Jamie Loftus

What a what a king.

Probably not.

I'm sure there's horrible things about Shaq that have come out.

That seems almost unavoidable.

Anyway, Sam Bankman Freed is the guy behind this gigantic financial crime that is still unraveling as we do this episode.

And I want to talk about less about what happened on the exchange, because none of us want to talk about how somebody carries out the nuts and bolts of a cryptocurrency scam.

I

I want to talk about the social elements of the scam.

I want to talk about how he conned the media, how he conned celebrities and how he conned regulators.

And I just want to talk about also the way some of these people talked and wrote about him, because there's a lot about him.

I don't know, a week or so ago, we did an episode on The Daily Show We Do What Could Happen Here about ethical altruism, which is, in brief, a theory that, like, instead of trying to help people just because they need help, you should only help people after you consider the way to help people that is, like, the absolute most beneficial way for, like, the least amount of, you know, effort.

It's utilitarianism, right?

How can I do the greatest good with the least resources and whatnot?

And it's it's the way a lot of these like and it's merged with this kind of thinking towards what billionaire types call long termism.

And the gist of this is like it's not worthwhile for me to do stuff like pay taxes to have a society or guarantee like universal health care.

Instead, I should make instead the most ethical thing that I should do is make as much money as I personally can and then put that money into things that I believe will save the world, like research to stop AIs from killing everyone and getting to Mars and shit.

It's a way for billionaires and the other mega rich to justify continuing to do exactly what they want and feel like they're saving the world.

Made a lot of Beanie Babies?

That's well, you know, that's I'm fine with that compared to these guys.

Because they're all doing the Elon Musk thing where they're pretending.