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Scott Alexander on Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Effective Altruism

astralcodexten.substack.com

I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.

Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body

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Sounds like a market opportunity to me. Why aren’t there Bond-villain type organizations that kill for profit alone? Was RICO that effective?

Any hired killer who actually put themselves up online openly would get immediately arrested, and anybody who googles "hire killer online" will be led to a police honeypot and promptly arrested. Because duhhhh.

Maybe there are no Bond-villain type organizations? I mean, there are crime syndicates, but they do not need to retail their enforcement capabilities to any random Joe with a bitcoin. They want them for themselves, tightly controlled by their leadership. And those who would retail probably would end up taking an order from LEO and going to jail very soon. It's an inherent contradiction between having wide retail appeal and tight opsec.