[this is the first of a series of five]
I have lots of questions
Last week Michael Lewis was profiled on 60 minutes. There was also a long article on him in The New Yorker. On the surface, this is all about the publication of this book. My copy arrived Tuesday. 255 pages. I finished it the next day. Best $9.66 I have spent in a long time. Naturally, I do not agree with all of it.
There is more - A LOT more - to be said. Before I try to sort that out I will give you some time to check out what you find at the links above. The book is a REAL hoot, especially if you are interested in how the next generation will run things!!!
People and Things
The central character in the book is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) a math savant who was once at the helm of FTX, a global crypto exchange. In early November, 2022 SBF was worth $15 Billion. A week later he was worth nothing. One read of Lewis’ book is that he planned it that way. As a member of the arcane “Effective Altruism” movement, SBF [sort of] believed the reason to make money was to give it away (you really need to read the book). It is less clear that he meant to give it away to lawyers.
Naturally, all of this got me thinking…
What do SBF, Elizabeth Holmes and Donald Trump all have in common? They all tried to disrupt the system. All are or were indicted criminal defendants. One is in jail for a long time, one temporarily and half the world wants the third one to join them.
What can we learn from this?
I have long believed that the central question of society is “Who shall decide?” Will it be the individual or the group? I have also been fascinated with the Nature-Nurture dichotomy and its central question: Does Altruism exist? Woven into that is the way Nature’s Laws and man’s laws interact or conflict while dealing (or failing) to deal with those issues. Thinking about it, I came up with:
More next week…