5 ms·
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise? Or in other words, if a rich person is defrauded and they still have
by wilsonnb3 4y ago
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a noise?
Or in other words, if a rich person is defrauded and they still have enough money to live a life of lavish luxury, was a crime still committed?
- lazide 4y agoI guess it depends on how many little people get fired due to the financial underperformance?
- whimsicalism 4y agoStealing capital that could have been allocated towards more productive medical enterprise hurts everyone, not just rich people. Penalties for misrepresenting your company help ensure that society devotes resources towards actually good ideas.
- wilsonnb3 4y agoEh, you would have to prove that the capital would have been allocated to something more useful in the absence of Theranos to prove that that hurts anyone. Most of her investors were not in the medical field, which is part of the reason they never realized she was selling snake oil. > Penalties for misrepresenting your company help ensure that society devotes resources towards actually good ideas. I agree with this in theory but I think fines and a ban from working in certain industries or founding companies is probably enough, not a decade in prison.
- whimsicalism 4y agoEven if their backup was to invest in medical index funds of some sort, this would have been a better usage. I don't think it was common knowledge that theranos was a scam in the medical industry until relatively late.
- lazide 4y agoIf it’s not possible to catch these scams in advance, what other chilling effect is going to reduce the quantity of others taking billions of dollars while lying through their teeth? Near as I can tell, a decade is light