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by labster 2650 days ago
Yet another example of how our culture considers drug offenses to be deplorable while white collar crime is just someone being a little too ambitious. Not an attack on you personally, it's just a pattern I see a lot.

The comparison isn't even all that relevant -- one was people basing life-and-death medical decisions on a fraudulent device business built on fraudulent patents, on which the recently departed U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis sat on the board. And the other was... sports. Not that the culture of doping isn't bad for all the athletes in all sorts of ways, but there is a big difference when someone is making bad health decisions without your knowledge.
2 comments
wp381640 2649 days ago
> Yet another example of how our culture considers drug offenses to be deplorable

Armstrong went just beyond drug offenses - he destroyed careers of people around him who wouldn't play along and attempted to call him out.

Betsy and Frankie Andreu, Emma O'Reilly, David Walsh, SCA Promotions, defrauding the USPS, lying under oath, etc.

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jacquesm 2649 days ago
Exactly. It's not as if this was a case of an individual only doing harm to themselves or 'just' cheating at sports.
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maxxxxx 2650 days ago
I think the main problem with people like Armstrong and Holmes is that they are widely admired by people and put forth as an example of "success" while in reality they are ruthless psychopaths who will stop at almost nothing to get their way.
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rchaud 2648 days ago
That is related to cultural mores as well. Do we not celebrate tech CEOs who have never made a profit?

They can become millionaires/billionaires by dint of their privately traded stockholdings, and the NYT will write a puff piece on them, but all we're doing is applauding them because they managed to convince VCs to float them cash to try doing something.

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isoskeles 2650 days ago
Most cyclists were doping back then, so are they all ruthless psychopaths or just the one who won?
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maxxxxx 2650 days ago
Everybody doped but only Armstrong went viciously with all his money and lawyers after people who claimed correctly that he was doping. He was on a different level from others.
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isoskeles 2650 days ago
Fair enough, I did not know this. That makes him worse than I thought.
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maxxxxx 2650 days ago
Read some stuff about his behavior. He was a bad dude who would do almost anything to win and keep winning.
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