I shouldn’t even try

Discussions of Sammy’s rise and fall repeatedly hit a point that I can’t grasp. Supposedly Sammy was a hypnotic figure. Supposedly he had a magnetic appeal to everyone he met.

I don’t get it. I can sort of see the appeal of Elizabeth Holmes. She’s pretty and lively and radiates a sense of mission and purpose. You’d rather be on her side than under her boot. Sammy doesn’t have any of those qualities. He’s pudgy, whiny and distracted, never paying full attention to anything. Interviewers are constantly frustrated because he won’t stop playing videogames long enough to answer a question. The interviewers then translate this distraction into “He must be really really really smart.”

Maybe there’s a specific high status magnetism that counts inside high status circles?

Elizabeth certainly fits there. The Fleischmann family has deep and long connections in wealth and Deepstate, starting with their ability to continue making gin during Prohibition. Obvious parallel to the Kennedy family. Kissinger and George Shultz were close friends of the Fleischmanns and were grandfather figures to Elizabeth. She didn’t need magnetism to convince Grandpa of her greatness.

Sammy’s family has much newer but possibly stronger connections. His menstruating individual has been running an NGO for several decades. He didn’t need introductions to D bureaucrats and legislators. They had been taking bribes from birthing person, so the birthed person was already in their circle. Apostolic succession.

When everyone you meet already fears the wrath of menstruating person, you don’t need your own magnetism.

Is that all of it? Sounds like there’s more. Obviously I shouldn’t even try to understand the emotions of aristocrats. Different species.

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Later: The podcast includes a long conversation with Tiffany Fong, the unintentional (?) honeytrap who managed to get close with Sammy. She doesn’t understand Sammy’s supreme overconfidence. This is the one aspect I do understand. Overconfidence is an innate quality of Professional Criminals, who are not the same thing as Psychopaths. Pro Criminals always pick the cheating path, and are always CERTAIN that they can bamboozle all squares and dullards. Their confidence is rewarded most of the time, but tends to fade when they face an unbribable cop or a hostile jury.

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Later again: Jacob Silverman, who made the above-linked podcast, appeared on another podcast where he made an especially interesting observation. Sammy is the most talkative suspect in history, but ALL of the bitcoin bros are big talkers, constantly spewing out sales pitches on every possible platform. “These guys don’t seem to realize that they’re providing literal copy-paste material for future indictments.”

This is not ordinary executive behavior. Founders of real companies that make real things don’t spend much time broadcasting. Bitcoiners MUST spend their time broadcasting because MLM is all sizzle and no steak. Their entire fortune depends on recruiting new influencers who will spend money and expand the talk and bring in more suckers who will spend more money and expand the talk, loop forever. Note also the recent story that Binance is paying 600k influencers, mainly in poor countries. Pure MLM.

Henry Ford didn’t talk much, but most of his sparse talk was aimed precisely at fraudsters like bitcoin.

Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

We are always seeking for those things which are in the clouds, not for those that lie at our feet.

Nothing can be made except by makers, nothing can be managed except by managers. Money cannot make anything and money cannot manage anything.