= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
SaidAchmiz comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (893)
Ok, thanks. That makes sense.
If you don't mind a bit of followup explanation: where does the lie to the government come into this? Like, clearly Madoff defrauded his clients and that's terrible, but I'm still not clear on the role of the disclosure to government institutions (or lack thereof). Is it just that the government in this case is the channel by which one disclose information about operations to one's clients, i.e. the government acting on behalf of the clients? Or is it something else...?
The SEC's basically acting as an enforcement body and a standards organization in this case. Lying to them allowed Madoff to perpetuate his fraud, and perhaps more importantly to legitimize it; he wouldn't likely have been able to manage billions of dollars if he'd been operating outside the regulatory framework. I'm not sure I'd call that intrinsically immoral, even with my deontology emulator on, but in this context I think I'd be comfortable saying that it acted to exacerbate the situation.
It looks like he'd tried to stay out of their sights as much as possible, though. Judging from Wikipedia, most of the investigation here was carried out by his competitors.
Understood. Yes, given this explanation I think I agree that lying to the SEC was immoral in this case.