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I wonder what the world would be like if we assumed best intent and genuinely asked what we could do to prevent things like this in the future. I'm not talking

I wonder what the world would be like if we assumed best intent and genuinely asked what we could do to prevent things like this in the future. I'm not talking about toxic optimism, but also maybe not using hindsight to call people out. Sure there's an important message here, but is this really about better journalism, or about improving the reputation of the person doing the calling out. Maybe we'd just provide more space the scammers and charlatans, I don't know. But lots of people messed up in this thing.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Maybe we need more calling people out. No prominent political pundit is going to see one bit of long-term skepticism after the "Red Wave" stuff of the last couple of weeks. They'll just happily keep going on all the news programs to offer their "expert opinion".
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > Maybe we need more calling people out. This is all we do and it doesn't really seem to be working. I think the more power someone has, and the more divided our society, the more calling them out elevates them (Trump, Musk, etc)
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Less concentrated wealth seems an obvious one. Including corporate wealth. It's relatively easy to draw a parallel between fossil fuel corporations and the fawning media they paid for and FTX.
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted, I think this is a fair question to ask. Crypto was founded on the notion that central banks were inherently corrupt and that we needed to establish an alternate financial system free from the power of banks. Well, here we are and look at how it's going. Fraud is everywhere and huge institutions are collapsing. This wasn't supposed to happen, but it does because it turns out that people with incredible amounts of money and power, whether backed by a government or not, are not very good at keeping the system in stasis.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  > It's relatively easy to draw a parallel between fossil fuel corporations and the fawning media they paid for and FTX. How?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    They're both obviously scams intended to make a small group rich at the expense of everyone else and the newspapers would say so, if they weren't on the payroll and getting a cut via advertising, donations and other less visible transfers of cash.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      How is fossil fuel a scam? I understand the climate impact (and possibly the lies), but equating that to a scam? Fossil fuels do have a positive impact.
rwmj 4y ago
You'd need to look at libel laws. SBF might not have been a real billionaire but he had access to enough money to sue the average journalist into oblivion (or at least make their life miserable for many years). Second look at how news is funded now it's not being subsidised by ads in the back of a newspaper.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Even if a journalist is too scared to criticize an apparent billionaire, that's no excuse for getting onto that billionaires gravy train and writing articles about how great the billionaire is. If they were too scared to do their job properly, they should at least have kept their mouths shut and said nothing. They didn't have to take the money of the guy they feared, and they didn't have to write nice things about him. What's he going to do, sue you for libel for saying nothing at all?
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    Journalists, government officials, enforcement agencies are not separate from society, they are embedded within it. Some social movements develop and the person which is perceived as the leader of that social movement becomes popular. And with popularity come free passes. Now a smart person will make sure not to use free passes because they know that the populace is fickle, their infatuation too shall pass and as soon as it does pass then the backlash is going to be 100 times worse. So if they do any media they'll do their best to put a stop to the ass-licking in order to make sure that they'll not be using a free pass. Then you have those who don't care and instead try to accumulate as many free passes as they can, say because they are old and are projected not live to see the crowd turn against them, or for whatever reason. Luck is also important. Take Nixon and JFK. One conspired against his opponents and the other stole Illinois. Both are very serious crimes, only one got to live to see the truth uncovered and crowd turn against him, the other is hailed as one of the best Presidents.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      So the defense is no longer "the journalists were afraid of getting sued" but rather "the journalists like access." Access which affords them money and power. That is as I already assumed. How is that any different from a bank robber excusing himself by citing the utility of money?
gsibble 4y ago
You're saying we shouldn't call out people who didn't do their due diligence on who they took money from? I say the opposite. Tar and feather them.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I'm saying is calling people out the best way to solve the problem? Maybe Tar and feathering them _Elevates_ them and makes them more powerful or likely to stay in their tracks. Maybe this person is also complicit and just pointing the finger to take the focus off of themselves. Maybe we just keep circling around making the same mistakes because instead of educating eachother we just call each outer out, leading to people taking a side rather than trying to improve. I don't know.
- jefftk 4y ago
  What sort of due diligence would you have liked to see, and what do you expect it would have turned up? It was public that FTX money came from running a crypto exchange, but that FTX's CEO (SBF) secretly diverted customer funds to his hedge fund (Alameda) doesn't seem like something people would have discovered in due diligence. Major investors, with lots of money on the line, also didn't catch this.
  - grenoire 4y ago
    There are two major ways in which you would not identify this flow of money: 1) You do a bad job at the due diligence and do not review anything beyond the income statement and top-level balance sheet accounts. 2) You turn a blind eye to it because it is favourable to you. Favourable can also be just the outcome of assessing the risk of 'cost of reversing fund diversion practices' vs. 'letting it slide because those diversions yield returns'.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      Can you say more about the level of diligence you think journalists should generally be doing when they receive funds from an organization? I think you're proposing a much deeper level than anyone currently does and which would be maybe hundreds of hours of research, but I'm not sure? Discovering a fraud when most people at the organization don't know about it and the people who do would like to your face is not a light task!
Yizahi 4y ago
We need to ban offshores and ban any contact with them. Create some legal framework and set defined thresholds of what is offshore and what is not and punish with short prison terms any schemes involving them. Unfortunately all world politicians are beneficiaries of this scam, and so financial crime will continue as before.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Ban shell companies while we're at it. This is not sarcasm or exaggeration. Companies should not be allowed to own majority stakes in other companies or obfuscate their operations under sub-brands of sub-brands.
  - telotortium 4y ago
    > Companies should not be allowed to own majority stakes in other companies You don't want companies to be able to buy other companies? You don't want multinationals? Good luck. Maybe you want a limit on the depth of an ownership tree instead - no more than 3 levels of ownership.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      On the contrary, why should we allow it?
      - telotortium 4y ago
        To get started, are you a socialist?
        kibwen 4y ago
        By what logic would one need to be a socialist in order to oppose opaque corporate structures that obscure the market and thereby make it harder for consumers to make more informed judgments? Companies don't need to own other companies to make markets work. Is it "socialist" to be pro-transparency?

ceejayoz 4y ago

Maybe we need more calling people out. No prominent political pundit is going to see one bit of long-term skepticism after the "Red Wave" stuff of the last couple of weeks. They'll just happily keep going on all the news programs to offer their "expert opinion".

mikkergp 4y ago
> Maybe we need more calling people out. This is all we do and it doesn't really seem to be working. I think the more power someone has, and the more divided our society, the more calling them out elevates them (Trump, Musk, etc)

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Less concentrated wealth seems an obvious one. Including corporate wealth. It's relatively easy to draw a parallel between fossil fuel corporations and the fawning media they paid for and FTX.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted, I think this is a fair question to ask. Crypto was founded on the notion that central banks were inherently corrupt and that we needed to establish an alternate financial system free from the power of banks. Well, here we are and look at how it's going. Fraud is everywhere and huge institutions are collapsing. This wasn't supposed to happen, but it does because it turns out that people with incredible amounts of money and power, whether backed by a government or not, are not very good at keeping the system in stasis.
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> It's relatively easy to draw a parallel between fossil fuel corporations and the fawning media they paid for and FTX. How?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  They're both obviously scams intended to make a small group rich at the expense of everyone else and the newspapers would say so, if they weren't on the payroll and getting a cut via advertising, donations and other less visible transfers of cash.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    How is fossil fuel a scam? I understand the climate impact (and possibly the lies), but equating that to a scam? Fossil fuels do have a positive impact.

rwmj 4y ago

You'd need to look at libel laws. SBF might not have been a real billionaire but he had access to enough money to sue the average journalist into oblivion (or at least make their life miserable for many years). Second look at how news is funded now it's not being subsidised by ads in the back of a newspaper.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
Even if a journalist is too scared to criticize an apparent billionaire, that's no excuse for getting onto that billionaires gravy train and writing articles about how great the billionaire is. If they were too scared to do their job properly, they should at least have kept their mouths shut and said nothing. They didn't have to take the money of the guy they feared, and they didn't have to write nice things about him. What's he going to do, sue you for libel for saying nothing at all?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  Journalists, government officials, enforcement agencies are not separate from society, they are embedded within it. Some social movements develop and the person which is perceived as the leader of that social movement becomes popular. And with popularity come free passes. Now a smart person will make sure not to use free passes because they know that the populace is fickle, their infatuation too shall pass and as soon as it does pass then the backlash is going to be 100 times worse. So if they do any media they'll do their best to put a stop to the ass-licking in order to make sure that they'll not be using a free pass. Then you have those who don't care and instead try to accumulate as many free passes as they can, say because they are old and are projected not live to see the crowd turn against them, or for whatever reason. Luck is also important. Take Nixon and JFK. One conspired against his opponents and the other stole Illinois. Both are very serious crimes, only one got to live to see the truth uncovered and crowd turn against him, the other is hailed as one of the best Presidents.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    So the defense is no longer "the journalists were afraid of getting sued" but rather "the journalists like access." Access which affords them money and power. That is as I already assumed. How is that any different from a bank robber excusing himself by citing the utility of money?

gsibble 4y ago

You're saying we shouldn't call out people who didn't do their due diligence on who they took money from? I say the opposite. Tar and feather them.

mikkergp 4y ago
I'm saying is calling people out the best way to solve the problem? Maybe Tar and feathering them _Elevates_ them and makes them more powerful or likely to stay in their tracks. Maybe this person is also complicit and just pointing the finger to take the focus off of themselves. Maybe we just keep circling around making the same mistakes because instead of educating eachother we just call each outer out, leading to people taking a side rather than trying to improve. I don't know.
jefftk 4y ago
What sort of due diligence would you have liked to see, and what do you expect it would have turned up? It was public that FTX money came from running a crypto exchange, but that FTX's CEO (SBF) secretly diverted customer funds to his hedge fund (Alameda) doesn't seem like something people would have discovered in due diligence. Major investors, with lots of money on the line, also didn't catch this.
- grenoire 4y ago
  There are two major ways in which you would not identify this flow of money: 1) You do a bad job at the due diligence and do not review anything beyond the income statement and top-level balance sheet accounts. 2) You turn a blind eye to it because it is favourable to you. Favourable can also be just the outcome of assessing the risk of 'cost of reversing fund diversion practices' vs. 'letting it slide because those diversions yield returns'.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Can you say more about the level of diligence you think journalists should generally be doing when they receive funds from an organization? I think you're proposing a much deeper level than anyone currently does and which would be maybe hundreds of hours of research, but I'm not sure? Discovering a fraud when most people at the organization don't know about it and the people who do would like to your face is not a light task!

Yizahi 4y ago

We need to ban offshores and ban any contact with them. Create some legal framework and set defined thresholds of what is offshore and what is not and punish with short prison terms any schemes involving them. Unfortunately all world politicians are beneficiaries of this scam, and so financial crime will continue as before.

kibwen 4y ago
Ban shell companies while we're at it. This is not sarcasm or exaggeration. Companies should not be allowed to own majority stakes in other companies or obfuscate their operations under sub-brands of sub-brands.
- telotortium 4y ago
  > Companies should not be allowed to own majority stakes in other companies You don't want companies to be able to buy other companies? You don't want multinationals? Good luck. Maybe you want a limit on the depth of an ownership tree instead - no more than 3 levels of ownership.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    On the contrary, why should we allow it?
    - telotortium 4y ago
      To get started, are you a socialist?
      - kibwen 4y ago
        By what logic would one need to be a socialist in order to oppose opaque corporate structures that obscure the market and thereby make it harder for consumers to make more informed judgments? Companies don't need to own other companies to make markets work. Is it "socialist" to be pro-transparency?