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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36680 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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It's wild to me how people can brazenly lie and expect to keep getting away with it. A lot of them do indeed get away with it, at least for a while, and maybe that's just aided by a favorable media environment that they build around themselves. The

You already have the answer:

$100 million in yearly revenue.

Who thinks about the future when you're making that much money? It seems unlikely he actually committed any fraud or other crime, and courts seem extremely unwilling to rule that advertisements aren't protected speech, so unlike a fraudulent money manager or inside trader or whatever, it's not like there's going to be any real consequences. He isn't going to lose that money or go to jail. He probably never really considered whether he could get away with it forever, because why would he? The bit in the MPMD video about charlatans is spot-on.

Who thinks about the future when you're making that much money?

There are plenty of billionaires, such as CEOs, who exact good judgment. He wanted to get rich and famous, and mission accomplished. Good for him, i guess. Unlike SBF, he chose a better way to get rich...a way which he keeps his money and does not go to jail (although he may be sued), which I guess makes him smarter in that regard.

There are plenty of billionaires, such as CEOs, who exact good judgment.

Did Liver King engage in poor judgement, if his goal is to make a bunch of money and get some attention? Plenty of legitimate companies engage in ridiculous marketing, implying their gadget/concoction/scheme will make you healthy/rich/popular. And it rarely bites them in the butt particularly hard. He's ethically compromised but that is also true of plenty of CEOs.

seems like you're moving goalposts a bit. Your original post is that making a lot of money clouds judgment. Maybe for some it does, but plenty of examples of people who have way more money than liver king not succumbing to such temptations.

Maybe I was unclear, but the point was that he had no need to think about "what if I'm eventually exposed?" Lots of charlatans, hucksters, and frauds get a lot of money ripping people off and never face consequences. He was making money, and so what if it eventually ends? It's not like his particular type of lying is likely to result in legal consequences. If a CEO ordered a marketing campaign that was obviously bullshit, but not legally actionable, and was the subject of some big expose in a newspaper, resulting in negative press, but earned millions of dollars with very low risk, would we ask "how did they think that would ever work?" It did work! (Maybe yes if it were long-term bad for the company, but Liver King probably has all the money he'll ever need).

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