OTOOOOOH

Here’s an odd one. Religion Unplugged sees a Christian angle in the trial of billionaire Bill Hwang. They call him a philanthropist.

Admittedly this is a complex situation.

On one side, Hwang is a standard superselfish Chinese billionaire who loves betting for its own sake and loves to gain status by owning everything. The perfect opposite of religion as defined by all the scriptures.

On the other side, his manipulations don’t make sense by the normal and predictable selfish billionaire model. The prosecutor is calling it a pump and brag scheme. He borrowed billions to buy billions in stocks, and didn’t seem interested in selling or shorting the stocks to make more money. When the stocks dropped he lost the borrowed billions.

Back to the first side, if he wanted to be seen as a philanthropist he would have been buying low and selling high, then spending most of the profit on real charities.

But he did put about 500 million into real charities, so he’s not entirely faking.

As a juror I’d have trouble convicting him of criminal manipulation. He wasn’t taking money from investors, just misusing banks and brokers to pile up his own money. There’s no obvious line between his activities and all other stock traders. I think they’re all criminals and predators and thieves, but I couldn’t apply my judgment in court. Since 1980 the written “laws” no longer agree with morality.

But he wasn’t playing Sammy’s evil Effective Altruism game. His real contributions helped real people right now, not fake people who might exist 1000 years in the future.

That’s a whole pile of Battling Buts, with no certainty anywhere!

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Possible explanation:

A factory worker is caught at the exit gate pushing a wheelbarrow full of scrap newspaper. The security guard looks through the newspaper and finds no auto parts, no valuable copper, nothing.

This happens repeatedly. Every day he leaves with a wheelbarrow full of scrap newspaper, every day the security guard rifles through the paper and finds nothing of value. Finally the security guard asks him what the hell he’s doing. “Stealing wheelbarrows, of course!”