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by ggm 1278 days ago
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.
1 comments
toomuchtodo 1278 days ago
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

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gnomewrecker 1278 days ago
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.

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tosc 1278 days ago
> 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.

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