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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15598 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Steve Sailer has been suspended from Twitter for allegedly violating their rules against hateful conduct.

His tweet said

Blacks suffer and perpetrate the majority of homicides/murders in the U.S., so anytime there's a sizable change in the national trend, it's usually driven by changes in black behavior. During the BLM Eras, black homicides [and] black traffic fatalities have trended together.

He appealed and the decision was upheld.

This is yet another way in which Elon Musk is going back on what he said in April.

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

It's starting to look like his attitude towards free speech isn't that different from his predecessors'.

Even I am stary to wary of the black crime narrative, although I strongly oppose Saylor being suspended for the tweet. Yeah, maybe it's true in terms of smaller crime or property crime or drug crime, but blacks are not creating madoff, theranos, or FTX-sized crimes. Look at the people involved in FTX...not a black among them. Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried , and Gary Wang...real black-sounding names, huh. Look at the FBI most wanted list..no blacks among them, although it's quite diverse. Look at the race of people who commit investor fraud or identity theft, no blacks, even though those crimes have way more victims and damage. A single hacker can compromise thousands of identities, steal millions of dollars. It's like there is no one group or race that is immune to doing crime. It's just that different races more more likely to engage in different types of crimes, which affect people in different ways. Financial fraud affects a lot of people at once, often involving a lot of money, whereas murder is way worse for the victim, but only a single victim. Hell ,even the Amish commit crime https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/16-sentenced-in-amish-beard-cutting-case

This feels somehow wrong, because despite occasionally producing SBF or Theranos, Palo Alto is still a nice civilized place and the same can’t be said for the black murder rate in places suffering from that. SBF had zero tangible effect on me, black crime has made entire neighborhoods and cities no-go zones.

One for one, a single SBF may produce more total harm than a single murderer, but for every one SBF there are probably thousands of murders, and innumerable assaults and lesser crimes.

deleted

"I Have Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Eight People."

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be... all those things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipwig. You Have Ruined Business And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Food From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipwig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game."

There is a difference between statistical deaths and murder. The first has enough links separating the action from the cause that one could be fairly said not to realize the specific harm. Murder of course one knows that he is killing another human.

This isn’t a defense of statistical deaths. White collar crime should be punished severely. SBF — assuming he is as guilty as he appears — shouldn’t be a free man until his 60s. Ditto Holmes.

Yet they aren’t murderers. I do believe murderers are worse morally. Further, I think rampant murder is worse for a community than fraud.

While I think white-collar crime and financial fraud is awful, it's also non-violent -- no one lost their lives because of SBF, and no one's home burned down

SBF is a bad example, FTX misappropriated ten thousand times the value of the median US home*. Even given the greater collateral damage and surprise of a physically burned home, FTX did more harm by wiping out investments, retirement funds. Very plausible he caused a suicide (although that's different from 'murder' because lots of suicides happen anyway, the effect needed to cause a suicide is less than that needed to kill a random person). Ten thousand retirement funds wiped out is comparable to 'destroying a neighborhood'.

It's more reasonable to compare smaller-scale white collar crime, e.g. defrauding $50k, to widespread theft and murder. Even then, how does one compare financial scams or hacking to theft?

*there are 20 reasons this is the wrong statistic, but they don't change the 10k

deleted

Er, ultimately it's children who can't afford college, someone who has to sell their house or shut down their business to pay back loans, someone being divorced because they lost money, etc. The 'numbers on a spreadsheet' are important because we use them to exchange all significant resources. If you burn down a house, that's "numbers on a spreadsheet" in insurance, but that insurance is the only reason the family can afford .

Let's say I switch some 'numbers in a spreadsheet' in a bank and steal all of a person's income and savings, and they lose their job, get evicted because they can't pay rent, get divorced and the wife takes the kids, etc. How is that different from burning down a house?

(again FTX is an unusually large-scale example of white-collar crime - $8B is a lot of money)

There's a separate issue here of culpability in that it's fraud - all the people who invested in FTX were either stupid or taking unnecessary risk, and should lose their money, which is somewhat true. Or that crypto trading is fundamentally parasitic anyway (HFT improves liquidity and allows for more efficient capital allocation or something, but what's being efficiently allocated here?). But that's not at all characteristic of white-collar crime generally. And a similar argument goes for theft, anyway - carry a gun, put criminals in jail, or it's your fault!

Weren't FTX's investors mostly institutional investors, VC funds, etc., meaning the damage will be widely distributed?

It's not just investors who lost money, users who had funds on the site are out right now as well

I mean investments as in ""investments"" retail ie random people made in bitcoin. Quite a few people put most or all funds into crypto.

SBF had zero tangible effect on me, black crime has made entire neighborhoods and cities no-go zones

that depends where you live, i suppose. Same for SBF...people who didn't invest in crypto or use FTX were not affected. Of course, one can choose to not invest in crypto, but way harder to relocate. Murder does have considerable ripple effects on overall neighborhood.

that depends where you live, i suppose.

Only if you mean to reference somewhere outside the United States. Basically every large metropolitan area is significantly warped by the question of black crime. Its represented in rents, commute times, taxes, etc. This is what white flight was all about. There are otherwise very good neighborhoods to live in (re:proximity to business hubs) that are essentially wasted because they are full of criminals and those who tolerate them.

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