sentiments here and in general also seems to the fact that everyone just believes that Sam Bankman Fried is guilty. he hasn't been proven as such yet, and the system exists as such for good reason. there are ample examples of people who have also been incarcerated while innocent
I am not sure if you are implying this, but Ghosn's case is far from clear-cut in the way that SBF's is.The hilarious implication that all the bad apples at Nissan were non-Japanese foreigners was far too convenient to be true.
What's definitely clear cut is that via an elaborate plan he fled the country to avoid getting any of those questions answered definitively, which is the part that concerns me in relation to SBF. As many people have mentioned, pretrial detention can't be about actual guilt, just the likelihood to show up to trial.
That's not a very useful bit of information, is it?
We'd expect a very high conviction rate in very bad systems because of corruption and because such systems might be meant just for show.
However, we'd also expect a very high conviction rate in very good systems. Before a case gets to trial in a very good system first it would be investigated by police. Only if the police think there is a worthwhile case would it go to prosecutors. Then some prosecutor has to decide they have enough evidence to stand a good chance of conviction. There would probably be more review taking into account overall prosecutorial load to make sure they won't be devoting limited resources to a case they might lose.
The only cases that reach trial should be cases that the prosecutor is very sure they will win, so of course we should see a high conviction rate if the prosecutors are competent.
It’s actually 99.8%. Yes, prosecutorial discretion can account for much of that, but you don’t get to 99.8% without something in the system being broken. Not all cases are cut and dry, some cases should go to trial and fail. 99.8% stretches credulity beyond reason. Japan is under criticism from human rights organizations for forced confessions, due to being able to interrogate suspects for weeks without them allowed to contact family or a lawyer. There is no right to remain silent. Even with the rights granted to suspects in the USA, forced confessions are common. In comparison, Japanese suspects don’t have a chance.
People with something to lose can be controlled through it. People with nothing to lose can only be controlled through violence. If you wish your use of violence to be limited by necessity and proportionality then you will be gentler with the rich.
If you wish to treat everyone the same then you must either use excessive violence in some cases, or accept that others are not going to be controlled.
It’s good that the courts use the more peaceful option of going after the defendant’s property instead of his person, when available. But obviously it’s only available when there’s property to go after.
The idea that only rich people have something to lose is a) ridiculously classist, and b) not applicable here: SBF supposedly doesn't have any money to lose, so by your logic we should be controlling him with violence.
SBF, regardless of the truth of his claim that he only has $100k in a particular bank account, almost certainly has anywhere from some to quite a lot of wealth to lose [0] (whether any of it is likely to remain after fines, forfeitures, etc. in the current criminal case is another story.)
[0] e.g., there is currently a legal dispute between SBF, FTX, and others over who owns a $400+ million stake in Robinhood.
Wealth isn’t just personal property in your own name or under your exclusive control. It’s almost always social, tied up in families, relationships, credit lines, trusts, companies, etc. And part of its power over you is your responsibilities toward and relationships with the others in its circle. You don’t want to be the guy who vaporizes your kid’s college fund. Or in SBF’s case, your parents’ house. Even if you technically have access to them when push comes to shove. (Maybe you think he would! But he found someone to place a very high stakes bet that he won’t).
It’s true that your access to resources in a pinch is not always aligned with cultural or consumption-based class markers. For example the family in Winter’s Bone clearly reads as poor, even though Jessup’s bond is paid-off house and acres of timber forest. Conversely, you could imagine a financier whose relationships are all burned and whose assets are all wiped out. But having something to lose is still going to be correlated with class on balance.
> But having something to lose is still going to be correlated with class on balance.
I look forward to seeing your data on that, but knowing plenty of both rich and poor people, I'm not going to assume it's correct. A lot of the poorest people I know are the ones richest in social ties. And vice versa, at least if we're counting the sort of meaningful ties that would make one more likely to stay in one place while the machinery of justice works.
This is exactly the right way to look at it. Especially when pretrial incarceration is maybe the single most effective tool for extracting a plea agreement (even from the wrongfully accused!)
Serious question: Would you like to increase the systems overreach by incarcerating people which can post a reasonable bond, but therefore make the system more fair?
People who have nothing have nothing to loose when dodging bond. Rich people have something to loose, so they can held by posting a bond. There's a tradeoff between making the system fair (nobody gets out of jail) and making the system as lenient as possible (people who can post bond get out - but be aware that quite a few innocent people await trial, which would then be jailed as well).
Poor people don't have money to go on the run to Costa Rica and live on a beach for the rest of their lives.
Is this even a real problem? It's not 1920 anymore you can't do anything without papers.
>But I have real questions about exactly who isn't getting this kind of generous treatment.
You've uncovered the unjust nature of the cash bail system as a whole. The efforts being made to get rid of it in California are a huge step forward toward making the system more equitable.
In retail stores, I’ve seen it with my own eyes all across the Bay Area.
It’s gone from occasional, ‘tries to hide it’ shoplifting to brazen ‘runs off with a shopping cart full of tools/baby food/electronics in the daylight daily’ in a handful of years.
Stores are changing their display practices to try to compensate (locking up anything over a certain dollar threshold), but it’s easy to bypass. Last week when talking to one guy (Home Depot in Santa Clara) while buying a power tool, he said they’d had over $14k taken in the last few weeks alone from that store. I’ve seen folks do the runs myself while picking up Electronics too. The staff just sighs, takes a note, and continues on with their day.
Notably, it seems like it’s co-ordinated. when talking to the staff, they say it’s a different person each time, but very frequent now. shrug
As long as we're using dueling anecdotes, I've lived in SF 20+ years, and as far as I can tell crime levels are about the same.
Is it possible that criminal groups are doing some organized shoplifting? I'd believe it. But this may be just a change in method for existing criminals. Or it may be that we're hearing about it more because it's a topic that has gained sudden media interest. In any case, that cuts against your theory that the cops don't care, because doing it in bulk or in an organized fashion will turn it from a misdemeanor to a felony, making cops much more interested. And indeed, SF just announced results from exactly that kind of operation: https://sfist.com/2022/12/16/sfpd-touts-60-arrests-in-new-re...
It makes it harder to keep them off the street, which makes departments deprioritize arresting people for those crimes. Same as 5150 for mentally unstable folks on the street. When it’s clearly a revolving door, folks stop trying to spend so much effort pushing people into it.
It’s often part of the same platform too - at least for Chesa Boudin.
It doesn't "make" departments deprioritize that. They choose it.
Note also you are once again conflating pre-trial detainment with post-trial punishment. People presumed innocent should not be generally kept off the streets.
Even given the (dubious and ineffective) goal of keeping people off the streets, a removal of cash bail would in theory make them work even harder, so that a) true repeat offenders would receive the sort of escalating penalties that would put them away for a long time, and b) people failing to abide by the terms of their non-cash bail would not be allowed back out again. So the end of cash bail should make them more dedicated.
But Boudin is material here. SF cops sandbagged on doing their job because they didn't like him. He was foursquare for a modicum police accountability and they hated that. And if you'd like to post nominal facts about the Boudin recall, please don't use ones from a publication wholly funded by one of the people who paid for the Boudin recall.
The retail stores are less able to handle shrink than they could before because they have serious competition from online sales.
They have tighter margins due to competition, so they lock stuff down more, leading to a much worse shipping experience, leading to more people shopping online. It's a death spiral.
There's certainly more reporting of shoplifting in SF in the last couple years, but it's only a part of the story, and evidently not a general trend, or we would see it in higher level statistics.
Covid was the biggest bail reform experiment in history. Typically for any non-violent crime in the US, people get ROR'd (released on own recognizance) so long as they don't have any outstanding warrants. Bail is for people that have a history of skipping court (outstanding warrants). During Covid, everyone got ROR'd regardless of outstanding warrants, because getting caught shoplifting and the cops find 3 points of meth in their pocket shouldn't be death sentence. Normally that type of person would be given a $5000 bail if this was their second time getting caught. If they were unemployed, they would dry out in jail and hopefully come out the other side on a better path. During covid everyone was released on zero bail. Homelessness and crime spiked across the US.
There are places that think it is a good idea to make covid bail policies permanent. The experiment is running now.
Even the Netflix documentary showed a short section on Ghosn's misuse of funds and not even on a large enough scale (Billions) to get such strong reaction by the Japanese justice system.
Plus I believe that any justice system that traces its roots on a past hierarchical system (ex: monarchy, dictatorship, communism) without any revolutions to change it is heavily biased & distorted from reality for other political inclinations.
The Ghosn thing is an aside; the relevant part is that he indisputably committed more crimes to avoid facing a trial.
As to the latter bit, I think that's all current justice systems. Certainly the one here in the US, which inherited English common law and then added on a two-tiered justice system for race-based slavery.
In Bahamas, there were stories of how awful the jail SBF was held is, but only one (iirc) managed to let out the kitty that he was held in infirmary, and not in the scary cells every story talked about.
One reason to stay within the law is that even due process can be a rather nasty experience, and generally to be avoided if possible. The threat of rape in US prisons is repeatedly referenced in "cultural products" coming out of LA. It is pretty odd when you think about it: systemic abuse is taking place and blockbuster films reference it and apparently the government doesn't care.
So sure, the bail is for preventing flight. It is not about justice. But ultimately the "justice system" is also not there to do "justice": it is ultimately there to insure societal stability and harmony. When a people get the sense that "the system" is stacked, and gives preferential treatment to special people, it undermines the very purpose of a justice system.
So tptacek, the justice people are talking about is simply the obvious this: If Joe Schmoe had pulled the scam of century, he would have had ample time to meet his cell mates in Bahamas in "scary prison", and, also get to know the fellows in cell block whatever over here, in the land of "sodomy in prison is a feature not a bug" USA.
>So sure, the bail is for preventing flight. It is not about justice. But ultimately the "justice system" is also not there to do "justice": it is ultimately there to insure societal stability and harmony. When a people get the sense that "the system" is stacked, and gives preferential treatment to special people, it undermines the very purpose of a justice system.
Okay, but what's the alternative here? Have a bail/trial by public opinion so the results are maximally aligned with what the public wants?
There's also the alternative of making the justice system more humane, but like you said:
>One reason to stay within the law is that even due process can be a rather nasty experience, and generally to be avoided if possible. The threat of rape in US prisons is repeatedly referenced in "cultural products" coming out of LA. It is pretty odd when you think about it: systemic abuse is taking place and blockbuster films reference it and apparently the government doesn't care.
The government doesn't care because the public doesn't care. It's hard to garner sympathy for suspects. I suspect that in the depictions you speak of, the thought that goes through the average audience's head is "criminal getting their just desserts", not "this is a failure of the criminal justice system because someone is effectively being punished before they're convicted".
Does that mean denying bail for everyone, or only for the people who are pariahs in the media (basically the "Have a bail/trial by public opinion" from my previous comment)?
The key issue is societal harm. For example above discusses bail considerations for serial rapists, etc. I pointed out that societal harm can also occur when a perception of distinct treatment for different classes of society reaches a critical threshold of society, it will result in societal harm. It's a sort of meta-harm to society, specially in today's political environment, societal harm to the people of United of States of America is anything that increases divisions, and diminishes trust in institutions, in my opinion.
That sounds pretty close to "Have a bail/trial by public opinion" from my previous comment, as well as questions raised by philosophers regarding utilitarianism and the justice system eg. "is it ethical to convict an innocent person to placate the masses?".
All inmates at that Bahamanian prison are originally held in the infirmary. The administrators were very clear that after the intake period he would be moved to standard cells.
Meanwhile, if someone pulls off the scam of the century, they are no longer a Joe Schmoe. They will have a lot of money to spread around while the scam is happening. Especially in a small Caribbean nation.
> So tptacek, the justice people are talking about is simply the obvious this: If Joe Schmoe had pulled the scam of century, he would have had ample time to meet his cell mates in Bahamas in "scary prison", and, also get to know the fellows in cell block whatever over here, in the land of "sodomy in prison is a feature not a bug" USA.
Thank you for spelling this out. It's not ok that this sort of baying for blood is given a cloak of righteousness when it is aimed at a suspect of criminal conduct.
If we're interested in justice, then bail reform is small potatoes: make fines for crimes scale based on income and wealth. It a billionaire, a decamillionaire, and a minimum wage laborer should all be proportionately penalized for breaking the law. Having large financial resources shouldn't reduce financial criminal penalties to irrelevance.
In many cases rich people aren’t punished in real terms at all, they actually make money. How many times have we seen rich people defrauding the public or causing them harm, only for them to be given some slap-on-the-wrist fine years later. Meanwhile, they have been investing their ill-gotten gains and making more than the eventual fines.
It is huge potato, because being hold in jail before trial puts huge pressure on people. If the charges are small, they are very likely to just sign plea deal while in exact same charge outside they would fought a case.
Layers and Criminal reform advocates talk about this a lot, actually. Being in pre trial jail is actively destroying their lives. It is one of reasons for why most cases enver even end up in trial.
There are a lot of impoverished, incompetent criminals who should be getting bail if the "I couldn't run from justice if I wanted to" argument was reasonable.
If a person ripped off a million people, it’s a tentative assumption that they wouldn’t rip off their parents too.
If my child was facing decades in prison for a non-violent crime with mitigating circumstances then I would sacrifice my home in a heartbeat, so its tentative from that direction too. I’m sure SBF could also pay them back easily enough.
He likely has substantial resources to aid any escape and a history of extradition. So he has the means.
We have the ankle tag, but if that is a foolproof solution then there wouldn’t even need to be a bail system as pretty much everyone could be tagged until trial.
If you were facing 100 years in prison after the fall from grace he has had, surely a private jet to Russia looks to have very appealing odds?
Unless they flee too, to a country that doesn't have extradition. Given the good chance he has countless millions stashed somewhere, this is definitely a non-zero chance. It is also made more likely due to the political connections SBF and his family have due to the tens of millions of dollars he has funneled to politicians. While not necessarily likely, it is far from impossible (anyone who thinks it is should look up Mark Rich). If anyone should be locked up without bail while waiting trial, it is SBF.
Every politician they gave money to is trying hard to distance themselves. Nobody is going to stick their neck out for SBF or his family. What on earth would be in it for them?
Besides, why is SBF in the USA right now? He could have tried to stay in the Bahamas. He came here because he knows that his chances with other countries’ justice systems are far worse. And what country in the world would give him shelter? He ripped people off all over the world. Anywhere he might go, there is a strong chance he would be arrested there.
>Every politician they gave money to is trying hard to distance themselves. Nobody is going to stick their neck out for SBF or his family. What on earth would be in it for them?
What was in it for Bill Clinton when he pardoned Mark Rich?
>Besides, why is SBF in the USA right now? He could have tried to stay in the Bahamas.
In the Bahamas he was in jail. Hours after landing in the USA he is in a mansion in California. Is it really that hard to understand?
> In the Bahamas he was in jail. Hours after landing in the USA he is in a mansion in California. Is it really that hard to understand?
Yes, it is. I’d endure extreme life threatening hardship for a few months if it meant a decent chance at avoiding a likely multi decade prison sentence, even if I got to hang out in a mansion for a few months before prison. It’s hard to imagine a rational person doing otherwise.
> When you've got personal wealth in the hundreds of millions, yeah, "hollywood plots" are indeed a concern.
SBF doesn't have that, though. He lost access to FTX's funds. He doesn't have anything he can give to anyone that would motivate them to do that for him. No money, no influence, no ability to reward anyone in any way. He is poison and nobody wants anything to do with him.
I was speaking to the issue (that you raised) of whether SBF has allies motivated to help him. On that issue, I responded that there were people still willing to have their entire net worths wiped out to help him.
Whether they actually have some arbitrarily higher figure is not relevant to that point.
I obviously don't have the numbers, but I would think a few billionaires a year, and lots of multimillioners. Add that up over 50 years and you probably have a pretty decent sample size
In any specific jurisdiction? Highly unlikely. There are only 3.3k billionaires globally. For those specific crimes? Even less likely.
My guess (but numbers hard to come by, to my point), is there have only been a handful of billionaires arrested for anything, even in most states. Ever.
There are several orders of magnitude difference between billionaires and multi millionaires. They aren’t even on the same page.
Off the top of my head Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind and Sunny Balwani must have been close. Epstein was also pretty close.
When I Google Billionaire arrested I get a flood of responses with names.
I would argue that at least individuals with 100 plus million have the similar capacity for flight AS billionaires. You could probably come up with an extensive list of US celebrities that have been arrested in this category
To take a step back, what do you think SBFs chance of skipping bail is? If you were to wager, what percentage would you put it at?
I'm willing to concede that we don't have a ton of apples to apples comparators. I do think there is a lot of general data, but as you point out, there are a lot of caviats.
This is a lazy joke about Jeffrey Epstein, who Ken White is also quite certain killed himself; the conspiracy theories about Epstein depend on people's movie-plot misunderstandings of the competence of federal penitentiary workers and their managers (in his telling [and thus my belief]).
But why would a formerly super wealthy sex addict who always got whatever he wanted possibly want to kill himself when facing life in prison? It just doesn't make any sense.
If this was meant to be sarcastic, you should add an /s tag. I've seen too many posts essentially arguing exactly what you are saying but that were actually serious.
Prison conditions in the U.S. are such that I wouldn't fault someone facing down a life sentence from considering a quicker option out.
Honestly, I don't even know what the point of prison in this situation is. It won't get anyone their money back, and he's unlikely to be in a position where he can reoffend in the future.
I suppose there's the deterrent angle, but I'm not convinced that there's a meaningful difference between a 10 year sentence and a life sentence as a deterrent.
Fair, but it remains to be seen if he was stealing for personal gain (embezzlement), or because he had a gambling addiction and was trying to keep his companies solvent.
"I'll just borrow these customer assets until I make it back" probably isn't a thing that someone would be deterred from whether it was 10 years or life. People make crazy gambles all the time for a lot less, and end up indebted to bookies who kill them.
He'll obviously never be in a position where he can make this mistake again, and I think life in prison doesn't fit the crime, especially for a first-time offender.
If he was stealing for personal gain, then sure, throw the book at him. But the available information doesn't make it clear if that's the case yet.
And that’s why we have such long sentences in the US. A few years of prison is quite a strong deterrent already. But voters say that they deserve more than that.
Even if life is precious, isn’t it up to the person facing the situation to decide that for themselves? It’s pretty easy for me to tell someone their life is precious when I don’t have to live their life.
You are probably talking about the Frank Pentangeli or (real life) Jeffrey Epstein style of suicide, not the "boo hoo the mental health clinic needs to hand out free Prozac but doesn't" sort.
But I don't think so. I'll give it a 1 percent chance of suicide, a 1 percent chance of flight to Israel (they likely won't want him) and a 98 percent chance of rutabaga patch guard duty at Club Fed for 20 years.
Note that his girlfriend, despite her femme fatale good looks and secondary school level calculus knowledge squealed like a piggy to the law, allowing her to altogether avoid the nasty shared toilet at the women's lockup. Pretty sweet.
I get the downvoted. Now all you who downvoted: so you have eyes on all those other rich people in jail? Is there a webcam? So how do you know they are there?
> and whatever happens, he's going to wind up in prison, and the threads here about his bail are in retrospect going to read a little silly.
I think you're missing the point.
The guy broke the law to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars, and he gets to sit around at home while waiting for trial. He is with his family, living however he wants. Eating great food, drinking, relaxing. Enjoying himself.
Regular criminals who break the law to the tune of hundreds of dollars are forced to sit in jail while they wait for trial. Jail sucks. You do NOT get to enjoy yourself.
> The guy broke the law to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars, and he gets to sit around at home while waiting for trial. He is with his family, living however he wants. Eating great food, drinking, relaxing. Enjoying himself.
He hasn't been convicted of a crime. Why should he be in jail?
> Regular criminals who break the law to the tune of hundreds of dollars are forced to sit in jail while they wait for trial. Jail sucks. You do NOT get to enjoy yourself.
It sounds like you support bail reform then, which has been a big thing recently in California and New York!
> That's the point.
The point absolutely is NOT to imprison people who have not been convicted of a crime. The point is to imprison people who have been convicted of a crime, and then maybe also temporarily imprison people pre-trial if they pose an imminent threat to the community (which SBF does not).
He hasn't been convicted. When he is, my guess is he spends essentially the rest of his life in prison. I don't much care what he's doing right now. It's unfair that people poorer than him spend the same time in lockup. But the bail system's treatment of SBF is so far from the top of my list of things to be concerned about, my first approximation of it is that it simply doesn't matter. You can feel differently!
The rest of his life in prison? You'll be sorely wrong by a long shot. Have you looked at any precedents? Jeff Skilling, for one, is already out. More recently, Elizabeth Holmes only received 11 years.
SBF will do more time than Holmes. Perhaps I'm underestimating just how young a goober he is; I don't think he'll get actual life, and 20 years for SBF gets him out when he's 45, which, oh shit, that's roughly how old I am. So: fair enough. He'll be in federal prison for a long time. That's what I meant to convey.
Weirdly she's free until she has to turn herself in on April 23rd 2023. Somehow I figured when you got sentenced, to prison, you got taken away to prison. I guess when you are rich, you get some time to do some last things before you go away?
It's not just rich people. Self-surrender/voluntary surrender is a reasonable thing for the courts to allow if they think you will show up. You can terminate your lease, store or sell your belongings, make arrangements for who takes your dog, marry (or not) your fiance etc. Better for avoiding recidivism if you can come back to things in stasis as opposed to restarting with nothing. The typical timeframe is around 2 weeks, but appeals might lengthen it.
I think it's fairly standard if you were released on bail prior to sentencing, but I don't have the statistics
She got pregnant to delay her prison time. There's also precedent for delaying reporting to prison for things like going to your child's graduation or something. I guess if a person is not a flight risk before sentencing then they're not treated as a risk after sentencing either.
If they aren't flight risk Before sentencing, and are still not also a flight risk After sentencing, why aren't they simply put under house arrest? Why should society pay to house, feed, cloth, guard, and medically maintain, and entertain them?
according to the state of California it cost them over $106 thousand per inmate per year. Surely at that price letting them take care of themselves is better for any nonviolent crime, or any crime where the odds of recidivism during their sentence while under house arrest is sufficiently low?
as those given house arrest have lower recidivism rates than those that go to prison I can accept a more lenient punishment that is more effective in preventing further crime. those under house arrest don't have their lives destroyed as totally as those going to prison so after their punishment are more able to reintegrate into society. for example many sentenced to house arrest with electronic monitoring are allowed to continue working while under house arrest, as they are never quit working they don't have to face the stigma against employing felons that prevent many ex-convicts from finding new employment after release and they aren't then driven to further crimes simply to make ends meet.
She is ~6 months pregnant and the judge allowed her to give birth out of prison before serving her time, jesus christ. This is a humane accommodation for a pregnant woman; she still has to serve her time after birth.
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years, and even though he pled guilty, sentencing still took about 3 months. A lot of thought and legal process went into it.
Those "regular criminals" who sit in jail awaiting trial are often not charged with Federal offenses. They are subject to a different court and jail system which has a different set of rules about bail.
Also, you seem pretty eager to make people suffer in jail even though they have not been convicted of a crime. Just because it sometimes happens doesn't justify it happening to everyone.
FWIW "regular criminals" routinely get bail. Even murder suspects do; around half of them. Despite that, there are some obvious issues with cash bail, which is why bail reform is a major area of legislation in some places. Several states have recently switched from cash bail to a points system.
That points system seems like an infinitely better idea than advocating that shitty conditions and mistreatment be applied evenly across all people. Presumption of innocence, right? No matter what we all think, SBF has not been proven -- in the way that matters -- to have broken the law.
So? That's how it should be if it's deemed by a judge that you're not likely to flee. You have a presumption of innocence and should not be detained if it can be helped.
FTX was incorporated in the Bahamas, and he was living there long before this all went down. If anything, many people including myself were surprised that he did not flee the Bahamas (which is quite cozy with the US) to a less extradition-friendly locale the moment the shit hit the fan.
What did his bail terms say? If they said stay in the county, for example, then he fled regardless of where his home was. If you breach bail terms (without good reason, eg preventing a death) you should never get out on bail again.
He was in the Bahamas for a few years before any of this went down. He probably took trips to the US (and Hong Kong and other places) for various reasons, but his main residency was the Bahamas.
I don't like the framing of this article (though the facts it presents about how SBF's bail works are good). In particular these parts stuck out at me:
> How, you may ask, does a dude who is so clearly impervious to reality, who had to be arrested in the Bahamas, and who is accused of billions of dollars in fraud, get out on bail? Fair question.
Why shouldn't he get out on bail?? He hasn't been convicted of a crime. He's not posing an imminent risk to the community that requires keeping him locked up while he hasn't yet been proven to have done anything wrong.
> So: is the bail surprising? Yes. Is it a travesty of justice? That’s a philosophical question. Is it legally wrong, or outside the scope of what can or should happen under the federal bail system? No.
I don't find the bail surprising at all. Getting bail is routine. Sure, many people can't afford it, but obviously SBF can (and this article spells out exactly how).
> I don't like the framing of this article (though the facts it presents about how SBF's bail works are good). In particular these parts stuck out at me:
> > How, you may ask, does a dude who is so clearly impervious to reality, who had to be arrested in the Bahamas, and who is accused of billions of dollars in fraud, get out on bail? Fair question.
>Why shouldn't he get out on bail?? He hasn't been convicted of a crime. He's not posing an imminent risk to the community that requires keeping him locked up while he hasn't yet been proven to have done anything wrong.
The article is framed that way because it seems to be a fairly popular belief that whether you're granted or denied bail should be dependent on the severity of the crime you're accused of (ie. you're accused of stealing billions, then you should be denied bail). Of course, that's not how the bail system works, but I can understand why people might believe that. To an first approximation, that theory fits with casual observations of when bail is granted or denied. For instance, shoplifting isn't a very serious crime and bail is likely to be granted, but murder is a serious crime and bail is likely to be denied.
I think the likelihood of being provided bill depends on whether or not the accused has risk of criminal behavior or flight. SBF has neither and he has proved as such by voluntarily submitting himself to extradition
Agreed. In an ideal world, we don't want people who haven't been found guilty sitting in jail for up to a year awaiting their trial. They're still presumed innocent at that point, and they could be found innocent at trial.
In reality, we have to deal with things like serial killers (where even though they could be innocent, it's dangerous to have suspected serial killers in public) or flight risks. Jail and bail are our solutions to these issues. But this should be seen as something we do reluctantly and only when necessary, not as a punishment.
1. There are ~800k people in pretrial detention in the US who are locked-up for the "crime" of being poor.
2. The US has the highest incarceration rate per capita.
3. The outrage bait of this article is to promote class divisions, that somehow being poor leads to one conclusion and rich to another WRT bail.
4. His parents put up their house (suppose it's worth $6 megabucks), he has to wear an ankle monitor, they took his passport, and he can't have firearms in his possession. It's curious that he was allowed to "make bail" against $250 megabucks for presumably much less than a "bail bond" would charge.
5. It appears they will be fighting this with pricey lawyers rather than plutocrat island escape plan 7.
Yea this article comes at from completely the wrong point of view. People who have not been convicted and have no clear and obvious reason why they shouldn’t be allowed out of jail deserve to be free until they are convicted. The fact that so many poor people aren’t in a position to make that reality is the real travesty.
> In that case, his parents’ house in Palo Alto, Calif., which was used to secure the bond, could be seized by the government.
Interestingly, the home is not located in Palo Alto, but in Stanford — which is a critical difference because it means that his parents (both Stanford faculty members) likely do not actually own the property. Stanford sells time-limited ground leases to faculty, which means that they cannot sell the property (or promise it) to anyone who is not a qualifying (tenure line) faculty member, or the university itself.
I don't know if the NYT is misreporting this, or if SBF's parents have signed a document promising something that they legally cannot make good on (grant rights in a property that they do not themselves hold). I'd guess it's the former, but who knows!
Source: I am familiar with Stanford's faculty housing programs and live in restricted faculty housing
Lately, a 3000 sq ft house in Stanford (which can be sold on the market, but only to eligible faculty and employees) sells for over $2.5M, whereas a similar home in Palo Alto (which can be sold on the market, to any one) sells for around $5M.
As a result, while what you said is true, I don’t think it matters that much. At the end of the day, it’s an asset that’s worth millions of dollars.
When we bought a couple years ago, there was a surprisingly small difference between homes on-campus and comparables off-campus. That may have changed somewhat, but I'd be surprised if the difference were 2x.
But the bigger picture is that SBF's parents cannot have signed over the right for the government to seize the property. They do not own a fee simple interest in the land. They have a ground lease that lasts a few decades (the limit is currently 51 years, but they bought decades ago when it may have been different).
Is the house worth millions? Yes. Can the government seize it? Stanford would say no because the residents are not the fee simple owners.
I’m not familiar with the details. But I assume there exist a way for creditors (incl the government) to seize it somehow, and then sell it to eligible buyers to recover what they’re owed.
Does your Stanford home has a mortgage on it? If so, I assume you signed a deed of trust somehow.
The challenge is that not just anyone can live in it... only faculty and staff. There's a 50 year max term and even widows get booted out after their spouses pass. You really don't own the house/land... just the right to live there and re-sell it.
For on-campus housing, widows/widowers can remain for life. [1] There are other off-campus housing programs that only give 10 years after the death of the qualifying spouse.
That's good news. There was a lot of drama in the late 90s when I lived there, because a widow was being kicked out of a house on Santa Ynez. I'd guess that was on-campus and maybe the reason for a change.
As I understand, they are bonding the equity in the house, not the property itself. So there's not necessarily a contradiction - as I understand, the faculty can still accumulate equity, and if the government needs it, it can force the sale to an eligible buyer (e.g. the university) and seize the proceeds.
Here's a 2019 source on how Stanford's faculty housing works:
"[Prof] will have to leave his house 10 years after he retires from Stanford or 51 years after he moved in — whichever comes first — at which point he will sell it back to the university, making a modest profit (appreciation is capped at about 3% per year). That means he can’t pass it down to his daughters."
https://extras.mercurynews.com/whoowns/stanford.html
There are various faculty housing programs, and they differ in important ways. for example, purchasers of on-campus homes can sell to any eligible person (tenure-line faculty, generally), or to the university. Pricing/appreciation is not capped. Other programs require resale to the university, with caps.
Of course, rules may have also differed decades ago, when the home was apparently purchased.
My understanding is that yes, the land is owned by Stanford. They would have granted a ground lease that lasts some period of decades when the home was purchased (reportedly in 1991). Rules may have been different then, but I don't think they were handing out fee simple interests at that time either.
This is very interesting! How come Stanford owns so many properties? It strikes me a bit odd and their own website have plenty of listings to choose from, ranging from 500k to 5m. Perhaps the reason was first to ensure that staff can afford housing, but can they at these prices?
If you could afford a $5 million house, what would be the reason to buy it from Stanford and not on the open market? Is it at a market discount considering the cap on ROI?
Would you consider the options available in the listing [0] the cheapest way to get housing in the area?
Not all of the homes are subject to the ROI cap. The homes with ROI caps are sold at 50% of FMV, so the carrying cost is significantly lower than if you pay full price.
The federal bail system’s presumption of release makes it better and more humane than most state systems. But you can still see the impact of wealth. First, because Sam Bankman-Fried broke the law by (allegedly) stealing billions of dollars instead of by being paid a hundred bucks to transport half a key of black tar heroin, there was no presumption he should be detained. That reflects society’s values. Moreover, rich people are more easily able to satisfy elaborate bail conditions.
He should be so happy he gets 6 months or so to live a semi-normal life under intense supervision and restriction of movement before he likely gets sent away forever like Madoff, Alan Stanford and many others. Being rich hardly means favoritism in the sense of avoiding justice.
I think that quote is accurate, but not unreasonable from the perspective of the justice system. My intuition is that alleged white collar Criminal is in fact less likely to commit a new Ponzi scheme while awaiting trial then an alleged drug Smuggler.
The justice system should be blind, but not to facts and reason
Meanwhile, the Threnos fraud was allowed to run for 8 years, ripping off rich people undeterred, while the NFT scammers were arrested just months after pulling off the fraud. Same for Madoff..that lasted 2 decades, again, ripping off rich people despite repeated warnings to the SEC.
-- "Bankman-Fried’s change in attitude is in part tied to the expectation that he’ll be able to get bail in the US." - legal podcasts seem to agree sam waive his extradition arguments in return for bail possibilities in the US --
What the hell is wrong with people. He didn't kill anyone. He's probably a criminal - but until he's convicted he's not a danger to himself or others and should not be in a jail cell.
And I don't care if it happens to others - two wrongs don't make a right. We should scrap cash bail for the entire country and fix our justice system, not become a rabid mob demanding everyone suspected of a crime spend time in jail until proven innocent.
The news is just breaking that the judge has stepped down due to her husband advising FTX. Can someone confirm if this is the same judge who granted bail or different one?
Thanks very much for posting this, was very helpful in correcting some misconceptions I had, as the news headlines all lead with the $250 million number, but this is very different compared to state courts where the full bail amount must be posted as collateral or put up by a bondsman.
So what you're saying is I can get a selfie with SBF and Elizabeth Holmes in a Starbucks in Palo Alto? Since even though Holmes was sentenced to 11 1/4 years, she has until April 23rd 2023 to turn herself in.
"According to Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried was held in the sickbay, where he had access to a toilet, running water, a TV, local newspapers, crossword puzzles and many other perks, including vegan food. Anonymous prison officials disclosed that the former CEO spent his days watching the news and reading articles about himself."
Bahamas aren't this terrible place to be. It's still jail in actual paradise. People in NYC would fork over a kidney for that type of view and square footage.
My guess -- no evidence -- was that was in return for immunity or leniency for his parents. It's the only incentive I can imagine to voluntarily accept a very long federal prison sentence.
> But you can still see the impact of wealth. First, because Sam Bankman-Fried broke the law by (allegedly) stealing billions of dollars instead of by being paid a hundred bucks to transport half a key of black tar heroin, there was no presumption he should be detained. That reflects society’s values.
I think it is more accurate to say that reflects the values of the people in power. And that is primarily people who have wealth.
The system is working, and it's working faster than normal!
First, the conspiracy theorists said SBF would never be charged or arrested. Apparently he "bribed" politicians. (But even if that was true, how would one expect a politician to be corrupt enough to be bribed, yet noble enough to stick their neck out to assist a fellow criminal who got caught?)
Then, they said he would not be extradited. Turns out he wanted to be, because being processed through the US justice system was preferable to being in jail in the Bahamas.
Now, they are saying he will somehow manage to escape, even though nobody has an incentive to help him do that, and many people involved have very strong incentives not to help him -- and if he really wanted to go into hiding, he could have done that anytime before he was arrested in the Bahamas.
Once that nonsense is over with and he shows up for his trial, people will claim that sure, SBF will be tried, but he won't be convicted! However, several of his close colleagues have just pleaded guilty to the same kind of crimes he is accused of, which is a very strong indication that they are cooperating with the prosecution and giving them all sorts of information.
If he is convicted, people will say, sure, he was found guilty, but his sentence will just be a slap on the wrist! The same was said about Elizabeth Holmes, and it was wrong.
On the other hand, the non-conspiracy-theorist mind sees the system working the way it is supposed to. Guy commits financial crime. Guy gets charged, arrested, and extradited to the US to stand trial for that crime -- in record time! It normally takes the US government a lot longer to put such a complicated prosecution together.
So, again, the system is working, and it's working faster than normal!
How likely is he to pull an exit scam like cotton? a friend if the family was willing to sign a bond for $250m, I’m sure they have the means to find a doctor and a body and have him die from glutton poisoning or whatever weird diet he was on.
Granted Cotton was in India so records are murkier, but SBF probably had 2 orders of magnitude more money hidden away on keys only he knows.
He won’t even need plastic surgery — a decent haircut and no one would recognize him.
When Madoff pled guilty, he wanted to be released to his NYC penthouse while waiting for sentencing. The Court refused and he was sent to the Manhatten Correctional Center.
Now I could be wrong on this, time will tell, but I was right about SBF being released on bail (Madoff was released, too): SBF is going to plead guilty. If he does, then, like Madoff, he will be sent to a detention center while awaiting sentencing.
SBF should be thankful that he gets to spend one last xmas with his family.
BTW, Judge Abrams has now recused herself from this case citing a perceived conflict of interest. Not sure how long it will take for this to hit the news. Her husband works for a law firm that represented FTX.
I assume SBF has secret unknown wallets of crypto that he can deploy for whatever purpose he wants without the government knowing. He could even pay back the folks that helped with his bail.
He doesn't have to pay anyone back because that is not how Federal bail works. Nobody had to put up a $250 million bail bond. He has instead agreed to pay the amount if he doesn't make it to trial. The article covers this in detail, including the fact that his parents had to cosign on the deal.
What’s actually surprising is that even in a highbrow forum like HN people don’t understand basics of the US legal system, for example: innocent until proven guilty.
My question is, how did he get so deep into obvious trouble (at least it should have been obvious to those close to him) without his presumably intelligent parents not having some kind of intervention? Surely they didn't know enough to be aware of what he was doing...
The whole situation seems like a lesson about the dangers of hubris and entitlement.
So a defendent accused of massive fraud was released on the mere promise to pay $250 million if he does not show up to court? Money that he himself says he does not have? I get most of the reasoning, but that part really makes no sense to me. Yes, his parents would be bankrupted, too, but still.
I'm not from the US, could someone explain to me this part: "in federal criminal cases, bail is governed by the Bail Reform Act of 1984. That scheme starts out with a presumption that a person should be released on their own recognizance or on an unsecured appearance bond — that is, a promise to pay a certain amount of money if they fail to show up for court.".
If someone fails to show up in court not because he forgets, but because, for example, he flees the country, how is he expected to keep the promise? In case of SBF, as I understand, his parents and some other people would have to pay some part of that 250m (because they can't afford the entire sum before going bankrupt), but is that it?
Everyone who would be on the hook to pay his bail, including his own parents, has a very powerful incentive to make sure he makes his trial appearance.
In addition to that, there probably isn't anywhere he could flee to that would not put him on trial or send him back to the US. FTX screwed customers in many countries.
Plus, the guy doesn't have any money. He lost access to FTX. How would he pay for his escape? Why would anyone be willing to risk helping him? Everyone who had anything to do with him or FTX is trying very hard right now to distance themselves.
Given all of that, I don't think it's unreasonable for a judge to decide that SBF's flight risk is below the bar that would normally be required to deny bail.
That still doesn't say how they got to 250m. Is it the norm to set the amount to an incredibly large number that neither the defendant or the family has any hope to pay? Or does the judge expect 250m to be in the realm of what he can pay?
You don’t pay $250M, you borrow that amount providing some collateral proportional to your risk of flight. It is basically an insurance policy with $250M payoff. Or an option.
> You don’t pay $250M, you borrow that amount providing some collateral proportional to your risk of flight.
No, you don't. Even with a fully secured bail bond (which is not a norm in all US jurisdictions), you (or someone acting as your surety) provides the court with a legal claim on property with a value at least equal to the bail amount. When (as is the norm in many syate systems) you engage a bail agent as a surety, the fee may be risk sensitive, or it may be a fixed percentage set by law, depending on state law.
I understand but you need to be able to borrow $250m. I can't borrow 250m. No one is going to allow me to borrow 250m unless I have some serious assets, which is not what the article suggests.
> I understand but you need to be able to borrow $250m.
No, you just have to have the court believe the combination of penalty, security, sureties, and non-financial conditions is sufficient to assure appearance.
In some state systems, the court may be constrained to only accept full secured bond when there is a penalty amount (or, if not so constrained, may have a practice of generally doing so), but that is absolutely not a requirement or the normal practice in the federal system.
> Or maybe they just think that if he flees they can catch him and then they get to take a house away from two Stanford Law professors, which they would enjoy.
Eh? This meant at all seriously or totally tongue in cheek?
We don't prosecute people just because we don't like them, or because bad things happened. Not in a free society with the rule of law, anyway.
In the case of SBF there is pretty clear evidence that he broke laws.
If there was such clear evidence about anyone in 2008, they definitely would have been prosecuted. Prosecutors love to grandstand, and if they thought they could nail the people who "caused the recession" they would have been tripping over each other to be the first to do it. The fact that it never happened is convincing proof that they had no case.
This government financial regulator explicitly allowed backdating capital infusions. They cooked the books. Not prosecuted. Kept the sweet federal pension.
"Dochow knew that IndyMac couldn't meet its capital requirements and allowed it to record a capital infusion six weeks before it occurred."
And in 1989 Dochow similarly pulled a not-regulate stunt with a failing S&L.
"As federal regulators were preparing a file against Lincoln’s CEO, Charles Keating Jr., Dochow ordered his staff “to cease all examinations of Lincoln Savings, all supervisory acts with regards to Lincoln Savings"'
There were endless stories pouring out after 2008 of laws broken with wild disregard, you can't make that much money and then not just burst the bubble but send a tidal wave of destruction across the world without a serious crime spree.
Of course SBF should be prosecuted, but the fact no CEO was even charged after 2008 means there was something far more corrupt at play, it was politics, they feared the repercussions of inhibiting the profit makers, pension funds and retirement plans would have collapse.
Weren't most of the law breaking done by people applying for loans and lying about their income?
Losses in the market for private label residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) were at the epicenter of the financial crisis from 2007-2009. Existing research has shown that a substantial portion of the poor performance of the loans securitized in this market was caused by fraudulent origination practices and that these practices were misrepresented to investors who purchased securities based on these loans. However, to date no paper has estimated the effects of mortgage fraud on losses from foreclosure in this market. This paper fills this gap by 1) Accounting for total losses from foreclosure due to no/low documentation loans which were known colloquially within the industry as Liar's Loans, and 2) Estimating what portion of these losses can be considered excess from the perspective of the investor. Losses are considered excess in the sense that they were higher than the expected losses for investors, had the loan quality information disclosed to them been accurate, instead of fraudulent. I find that Liar's Loans account for roughly 70% of total losses, and 36% of losses in Liar's Loans can be considered excess. Projected to the level of the entire market, this implies that $345 billion of the $500 billion in losses from foreclosure are accounted for by Liar's Loans. Roughly $125 billion, or 25% of total market losses, can be considered excess losses caused by fraud in Liar's Loans.
> Not in a free society with the rule of law, anyway.
How strange to negate mountain loads of evidence with a single religion-like self-defending assumption. Of course you would believe that yours is a society of Law if you actively ignore all evidence to the contrary.
>How strange to negate mountain loads of evidence with a single religion-like self-defending assumption.
He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law before a jury of his peers, who must be convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Do we all know he did it? Yes. But a jury hasn't ruled on it yet and until then he is legally speaking innocent. He must have his chance to face his accusers and present his arguments and present his own evidence.
Due processes must be fallowed. If we don't fallow due process and presume innocence than anyone can be imprisoned at any time for anything on trumped up charges because prosecutors and police simply say they have evidence whether or not it is true. at that point trials are nothing but farce and we have fallen into tyranny.
>Of course you would believe that yours is a society of Law if you actively ignore all evidence to the contrary.
While our society is far from living up to our own ideals, giving up on those ideal because we haven't always met them is not the answer; we should instead endeavor to adhere to them more fully. To do otherwise is nothing but a societal nihilism.
This bail deal is just a travesty of justice and nonsense! He or his family promised to pay a bail of $250 million. But they DON'T HAVE this money, unless he uses money that was stolen from other people. Unlike a normal person, he didn't have to pay this money to leave the jail, just signing some papers. It is absurd that this is happening. The guy should at least pay upfront several million dollars, if hey really want to call this bail.
Any writer who tries to support their argument by calling the opposing position a 'conspiracy theory' is best ignored:
> "The bottom line is that this result may shock people, but it is consistent with federal bail law. That’s likely why the government agreed and not — as conspiracy theorists are already shouting — because of some political pressure in his favor."
The obvious counterpoint is that 'consistent with federal bail law' is not much of an argument, as there appears to be a great deal of discretionary privilege, aka 'choice', on the part of judge / prosecution - i.e. not granting bail would also be 'consistent with federal bail law' so that doesn't explain much at all.
Incidentally, judges granting special treatment to members of the privileged Stanford community in criminal cases is not a very good look. Just ask ex-judge Aaron Persky.
> Any writer who tries to support their argument by calling the opposing position a 'conspiracy theory' is best ignored
That's a gross mischaracterization of what the author said. The author is pretty clearly arguing (a) that this is just how the federal bail system works, but also (b) it's a good question whether this system, which treats white collar criminals much better in general, is fair.
The part I'm particularly enraged about is the (b), but I also think it is a bullshit conspiracy theory that SBF somehow got off easier because a parent once worked in the same department as someone who now is at the SEC.
> not granting bail would also be 'consistent with federal bail law' so that doesn't explain much at all.
The article covers this. Federal bail law has a presumption that defendants will get bail unless there is a good reason to believe they are a flight risk or might re-offend before the trial starts.
I think there are a great many prominent counterexamples of bail being denied for people who pretty clearly fit that bill. Chelsea Manning comes to mind, being neither a flight risk nor potential re-offender.
Chelsea Manning didn't go though the federal court system.
As an enlisted member of the military, she went though a court-martial under Uniform Code of Military Justice, which are a different set of laws that don't even have the concept of bail. So different rules apply.
But still, they do have roughly equivalent rules around pretrial restraint and needing to prove that confinement is actually necessary (especially since the military can eliminate flight risk by simply confining them to base). Even at the time there was much (justified) criticism that her treatment was a "degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment"
Civil contempt of court is handled under yet another set of laws. And those laws don't appear to have the same presumption of bail that the laws dealing with criminal pre-trial detention.
Which kind of makes sense, it's not the same thing; Criminal trials have bail because it might take months or years of delays for the prosecution and defence to build a case. Here, the court has ordered you directly to jail as a punishment for not following their order; You can leave at any time by complying with the court order.
Not sure what country you are posting from, but here in the US about 40% of one of our two political parties thinks the other is a bunch of satanic baby-blood drinking pedos. Dismissing someone for talking bout conspiracy theories is overlooking the state of the world. FFS Qanon has chapters in Europe!
Part of it is that the bail bond industry can afford lobbyists, and probably a bigger part is that "tough on crime" grandstanding by politicians is nearly always a winning strategy. It is too easy to claim a politician that advances any kind of reform will be pilloried as someone who is trying to put savage criminals back on the street, your street.