Comment by tsimionescu
8 hours ago
This is said with very high authority, and nothing whatsoever to back it up. Sure, not all, nor even the majority, nor even the plurality or a large minority of gamblers resort to criminal behavior.
But what evidence do you have that only over-leveraged gamblers resort to criminal behavior? Why do you think that some rich person who bet, say, $1 million they can actually afford will not still seek to recoup their investment, especially if it only takes some bribes and threats?
> Why do you think that some rich person who bet, say, $1 million they can actually afford will not still seek to recoup their investment, especially if it only takes some bribes and threats?
Because "only bribes and threats" are crimes for which people go to jail, and most "rich people" in the west, even in our authoritarian corruption hellhole timeline, are unwilling to engage in that nonsense because the benefits don't outweigh the risks.
Do I get to demand you cite evidence here, too? Has a wealthy person ever been caught in criminal extortion trying to goose a losing position that they could cover? I don't think that's ever happened, honestly.
I mean, yeah, it's my opinion. My gut says that the "bro" markets are all overleveraged right now, there aren't any easy winning positions at the moment (even AI stock valuations seem to have topped), and now the loans are coming due. Something's going to pop, and we're all looking for proxy measurements. This is one.
Well, the Epstein files prove quite clearly that there exist rich people who perform blatantly illegal acts that can put them in jail for a looooong time, even when they don't stand to lose any money whatsoever by not committing said crimes. And they also show that said rich people generally don't face any legal consequences even when their crimes become public knowledge.
So any argument that starts from the assumption that rich people don't commit crimes for relatively low gains, and/or that they would be caught and put in jail if they did commit crimes, is obviously false.
I think the Epstein files even have specific examples of blackmail among said rich people (e.g. Epstein's letter draft to Bill Gates).
Sigh. I didn't say the wealthy don't commit crimes. I said the wealthy don't commit crimes to avoid paying routine investment losses.
Actually what I really said is that no one does this, because it's insane. So I therefore infer that the people doing this are looking at losses that are not routine, they're faced with bets they can't cover.
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