FTX SBF CrYptocurrency

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PRIMARY ON PARDON ATTEMPT 10 26

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STEVEN LAW?

MUSK?

CU?

KIRK?

THIEL?

TALLINN

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SEEKS PARDON TRUMP SCOTUS

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AN 10 26

OMG DOH

President Donald Trump adores felons with bottomless pockets, and now one of the tech industries most infamous felons is almost through the ribbon, reports Gizmodo.

“Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder about three years into a 25-year prison sentence for around $11 billion in fraud against FTX customers, investors, and lenders, presumably thinks the amount of time he’s served so far should just about square the bill,” said Gizmodo.

“In a prison interview with The Economist’s “Money Talks podcast,” Bankman-Fried continued to insist on his innocence even as his lawyers argue the $11 billion forfeiture in the case (an amount basically equal to what he stole) should be thrown out on constitutional grounds.”

The BBC reported in June that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers were seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump. But now they are pursuing a petition before the Supreme Court while chasing Trump’s generosity.

“Donald Trump, … uses pardons as patronage and is happy to hand them out to other powerful men who claim to be victims of partisan lawfare,” reports Gizmodo. “Last year, Bankman-Fried began praising Trump’s wisdom on pardons on X, writing that ‘President Trump knows that, when you weaponize the DOJ, you start putting innocent people in prison.’

“Getting a pardon is “an uphill battle,” Bankman-Fried told Money Talks. “All I can do is put forward, you know, the truth as I see it, and hope that parties are more reflective, and that there’s less visceral reaction than there was before.”

But Gizmodo said that “The visceral reaction Bankman-Fried is referring to” is likely a U.S. Senate resolution to Trump urging the president not to pardon him—which was passed without opposition.

“For the record, Bankman-Fried’s transfer of $8 billion from FTX to his crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, was fraud," assures Gizmodo. “It was not normal margin trading, and his lawyers have already lost one appeal predicated on a similar argument.

Bankman-Fried told Economist hosts that FTX was “a legitimate and successful business,” but suffered a “run on the bank, which is a thing that happens with margin businesses. But Gizmodo writes that his supposed “run” came after FTX was already insolvent and Bankman-Fried had padded Alameda’s balance sheet with FTT, a worthless trade token that FTX cooked up itself.

“About the only thing this interview is effective evidence for is the thesis that money poisoning causes permanent brain damage,” added Gizmodo writer Tom McKay.

Meanwhile, critics like DOJ's former pardon attorney Liz Oyer, accuse have condemned Trump's approach to the clemency process and accuse him of abusing his Article II powers. Oyer and others claim Trump is using the "unfettered executive power" to grant pardons in a way that has served to "degrade, corrupt and politicize the justice system.

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email 9 24

But a newcomer is putting those veterans to shame when it comes to the obscene amounts of money Corporate America spends corrupting our elections.

• As detailed in a recent Public Citizen report, the cryptocurrency sector alone is responsible for essentially half (48%) of ALL the disclosed corporate money lavished on political candidates so far this year.

• In other words, the crypto kingpins are spending virtually as much to distort our democracy as all other Big Businesses combined!

• Crypto is currency that exists only as digital (i.e. computer) files. It is not backed up by any government and so far it is largely unregulated. Bitcoin may be the most well known example.

• With the crypto “industry” spending so much so fast, those old-timers — Big Oil, Big Pharma, Wall Street, Big Tech, and more — will surely ramp up their spending beyond even the insane levels we’ve already seen from them.

• And we can only imagine the untold amounts they are spending in the shadows using dark money conduits.

• So the absolute dumpster fire of corporate money in politics could very well become a veritable supernova that burns everything to ash.

All of this, of course, was set off by the Supreme Court’s infamously anti-democratic Citizens United ruling back in 2010.

Public Citizen called for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United within moments of the decision being handed down. We’ve also consistently fought for disclosure of the secret spending that was unleashed by the ruling. And we’ve been a leader in the fight against corporate money in politics ever since.

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new FTX Filing Pulls Back the Curtain on Sam Bankman-Fried’s Massive Influence-Peddling Operation

Lee Fang, Ken Klippenstein, Daniel Boguslaw

A bankruptcy filing revealed new information about how the crypto exchange spent money on consultants, think tanks, and business relationships.

READ MORE →

a  FILING IN FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings is shedding light on the true extent of the crypto-trading powerhouse’s influence-peddling operation. Last week, FTX filed its creditor matrix, a document that lists former vendors and investors to the company.

The list includes nearly a dozen public relations experts — specialists who generate positive spin in the media on behalf of clients — as well as political consultants, think tanks, and trade groups.

Sometimes, the money went directly to political operations; Majority Forward,a dark-money group designed to elect Senate Democrats, received cash. In some cases, the hired guns, such as PR firms, were paid directly for their services. In others, the groups that received donations maintain that they are independent, but had interests aligned with FTX.

The filing, for instance, listed a donation to the Center for a New American Security, a prominent national security-focused think tank in Washington, D.C., that has worked to shape crypto regulations.

...

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an 5 23 no lnx

Five more Republican lawmakers surrender FTX money to U.S. Marshals Service

Alexandria Jacobson and Raw Story May 18, 2023

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Money keeps pouring into the U.S. Marshals Service from federal political campaigns and committees who received funds from FTX, the now-defunct cryptocurrency company, according to a Raw Story analysis of federal campaign records.

Another five political campaigns sent $15,500 in campaign cash to the government agency best known for hunting down suspected criminals, adding to at least $160,000 collected from 30 federal political candidates and party committees, as Raw Story first reported.

The five new campaigns that gave up the money are fundraising entities for Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

Stefanik is chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, the GOP’s fourth most powerful position in the U.S. House of Representatives.

These mass “disgorgements” to the U.S. Marshals — an extraordinary development with almost no precedent in politics — stem from the Department of Justice urging politicians to return contributions made by FTX executives, including Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s former CEO. Bankman-Fried faces 13 charges in federal court, including fraud, breaking campaign finance laws and violating the Foreign Corrupt Business Practices Act with analleged $40 million bribe to Chinese authorities.

“Based on our office's investigation, we have cause to believe these donations represent the proceeds of Bankman-Fried's crimes and accordingly are forfeitable under applicable provisions of the federal asset forfeiture statutes,” said a letter sent by the Department of Justice to a member of Congress’ campaign committee, which in turn shared its contents with Raw Story.

The letter continued, “It is the intent of this office to request any funds forfeited be made available to compensate the victims of Bankman-Fried's crimes pursuant to the Department of Justice's restoration and/or remission regulations."

These letters seem to indicate the DOJ taking a harder stance on campaigns taking money from suspected criminals — and could be considered an “aggressive practice,” said Kevin O’Brien, a partner at Ford O’Brien Landy LLP and former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice.

“Forced forfeiture is a very onerous process. It's not fun, and I think that might have something to do with why they're so eager to send the money back,” O’Brien said. “Investors pretty much lost their shirt, and so the government has an obligation to collect what it can from other sources, including people who are required under the law to forfeit the proceeds of a crime.”

As for sending the money to the U.S. Marshals, O’Brien called it “unusual” and “weird.” He wasn’t sure why the funds were directed to the U.S. Marshals but theorized it could be a bureaucratic decision. The Marshals could be taking the funds as a part of its Asset Forfeiture Program, which allows the USMS to manage and sell assets seized and forfeited by the DOJ, according to the U.S. Marshals website.

“The Molinaro campaign sent the contribution it received from an FTX Executive to a U.S. Marshals recovery fund. It will benefit those defrauded by FTX,” said Dave Catalfamo, an adviser to the Molinaro campaign.

Four of the five new disgorgements came from FTX executive, Ryan Salame, a frequent political donor, according to Raw Story’s analysis of FEC records.

Salame’s house was searched by the FBI on April 27, but he has not been charged with a crime.

“Since news broke, I have waited on guidance from the bankruptcy court on what to do with the funds I received connected to FTX. Having received said guidance, I have tendered the funds to the court. It is up to the court to decide what to do with the money,” Rep. Morgan Griffiths (R-VA), who previously returned $2,900 in FTX-related contributions, said in a statement.

Among the political contributions that federal political committees have sent the U.S. Marshals to date, according to federal records:

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — $36,500

Republican National Committee — $25,000

Former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse — $5,800

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) — $5,800

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) Campaign Fund — $5,800

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) — $5,800

Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) — $5,800

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) — $5,800

Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) — $2,900

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) — $2,900

Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) — $2,900

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) — $2,900

Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) — $2,900

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) — $2,900

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) — $2,900

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) — $2,900

Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) — $2,900

Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) — $2,900

Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA) — $2,900

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) — $2,900

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) — $2,900

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) — $2,900

Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL) — $2,900

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) — $2,900

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) — $2,900

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) — $2,900

Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) — $2,900

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) Presidential Exploratory Committee — $2,900

Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) — $2,900

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) — $2,900

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) — $2,900

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) — $2,900

Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) — $2,700

Athena PAC (Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida) — $2,500

Axne PAC (Democratic Rep. Cynthia Axne of Iowa) — $1,618

Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR) — $1,000

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an ah? 1 23

Cryptocurrencies are popular on the right, from MAGA Republicans to anti-MAGA libertarians. But in 2022, the cryptocurrency market suffered a major blow when crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and criminal fraud charges were filed against its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. In December, Bankman-Fried agreed to be extradited back to the United States to face charges.

In an op-ed published by The Guardian  GUK on January 17, journalist Zoe Williams argues that there are some important lessons to be learned from the FTX debacle. One is that FTX’s downfall underscores the need for strong market regulation. Another is that libertarians are foolish to have so much faith in a market that is insufficiently regulated.

Zoe Williams, today in The Guardian, argues that the FTX debacle underscores the need for market regulation.

READ MORE: **:{Here's a}::{ quick explainer of what happened with crypto giant FTX — and how the GOP is lying about it}:**

“Naturally, if you unshackle a currency from the state and don’t regulate it, that’s a pretty libertarian proposition,” Williams writes. “You might even call it the ultimate free market. So, how’s that panning out for you, lads? Or should I say bros?.... Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned from the cryptocurrency exchange he founded, and FTX has filed for bankruptcy.”

Williams goes on to lay out some reasons why cryptocurrencies aren’t the panacea that some on the right believe they are.

“As Bankman-Fried continues to proclaim his innocence, investigators point in court to a $65bn (£53bn) backdoor between his two companies,” Williams observes. “They’ve also identified tens of millions of dollars of spending on hotels, travel, food and luxury items in under a year. No question, there will be technical details in here that are hard to understand, but there is a principle that is very easily grasped, that is as universal and intuitive as time itself.”

Williams continues, “Markets have never been free: they are social spaces and, as such, have always been governed by rules, which — since the first time a snake-eyed trader tried to cut flour with chalk — work because they are formally determined. Take away those rules, and soon, a greedy, clever person might take advantage. He won’t be able to help himself. He needs the rules as much as anyone else, if not more.”

READ MORE:**'Headed for oblivion': Economist Paul Krugman warns of 'collapse of crypto institutions' after FTX debacle**

The Guardian writer notes that billionaire political donor Peter Thiel has been a major cheerleader for cryptocurrencies.

“I think Thiel is right: crypto is the ultimate technology of libertarianism, the final frontier of discovery,” Williams writes. “He just missed the second footfall, which is that, through crypto, we will discover that libertarianism is b******t.”

READ MORE: The white male privilege scam

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am promise

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an 1 23

In the tech world, billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is best known for heading the ill-fated cryptocurrency exchange FTX. But he is also a major donor to Democratic politicians. And Bankman-Fried’s legal problems, according to Politico’s Sam Brodey, have become a worry for Democrats — including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, who is set to begin a third term in the U.S. House of Representatives this Tuesday, January 3.

“When Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux was gearing up last spring for a primary battle against Georgia Democratic incumbent Rep. Lucy McBath,” Brodey reports in an article published on January 2, “Bourdeaux’s campaign team flagged an alarming article in Politico for her to read. It reported that Sam Bankman-Fried, a twentysomething cryptocurrency billionaire, was making his foray into politics as a Democratic big-money player — and he was starting with a seven-figure campaign to reelect McBath and defeat Bourdeaux…. Soon after, nearly $2 million worth of TV ads from Protect Our Future PAC — which touted McBath’s inspirational personal story and positions on health care and Social Security — began blanketing the airwaves in suburban Atlanta.”

Brodey continues, “The ads, among the first of the race, helped introduce McBath to a newly drawn district that was home to few of her prior constituents. Bourdeaux, already considered an underdog in the race, struggled to pick up traction. She lost in a landslide. Six months later, McBath is preparing for a third term, Bourdeaux is leaving Congress, and Bankman-Fried is in federal custody, likely facing a number of criminal charges.”

READ MORE: **FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrested and indicted for 'massive, years-long fraud'**

According to Brodey, FTX’s collapse “has revealed that his deluge of campaign cash wasn’t just shady — it may have been stolen.”

“Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York allege that Bankman-Fried directed ‘tens of millions’ in illegal campaign contributions using the money customers had deposited in FTX’s platforms to grow their savings, not fund political campaigns,” Brodey reports. “Among the charges federal prosecutors are pursuing against Bankman-Fried are campaign finance violations. Court filings have suggested evidence that he spearheaded an illegal ‘straw donor’ scheme where other individuals contributed his money in their names.”

Brodey adds, “In response to the news, many entities that received checks from FTX have either donated those funds to charity or set them aside in the event they are reclaimed in some kind of legal proceeding. FTX executives gave tens of millions of dollars directly both to Democratic and Republican candidates and organizations, with Bankman-Fried himself claiming that he obscured his contributions to the GOP in order to evade scrutiny. But when it comes to Protect Our Future PAC, that money is long gone.”

Protect Our Future PAC, according to Brodey, “spent over $24 million in 18 House Democratic primaries around the country” in 2022. And 14 of the candidates it backed “will be serving in the House” beginning January 3.

READ MORE:**'Headed for oblivion': Economist Paul Krugman warns of 'collapse of crypto institutions' after FTX debacle**

“Come January,” Brodey observes, “there will be a caucus of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who — if they don’t owe their seats entirely to Bankman-Fried — at least saw their paths to power paved with stolen, illegal campaign contributions.”

Adav Noti, senior vice president of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told the Daily Beast, “It’s hard to think of a historical parallel where there was not only massive amounts of political spending, but some or all of that spending was illegal under campaign finance law and it was all done with stolen money.”

The Beast also interviewed Jordan Libowitz, communications director for the watchdog group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Libowitz told the Beast, “We don’t have a lot of precedent for people trying to disavow spending outside of their own campaign that’s helped by someone who’s now controversial. As for grappling around it, that requires a certain amount of shame, which is in short supply with members of Congress.”

READ MORE:**Here's a quick explainer of what happened with crypto giant FTX — and how the GOP is lying about it**

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an comm dr 12 22

If this past week presents any single lesson, it’s the social costs of greed. Capitalism is premised on greed but also on guardrails—laws and norms—that prevent greed from becoming so excessive that it threatens the system as a whole.

Yet the guardrails can’t hold when avarice becomes the defining trait of an era, as it is now. Laws and norms are no match for the possibility of raking in billions if you’re sufficiently ruthless and unprincipled.

Donald Trump’s tax returns, just made public, reveal that he took bogus deductions to reduce his tax liability all the way to zero in 2020. All told, he reported $60 million in losses during his presidency while continuing to pull in big money.

Every other president since Nixon has released his tax returns. Trump told America he couldn’t because he was in the middle of an IRS audit. But we now learn that the IRS never got around to auditing Trump during his first two years in office, despite being required to do so by a law dating back to Watergate, stating that “individual tax returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review.”

Of course, Trump is already synonymous with greed and the aggressive violation of laws and norms in pursuit of money and power. Worse yet, when a president of the United States exemplifies—even celebrates—these traits, they leach out into society like underground poison.

Meanwhile, this past week the S.E.C. accused Sam Bankman-Fried of illicitly using customer money from FTX from the beginning to fund his crypto empire.

From the start, contrary to what FTX investors and trading customers were told, Bankman-Fried, actively supported by Defendants, continually diverted FTX customer funds … and then used those funds to continue to grow his empire, using billions of dollars to make undisclosed private venture investments, political contributions, and real estate purchases.

If the charge sticks, it represents one of the largest frauds in American history. Until recently, Bankman-Fried was considered a capitalist hero whose philanthropy was a model for aspiring billionaires (he and his business partner also donated generously to politicians).

But like the IRS and Trump, the S.E.C. can’t possibly remedy the social costs that Bankman-Fried has unleashed — not just losses to customers and investors but a deepening distrust and cynicism about the system as a whole, the implicit assumption that this is just what billionaires do, that the way to make a fortune is to blatantly disregard norms and laws, and that only chumps are mindful of the common good.

Which brings us to Elon Musk, whose slash-and-burn maneuvers at Twitter might cause even the most rabid capitalist to wince. They also raise questions about Musk’s other endeavor, Tesla. Shares in the electric vehicle maker dropped by almost 9 percent on Thursday as analysts grew increasingly concerned about its fate. Not only is Musk neglecting the carmaker but he’s appropriating executive talent from Tesla to help him at Twitter. (Tesla stock is down over 64% year-to-date.)

Musk has never been overly concerned about laws and norms (you’ll recall that he kept Tesla’s factory in Freemont, California, going during the pandemic even when public health authorities refused him permission to do so, resulting in a surge of COVID infections among workers). For him, it’s all about imposing his gargantuan will on others.

Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk are the monsters of American capitalism—as much products of this public-be-damned era as they are contributors to it. For them, and for everyone who still regards them as heroes, there is no morality in business or economics. The winnings go to the most ruthless. Principles are for sissies.

But absent any moral code, greed is a public danger. Its poison cannot be contained by laws or accepted norms. Everyone is forced to guard against the next con (or else pull an even bigger con). Laws are broken whenever the gains from breaking them exceed the penalties (multiplied by the odds of getting caught). Social trust erodes.

Adam Smith, the so-called father of modern capitalism, never called himself an economist. He called himself a “moral philosopher,” engaged in discovering the characteristics of a good society. He thought his best book was not The Wealth of Nations, the bible of modern capitalist apologists, but the Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he argued that the ethical basis of society lies in compassion for other human beings.

Presumably Adam Smith would have bemoaned the growing inequalities, corruption, and cynicism spawned by modern capitalism and three of its prime exemplars—Trump, Bankman-Fried, and Musk.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-bitcoin-some-ways-has-more-integrity-us-dollar

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https://www.alternet.org/ftx-founder-arrested-and-indicted/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/12/elon-musk-right-destroy-twitter/

an 12 22

You break it, you own it. That’s what I was told as a child. But for today’s billionaires, it seems like the opposite is true.

“You own it, you can break it” — at least if you’re rich enough.

Just look at Elon Musk.

He paid a fortune for Twitter and is now busily destroying it — firing half its employees and driving out even more, causing chaos on the platform, making advertisers flee, and threatening bankruptcy.

Or consider Sam Bankman-Fried,who became a billionaire after founding the popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX— until he drove the company into bankruptcy.

Seems FTX was a Ponzi scheme that got out of hand. At least $1 billion in customer funds is reportedly missing.

These billionaires are presumed to be free from responsibility because they own what they’ve had a hand in destroying. So under the rules of capitalism, they have a right to do whatever they want with their money. Right?

Wrong. Millions have come to rely on Twitter as a vital source of information and connection. Investors put their money — and trust — in FTX. These people aren’t mere collateral damage. They’re bearing a big part of the cost.

“You own it, you can break it” is a careless norm for a complex society.

Do we really think that the super-wealthy should be allowed to control so much wealth and wield so much influence?

Absolutely not. We need stronger laws protecting the rest of us from the recklessness of these so-called “disruptors.” [vid]

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judd

12 22

andrew Ross Sorkin speaks with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried during the New York Times DealBook Summit on November 30, 2022 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, burst onto the political scene and cast himself as the financial savior of the Democratic Party. In May, SBF said he was prepared to spend up to $1 billion to help Democrats win in 2022 and 2024.

Like many of SBF's claims, that turned out to be bluster. Public campaign finance filings show that SBF spent just $41 million in the 2022 midterm elections. Much of that was spent propping up unsuccessful Democratic primary candidates, including $11 million to Carrick Flynn, who lost a Congressional primary in Oregon. Still, SBF made substantial donations to Democratic Super PACs, including $6 million to the House Majority PAC, the Super PAC affiliated with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The spending made SBF one of the top two donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle. (Billionaire George Soros technically spent more, but most of it was donated to Soros' own PAC and not distributed.)

When FTX collapsed and declared bankruptcy, the media portrayed it as a serious blow to Democrats.

Even based on public campaign finance reports, this was an oversimplification. SBF donated to Republicans favorable to crypto, including Senator-elect Katie Britt (R-AL), Senator John Hoeven (R-ND), and Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). SBF also donated to the National Republican Campaign Committee, which supports the election of Republicans to the House. Further, another FTX executive, Ryan Salame, publicly donated about $23 million in the midterms, and almost all of it went to Republicans. 

FTX itself donated to a slew of Republican Super PACs just before the election, including $1 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), $750,000 to Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and 150,000 to the American Patriots PAC. These donations would have almost certainly required the approval of SBF, the company's then-CEO.

Now, SBF has admitted that his image as a top supporter of Democratic candidates was a ruse. After FTX's bankruptcy, in a phone interview with crypto content creator Tiffany Fong, SBF said that he gave just as much money to Republicans in the 2022 cycle. SBF just made sure that those donations were secret. 

I donated about the same amount to both parties this year. That is not generally known because, despite Citizens United being literally the highest-profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about when they talk about campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom the idea that someone in practice actually gave dark. All my Republican donations were dark. And the reason was not for regulatory reasons. It's just reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to a Republican. They are all secretly liberal and didn't want to have that fight. So I made all the Republican ones dark.

If SBF is telling the truth, it would make him one of the Republicans' top donors.Since much of SBF's spending on behalf of Democrats went to failed Democratic primary candidates, it's possible that SBF spent significantly more helping Republicans than Democrats in the general election.

SBF blames "reporters" for his deception, but he chose to hold himself out as someone who was willing to spend $1 billion to elect Democrats. That generated an enormous amount of media coverage and raised the profile of FTX. All the while, he was engaged in the much more mundane task of buying influence from both parties. How did SBF do it?

The top Super PAC for Republican Senate candidates was Mitch McConnell's SLF. But the largest donor, by far, to the SLF is One Nation. Through September 30, 2022, One Nation donated $53.5 million to the SLF. Like the SLF, One Nation is run by Steven Law, a former Chief of Staff to McConnell. But unlike the SLF, One Nation is organized as a 501(c)4 non-profit organization and can keep its donors secret. One Nation can collect unlimited donations from people like SBF, keep their identities secret, and then pass the money on to the SLF. The top Super PAC for Republican House candidates, CLF, also has an affiliated non-profit, the American Action Network, that operates the same way. 

The truth about SBF's political spending is an example of his duplicity. But, more importantly, it illustrates how the public has no idea who is actually funding candidates in the United States. The largest sums of money spent on elections come from anonymous donors. Making disclosure effectively optional allows unscrupulous individuals like SBF to manipulate public perception.

The DISCLOSE Act is one solution to this problem. It would require "organizations spending money in elections – including super PACs and 501(c)(4) dark money groups – to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle." If the DISCLOSE Act was law, SBF's donations to all candidates would be public. The bill would also "crack down on the use of shell corporations to hide the identity of the donor by requiring companies spending money in elections to disclose their true owners."

The Senate brought the DISCLOSE Act up for a vote in September. All Democratic members voted for it, and all Republican members opposed it. Since the bill required 60 votes to pass, it failed.

"The American people are fed up with dark money influence campaigns that rig their government against them and stymie their priorities," Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sponsored the legislation, said. "The DISCLOSE Act would shine a light on special interest spending to neutralize its toxic effect, giving Americans’ voices a chance to be heard.  Republicans heeded the wishes of dark money donors today, but the fight to pass this bill isn’t over."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-outlets-are-pushing-unfounded-conspiracy-theory-about-collapsed-cryptocurrency

After the cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11, right-wing outlets spread a baseless conspiracy theory drummed up by a white supremacist radio host claiming that FTX’s downfall was related to CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s donations to the Democratic Party and FTX’s role in supporting relief efforts in Ukraine.

Multiple outlets have confirmed that Bankman-Fried had made a number of high-dollar personal contributions to Democratic campaigns during the 2022 midterm elections. However, there is currently no evidence that FTX was laundering taxpayer money or private funds through Ukraine and into Democratic campaigns. A Ukrainian official has also refuted the conspiracy theory, calling it “nonsense.”

The conspiracy theory appears to have originated from white supremacist Hal Turner on November 11, when Turner published a post to his radio show's website. The post asserted without evidence that “tens-of-billions in American ‘Military Aid’ to Ukraine” was actually invested into FTX by the Ukrainian government,and then reinvested into Democratic Party campaigns. In the post, Turner also claimed that “to some observers,” this appears to be "pure, criminal, money-laundering, and a criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.”

A Twitter thread that linked to Turner’s content and was retweeted thousands of times was then posted on November 11.The same unsubstantiated theory was subsequently amplified by embattled Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who posted content that seemed to originate from 4chan to support this theory.

Following Musk’s promotion, the FTX conspiracy theory rapidly gained traction with right-wing figures and online outlets. Musk has historically used his personal Twitter account to bring attention to right-wing conspiracy theories and those amplifying them, recently tweeting and then deleting a link to a website espousing the unhinged theory about the attempted assassination of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and subsequent assault of her husband. Right-wing figures and online outlets were quick to amplify that falsehood as well.

Here are some of the conservative media outlets that spread the baseless conspiracy theory amid the fallout of FTX’s bankruptcy.

Fox News walked its viewers through the conspiracy theory without concern for lack of evidence

Fox News hosts wasted no time in wildly speculating about FTX's collapse, seeming to take the underlying premise that Bankman-Fried and the Ukrainian government were in cahoots as a given despite the lack of evidence.

Fox host Jesse Watters discussed the unfounded conspiracy theory as fact, baselessly stating that Ukraine invested in FTX to “reward their favorite mega donor,” and later claimed that FTX collected money from Ukraine and “plowed it right back into the Democratic Party.” He later added, “I don’t know if this is money laundering or war profiteering — I don’t even know, but it needs to be investigated."[vid]

While guest-hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) claimed that there was “speculation that the U.S. government might have sent taxpayer money to Ukraine which then ended up at FTX and ultimately to Democrats.” Gabbard’s guest, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, further speculated by bizarrely claiming that Bankman-Fried was “in the bosom of the left” before asking why the U.S. government is spending so much money on Ukraine and why Ukraine was linked to FTX.

Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, along with Fox and Friends Weekend host Will Cain, rejected Ukrainian officials’ denial of the theory, with Cain stating that “denial is not proof” that FTX wasn’t being used as a slush fund. He later stated that “the Ukrainian angle” in the story was “not a conspiracy” but still an “important question to ask.”

Right-wing media outlets and figures spread the theory online

Right-wing media outlets and figures began to allege that Democrats laundered Ukrainian aid into donations through FTX on November 12, with many sharing these allegations on Twitter and Facebook.

• Right-wing outlet The Gateway Pundit published two articles on November 12, claiming without evidence that “tens of billions of dollars going to Ukraine were actually laundered back to the US to corrupt Democrats and elites using FTX cryptocurrency.” Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters found that these articles were shared across Facebook more than 10,000 times. The Gateway Pundit, [11/12/22, 11/12/22]

• Infowars published an article claiming without evidence that FTX’s collapse “revealed” that it had been “nothing more than a slush fund for Democrat candidates.” The article went on to say, “The fact Ukraine military aid funds had invested heavily in FTX earlier this year is starting to make a lot more sense.” Infowars, [11/12/22]

• Neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec tweeted, “It is increasingly looking like the Democrats 2022 campaigns were funded by kickbacks from Ukraine funding using FTX as the pass-through vehicle. No wonder dude is scared for his life after ripping off these people.” Posobiec later complained that media haven’t backed up his baseless assertion. Twitter, [11/13/22, 11/13/22]

• Failed Arizona secretary of state candidate and election denier Mark Finchem tweeted,“Seize assets of all candidates, orgs, politicians, executives, campaigns, PACs & companies who were involved in the Ukraine money-laundering scam that spent money in the 2022 elections and ripped off the American People; then give the money BACK to the taxpayers. #AZSOS #FTX.” Twitter, [11/13/22]

• Sinclairanchor Jan Jeffcoat read a tweet from right-wing podcaster Eric Matheny on-air, baselessly accusing the Democratic Party of money laundering with FTX as the intermediary. Sinclair Broadcast Group, *The National Desk*, [11/14/22]

• The Daily Wire published an article with the headline “Biden, Ukraine, And A 30-Year-Old Crypto Billionaire: How The Implosion Of FTX Connects To The Global Elite.” The article mentioned that Bankman-Fried “comes from an extraordinarily well-connected family” and has ties to the “controversial” World Economic Forum, but it did not explicitly accuse anyone of money laundering. (The Daily Wire and its network of Facebook pages have also shared this article across Facebook, where it has earned more than 4,000 total interactions.) The Daily Wire, [11/14/22]

• Disgraced former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) tweeted, “Here’s why the FTX story matters: For an entire year Democrat law makers have stood on the House floor and demanded taxpayer \( for Ukraine. The whole time, Ukraine was funneling those tax \) into FTX, who in turn donated them back to Democrat lawmakers. This is #bluewashing.” Twitter, [11/14/22]

• Right-wing influencer Terrence K. Williams wrote, “Joe Biden & Zelenskyy have been laundering money. Biden funded Ukraine. Ukraine funded FTX. FTX funded Democrats with millions. They impeached Trump for a phone call, they should escort Biden out of office now and we need to cut ties with Ukraine immediately!” Twitter, [11/14/22]

• Fox’s Cainasked on Twitter, “Was FTX laundering money through Ukraine back to Democrats (any politician) voting to fund the war in Ukraine? Finding the answer to this question used to be the top story and a path to the Pulitzer.” Twitter, [11/14/22]

• Breitbartsenior editor Joel Pollak tweeted, “The FTX collapse goes to the heart of the Democratic Party in the same way as the Jeffery Epstein scandal and will be covered up in the same way for that reason.” Twitter, [11/15/22]

• Newsmax host Benny Johnson shared the aforementionedJesse Watters Primetime segment to Twitter and in a video on Facebook, where it earned at least 27,000 views. Twitter, [11/14/22; Facebook, 11/15/22]

• Failed GOP congressional candidate Sandy Smith shared Johnson’s video on Facebook, writing, “Explains where the millions the Dems poured into NC against me came from. #FTXScam #Investigate #FTX.” Facebook, [11/15/22]

===

no lnx many

What the Sam Bankman-Fried debacle can teach us about "longtermism"

I'm not surprised that longtermism led to fraud, corruption and disaster. I'm mostly surprised it wasn't worse

By ÉMILE P. TORRES

Contributing Writer

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 20, 2022

[Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, testifies during the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States, in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, December 8, 2021. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Everybody's talking about Sam Bankman-Fried, effective altruism (EA), and the ideology known as "longtermism"that many effective altruists, including Bankman-Fried, accept. The tidal wave of bad press triggered by the catastrophic collapse of Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX comes at the worst time for the longtermist community: William MacAskill, the poster boy of longtermism and a moral "adviser" to Bankman-Fried, went on a media blitz after his book "What We Owe the Future" came out last summer, even making an appearance on "The Daily Show." The reputational damage to longtermism caused by recent events has been significant, and it's unclear whether the movement, which had become immensely powerful over the past few years, can bounce back.

Critics of longtermism, like myself, saw this coming from miles away. Not, specifically, the implosion of Bankman-Fried's empire, but something very bad — something that would cause serious harm to real people — in the name of longtermism. For years, I have been warning that longtermism could "justify" actions much worse than fraud, which Bankman-Fried appears to have committed in his effort to "get filthy rich, for charity's sake." Even some within or adjacent to the longtermist community have noted the ideology's potential dangers, yet none of the community's leaders have taken such warnings seriously. To the contrary, critics have been habitually dismissed as attacking a "straw man," or of putting forward their critiques in "bad faith." One hopes the FTX debacle will prompt some serious reflection on why, and how, the longtermist ideology is playing with fire.

Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic

It's useful to distinguish, right off the bat, between "moderate" and "radical" longtermism. Moderate longtermism is what MacAskill defends in his book, while radical longtermism is what one finds in all the founding documents of the ideology, including multiple papers by Nick Bostrom and the PhD dissertation of Nick Beckstead. The latter is also what MacAskill claims he's most "sympathetic" with, and thinks is "probably right." Why, then, does MacAskill's book focus on the moderate version? As a previous Salon article of mine explains in detail, the answer is quite simply marketing. Radical longtermism is such an implausible view that trying to persuade the public that it's true would be a losing game. The marketing strategy was thus to present it in more moderate form, which Alexander Zaitchik of the New Republic aptly describes as a "gateway drug" to the more radical position

Over and over again throughout history, the combination of utopianism and the utilitarian mode of moral reasoning — the belief that ends justify means — has been disastrous.

If taken literally by those in power, radical longtermism could be profoundly dangerous. The reason — and this is something that every politician and journalist needs to understand — is that it combines what can only be described as a techno-utopian vision of the future, in which humanity creates astronomical amounts of value by colonizing space and simulating vast numbers of digital people, with a broadly utilitarian mode of moral reasoning. Over and over again throughout history, the combination of these two ingredients — utopianism and the belief that ends justify the means — has been disastrous. As Steven Pinker, who appears somewhat aligned with effective altruism (MacAskill even gave a guest lecture on longtermism in one of Pinker's classes), writes in "The Better Angels of Our Nature":

Utopian ideologies invite genocide for two reasons. One is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus. In a utopia, everyone is happy forever, so its moral value is infinite. Most of us agree that it is ethically permissible to divert a runaway trolley that threatens to kill five people onto a side track where it would kill only one. But suppose it were a hundred million lives one could save by diverting the trolley, or a billion, or — projecting into the indefinite future — infinitely many. How many people would it be permissible to sacrifice to attain that infinite good? A few million can seem like a pretty good bargain.

Is longtermism really utopian? Yes, in a couple of senses. On the one hand, many of its foundational texts explicitly imagine a future in which our descendants use advanced technologies to radically enhance themselves, thus creating a superior race of "posthumans." Such beings may be immortal, superintelligent and have perfect control over their emotions. An example comes from Bostrom's "Letter from Utopia," in which he writes, pretending to be a posthuman from the future: "How can I tell you about Utopia and not leave you mystified? With what words could I convey the wonder? My pen, I fear, is as unequal to the task as if I had tried to use it against a charging war elephant." From there, the "letter" takes readers through a phantasmagoria of wonders, describing our posthuman progeny as living in "surpassing bliss and delight."

Other leading longtermists like Toby Ord share this general vision. In his 2020 book "The Precipice," Ord waxes poetic about how reengineering the human organism could enable us to transform "existing human capacities — empathy, intelligence, memory, concentration, imagination." It could even augment our sensorium by adding new modalities like echolocation and magnetoreception. "Such uncharted experiences exist in minds much less sophisticated than our own," he declares. "What experiences, possibly of immense value, could be accessible, then, to minds much greater?" Furthermore, reengineering human beings isn't just something we might consider doing in the future — it may be integral to fully realizing our "vast and glorious" longterm "potential" in the universe. In his words: "Rising to our full potential for flourishing would likely involve us being transformed into something beyond the humanity of today." Similarly, he declares that "forever preserving humanity as it is now may also squander our legacy, relinquishing the greater part of our potential."

MacAskill also touches on this idea in "What We Owe the Future," writing that "eutopia," which translates as "good place," is "a future that, with enough patience and wisdom, our descendants could actually build — if we pave the way for them." While he doesn't claim that "a wonderful future is likely," he does contend that it's "not just a fantasy, either."

On the other hand, radical longtermists imagine our descendants colonizing space and creating huge computer simulations in which trillions upon trillions of digital people "live rich and happy lives while interacting with one another in virtual environments," quoting Bostrom. Why would these people be happy? No one explains. Maybe they'll have access to digital Zoloft. In the longtermist view, the more "happy" people who exist in the future, the greater the amount of "value," and the more value, the better the universe will become. This is why longtermists are obsessed with calculating how large the posthuman population could be. For example, Bostrom estimates some 1058 digital people in the future — that's a 1 followed by 58 zeros — while MacAskill and his longtermist colleague Hilary Greaves note that there could be 1045 in the Milky Way galaxy alone. It follows that there could be literally astronomical amounts of value in the far future — amounts that utterly dwarf the value humanity has so far created, or that exists right now.

So what lies ahead, if we play our cards right, is a techno-utopian world among the heavens full of unfathomable quantities of goodness. The stakes are thus absolutely enormous. This is where the idea of "existential risk" enters the picture. Longtermists define this as, essentially, any event that would prevent us from realizing this glorious future, and this is why radical longtermism implies that the single most important task for humanity is reducing existential risk. As Bostrom writes, "for standard utilitarians, priority number one, two, three, and four should … be to reduce existential risk," the fifth being to colonize space. Here it's worth noting that the EA community is overwhelmingly utilitarian — at least 70 percent or so — and its leading luminaries, such as MacAskill and Ord, "describe themselves as having more credence in utilitarianism than any other positive moral view." Bankman-Fried is also a utilitarian who, in his own words, aimed "to maximize every cent I can and aggregate net happiness in the world."

Having outlined the longtermist ideology, its danger can be understood as twofold: first, it leads adherents to ignore, neglect and minimize current-day suffering. If a problem doesn't pose an existential risk, then it shouldn't be one of our top four (or five) global priorities. Second, it could end up justifying, in the eyes of true believers, harmful actions for the sake of the greater cosmic good — namely, creating a multi-galactic civilization full of 1058 posthumans in vast computer simulations spread throughout the universe. Let's consider these in turn.

In one of the foundational texts of longtermism, published in 2013, Bostrom writes that

unrestricted altruism is not so common that we can afford to fritter it away on a plethora of feel-good projects of suboptimal efficacy. If benefiting humanity by increasing existential safety achieves expected good on a scale many orders of magnitude greater than that of alternative contributions, we would do well to focus on this most efficient philanthropy.

What are these "feel-good projects" that we must not "fritter away" our resources on? As Peter Singer, who considers himself an effective altruist, notes, this would include charitable causes like "donating to help the global poor" and reducing "animal suffering." This was, in fact, made explicit by Greaves in an interview on the longtermist philosophy.Quoting her in full:

There's a clear case for transferring resources from the affluent Western world to the global poor. But longtermist lines of thought suggest that something else would be better still. There are a lot of candidates for potentially very high value longtermist interventions. … The most clear-cut one, I think, is reducing risks of premature human extinction. … Even if we can do anything that reduces the probability of premature human extinction by a tiny amount, in expected value terms, that is, when you average across your uncertainty, the contribution of that kind of intervention could be massive — much greater, even, than the best things we can do in the area of global poverty.

What does Greaves mean by "premature extinction"? This refers to any extinction event that occurs before we've created Utopia and flooded the universe with "value."On the longtermist view, then, we shouldn't spend money on global poverty: Those resources should instead go to ensuring that we realize our "longterm potential." After all, when one takes a truly cosmic perspective on our place in a universe that could remain habitable for literally trillions of years to come, all the suffering caused by global poverty becomes virtually imperceptible.

In the longtermist view, we shouldn't spend money on global poverty: When one takes a truly cosmic perspective on our place in the universe, the suffering caused by poverty becomes virtually imperceptible.

This is why Bostrom writes the following about the worst horrors in human history, including the two world wars: "Tragic as such events are to the people immediately affected, in the big picture of things — from the perspective of humankind as a whole — even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life." Why? Because "they haven't significantly affected the total amount of human suffering or happiness or determined the long-term fate of our species." Elsewhere, he describes "an all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States" — which studies show could literally kill more than 5 billion people — as "a giant massacre for man, a small misstep for mankind," so long as it doesn't cause our complete extinction.

It's this perspective — the cosmic vantage point — that yields a profoundly callous view of current-day suffering. Sure, global poverty is bad, but it's not going to prevent our descendants from becoming radically enhanced posthumans, colonizing space and simulating enormous numbers of digital people, which is what really matters.Or consider climate change, which the longtermist Jaan Tallinn, who co-founded the Future of Life Institute, says "is not going to be an existential risk unless there's a runaway scenario." A runaway scenario, which would cause our extinction, is very unlikely.

The clear implication of Tallinn's statement is that we shouldn't be too concerned about non-runaway climate change. Of course it will cause profound harm, especially to people in the global South, but in the grand scheme of things the suffering of such people will amount to nothing more than "mere ripples." John Halstead, another longtermist, echoes this idea in an unpublished document that's been highly influential among longtermists. "It's hard to come up with ways in which climate change could be a direct ex risk," he concludes ("ex risk" is short for "existential risk"). So let's not get too worked up about it: There are bigger fish to fry. As I have noted elsewhere, it is impossible to read the longtermist literature and not come away with a rosy picture of the climate crisis.

The longtermist perspective on humanity's vast future is also what leads Nick Beckstead to the astonishing claim that we should prioritize saving the lives of people in rich countries over saving the lives of those in poor countries. Because this conclusion is so shocking, I will quote the passage in full:

[S]aving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive. By ordinary standards — at least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standards — saving and improving lives in rich countries is about equally as important as saving and improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal.

As this shows, one of the dangers of radical longtermism is that it inclines advocates to ignore the cries of the most disadvantaged people. Their suffering is bad, for sure, but the failure to create a much, much bigger amount of value in the very far future would be orders of magnitude worse. To make this more concrete, consider that there are 1.3 billion people today in multidimensional poverty. Now compare this with the 1058 digital people who could exist in the future. For longtermists, could exist implies should exist, assuming that such lives would be better than miserable. If you crunch the numbers, the better thing to do would be to focus on all these future people, not those struggling to survive today. What matters most, Beckstead argues, is that we focus on the trajectory of civilization over "the coming millions, billions, and trillions of years."

The second danger is that true believers of radical longtermism could be inclined to commit harms for the sake of creating a techno-utopian paradise among the stars full of astronomical value. What exactly is off the table given longtermism's vision of the future? What means cannot be justified by such a "vast and glorious" end? Bostrom himself has written that we should keep preemptive violence as a "last-resort" option to neutralize threats that could prevent a posthuman civilization from existing. He's also dabbled with the idea of implementing a mass global surveillance system to monitor the actions of everyone on the planet, in order to prevent "civilizational destruction," which could pose an existential risk. This was published in a journal specifically for policymakers. Or consider a real-world scenario outlined by Olle Häggström, who is generally sympathetic with longtermism. Referencing Bostrom's claim that minuscule reductions in existential risk are morally equivalent to literally billions of actual human lives, Häggström writes:

I feel extremely uneasy about the prospect that [Bostrom's claim] might become recognised among politicians and decision-makers as a guide to policy worth taking literally. It is simply too reminiscent of the old saying "If you want to make an omelette, you must be willing to break a few eggs," which has typically been used to explain that a bit of genocide or so might be a good thing, if it can contribute to the goal of creating a future utopia. Imagine a situation where the head of the CIA explains to the US president that they have credible evidence that somewhere in Germany, there is a lunatic who is working on a doomsday weapon and intends to use it to wipe out humanity, and that this lunatic has a one-in-a-million chance of succeeding. They have no further information on the identity or whereabouts of this lunatic. If the president has taken Bostrom's argument to heart, and if he knows how to do the arithmetic, he may conclude that it is worthwhile conducting a full-scale nuclear assault on Germany to kill every single person within its borders.

To my knowledge, there are no radical longtermists out there today actively calling for something like this. But as Singer explains in his critique of longtermism,

Marx's vision of communism as the goal of all human history provided Lenin and Stalin with a justification for their crimes, and the goal of a "Thousand-Year Reich" was, in the eyes of the Nazis, sufficient reason for exterminating or enslaving those deemed racially inferior. … I am not suggesting that any present exponents of the hinge of history idea would countenance atrocities. But then, Marx, too, never contemplated that a regime governing in his name would terrorize its people.

The crucial point here is that all the ingredients needed to "justify" atrocities are present in the longtermist ideology — indeed, they lie at its very core. These ideas and assertions, arguments and conclusions, are right there in the canonical longtermist literature. All that's missing is a situation in which extreme actions appear necessary to safeguard our posthuman future of astronomical value, and someone who, finding themselves in this situation, takes the core claims of the literature seriously. It is entirely possible that such a situation will arise in the future, and that such a person will find themselves in it, spellbound and driven by fantastical visions of Utopia among the stars.

All the ingredients needed to "justify" atrocities are present in longtermist ideology. All that's missing is a situation in which extreme actions appear necessary to safeguard our posthuman future of astronomical value.

This is why I've become increasingly alarmed by the clout and influence that longtermism has acquired over the past five years. Elon Musk calls it "a close match for my philosophy." A UN Dispatch article reports that "the foreign policy community in general and the United Nations in particular are beginning to embrace longtermism." The ideology is pervasive in the tech industry, motivating much of the research on how to create superintelligent computers that might someday replace us. It's the worldview that Bankman-Fried was passionate about, and which may have led him to believe that a little fraud — assuming he committed fraud, which, again, seems probable — might be OK, since it's for the greater cosmic good. In fact, Bankman-Fried told the New Yorker earlier this year that he was never interested in helping the global poor; his "all-in commitment" was to longtermism. He thus established the FTX Future Fund, which included MacAskill and Beckstead on its team, to support longtermist research projects.

These are the two primary reasons that radical longtermism is so worrisome: It minimizes all sub-existential problems facing humanity and it could potentially inspire acts of terror and violence in the name of the greater cosmic good. Singer nicely summarizes these dual concerns in writing that

the dangers of treating extinction risk as humanity's overriding concern should be obvious. Viewing current problems through the lens of existential risk to our species can shrink those problems to almost nothing, while justifying almost anything that increases our odds of surviving long enough to spread beyond Earth.

It is of paramount importance that journalists, politicians, policymakers, businesspeople and the voting public understand this worldview. Much of my article here has outlined the core ideas of longtermism using the movement's own words — this was, of course, on purpose, because critics are often dismissed as exaggerating what radical longtermists really think. We aren't exaggerating: The radical longtermist worldview really is this bizarre, philosophically dubious and potentially dangerous.

The collapse of FTX has caused immense harm to many people — some, apparently, have lost more than half their wealth — and seriously damaged the "brand" of longtermism. What surprises me most isn't that a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme run by a utilitarian longtermist imploded, but that the first major blunder involving longtermism wasn't even worse. If this ignominious debacle doesn't take the longtermist ideology down entirely, it should at least provoke an extended reflection by the movement's leaders on whether they should have listened to its critics long ago.

Read more

from Émile P. Torres on philosophy and the future

Selling "longtermism": How PR and marketing drive a controversial new movement

"White Psychodrama" and the culture wars: A self-reinforcing cycle, going nowhere

Soup on the van Gogh: The painting's fine, and the kids are all right

By ÉMILE P. TORRES

Émile P. Torres is a philosopher and historian whose work focuses on existential threats to civilization and humanity. They have published on a wide range of topics, including machine superintelligence, emerging technologies and religious eschatology, as well as the history and ethics of human extinction. Their forthcoming book is "Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation" (Routledge). For more, visit their website and follow them on Twitter." For more, visit their website and follow them on Twitter.

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