Agreed. I think SBF's current treatment proves nothing about corruption. For two main reasons.
One is that there's no great reason for the prosecutors to rush, and plenty of reason for them to wait until the picture is clearer. The person now in charge of FTX oversaw Enron's liquidation. He will be getting to the bottom of what happened and producing a report. Plenty of other investigation is underway. And SBF is ignoring advice of counsel (plus that of basically any lawyer with a pulse) and giving extended interviews. They can charge him any time they want, and for now waiting only improves their position.
The other is that even if we assume our politicians are nakedly corrupt and that exonerations are for sale, there's no reason to think that past money would influence that. SBF is broke. They already have his money. So even if they are entirely without honor, the best thing they can do for themselves is throw SBF under the bus. They get exactly the same amount of money, plus the political capital from appearing honest.
Which I kind of have to agree with. Steal from the masses and you can get away with it, steal from the powerful and it's all hands on deck. See also: police not caring at all about your stolen car/property but SWAT will descend like a swarm if you piss off the wrong politician or threaten well-funded interests.
It is the same mindless angry mob sentiment that has existed through the ages, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the burning of witches to the lynchings through the American South.
People bray for blood and deem the government corrupt and ineffective if it is not immediately provided.
> Seems a bit premature, don't you think? Elizabeth Holmes's frauds were discovered in 2015 but took until 2018 for her to be indicted.
The fact that the rich can delay their trial for years while everyday people can have seized their assets ("civil asset forfeiture") without much recourse or get executed by police on the street for small-scale crime (George Floyd) is in itself an evidence of a corrupt, biased system.
And it goes even worse than that: the uber rich can inject billions of dollars into politics "thanks" to Citizens United - the Midterm 2022 elections had almost 9 billions of dollars in budget over all the candidates. Whoever has the most money on their side has a really good chance of winning an election - an absurdity, given that ideally elections should be decided on political merits, not on who could buy the most media airtime or hire PIs to dig up dirt on their opponents.
Democracies worldwide are sick at their core, and some of it already are falling towards capitalism-fascism ideologies. In the end, unchecked capitalism will always devolve towards fascism. The USA nearly re-elected Trump 2020, an awful lot of the Midterm 2022 elections were extremely close, Italy has fallen towards a fascist, in France the only competition for Macron's LREM is the fascist Le Pen, in Sweden the fascist Sweden Democrats are the kingmakers, in Israel literal terrorist lawyers and sympathisants will soon be part of the Cabinet, Hungary's Viktor Orban is a far-right autocrat...
She provided no benefit or advantage to those in power, the success or failure of Theranos and her personal status had no bearing or effect on the ruling class, therefore she is subject to the same laws and punishments as the rest of us.
SBF, on the other hand, donated a significant amount of the stolen money to politicians of all stripes, and there's (as yet unproven) hints that the overall FTX/Alameda hierarchy of shell corporations may have been involved in other financial shenanigans that would benefit those in power.
I dont understand this logic. This benefited them in the past, the spigot has dried up at this point - why would they care what happens to him in a few years?
Further more, there have been tons of examples where political donations dont help criminals. H. Winstein and J Epstein both were big donors, but when their crimes got enough press and they were arrested, no one protected them (yes I know it's more complicated with Epstein)
