Yikes. After railing against hypotheticals, he says: it seems morally hard to distinguish a cryptocurrency trader from the millions who deal in opt

Yikes. After railing against hypotheticals, he says: it seems morally hard to distinguish a cryptocurrency trader from the millions who deal in options, bonds, and all manner of other speculative assets. And a traditional investor who made billions on successful gambles, or arbitrage, or creating liquidity, then gave virtually all of it away to effective charities, would seem, on net, way ahead of most of us morally. Okay, ignoring the fact that you can’t make billions off of trading derivatives without significant side effects— who has ever done this? Warren Buffett maybe is the closest. He has promised to give away his fortune but he didn’t earn it in option trading. And whether his money will be used “effectively” is still an open question. I’m sure lots of people have a fantasy of making billions and then helping the world with it. But more often the people who get there start believing that helping the world is best done by continuing to grow their own business interests. Couple that with the toxic ideas of EA and you start believing that any abuse you place on people today is fine because it’s in service of Long Term Propserity. That you never have to define what that is or exactly how your actions contribute is a feature.