Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tosc 1271 days ago
It’s only a multibillion dollar fraud, so it’s fine for him to fly first class. Imagine if instead he’d been caught selling loose cigarettes on a street corner.
2 comments

If the cigarette seller posts $250m bail, they too can sit in a lounge. The likelihood of an extradition for street crime at this level is low. If they have outstanding warrants for illegal tobacco sales and tax avoidance ten years back, higher.

It's really about cost benefit.

The comment you replied to was likely referring to Eric Garner, who was killed by the NYPD in 2014 via a prohibited chokehold maneuver for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on the street [1].

I believe the point being made was the wildly disparate proportion of justice (even assuming pre trial treatment and “innocent until proven guilty”) with regards to the crime and harm caused. Petty crime? Violent treatment. Billions of dollars of white collar fraud? Business class and lounge access.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner

That situation was awful. Drawing a connection directly between the two scenarios makes very little sense. The people involved in each event are so far removed as to be entirely causally unrelated.

It’s highly unlikely that there’s some individual out there that’s in charge of both situations, saying “yes we should murder petty criminals, and also let fraudsters fly first class”.

So, yes this dissymmetry is unfair, but it’s also unfair that the sun will eventually expand to swallow the earth, and that’s about as connected to SBF as Garner is.

> It’s highly unlikely that there’s some individual out there that’s in charge of both situations

What a bizarre straw-man. Of course there is no individual. There are numerous democratically elected policymakers. What difference does that make?

> but it’s also unfair that the sun will eventually expand to swallow the earth, and that’s about as connected to SBF as Garner is.

Bizarre thinking again. Both men were arrested for non-violent crimes.

He would have been arrested then released on bail and made the next flight.

They would both be presumed innocent until proven guilty. What would be wrong with either person flying first class?

> He would have been arrested then released on bail and made the next flight. They would both be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Why do you assume this?

I think you are looking for a subreddit to pass your time debating politics, crime, etc.

Throwing out an incident that happened 8 years ago where a cop used an illegal chokehold while trying to subdue someone during an arrest is a troll.

I described what is supposed to happen, and what happens most of the time.

> I described what is supposed to happen,

Not very relevant to those for whom it doesn’t.

> and what happens most of the time.

This blithely elides the possibility that it’s not random who it happens for and who it doesn’t.

Have you considered that there are those for whom it happens most of the time, and those for whom it doesn’t.