The co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX pleaded not guilty to a seven count indictment charging him with wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
An attorney for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in federal court Tuesday his client has to subsist on bread, water and peanut butter because the jail he’s in isn’t accommodating his vegan diet.
Welcome to the American corrections system, abuses like this and worse happen every day and we just don’t normally hear about them because the defendants aren’t famous like this one is
They don’t have to be. That’s not the point of it: the point is to punish them or permanently keep them locked away. If we wanted to guarantee they’ll never hurt anyone ever again, we’d execute them and still do in some states.
I don't think a system that's focussed on rehabilitation rather than punishment would be popular with American voters.
Countries that do focus on rehabilitation in western democracies, often hand out less long sentences and treat their prisoners relatively nicely. Their own cell, tv, etc. Still prison though, being robbed of your freedom is punishment in and of itself. On average that leads to better outcomes, lower recidivism, ....
But on a case by case basis, discovering someone who committed a heinous crime was let out after 10 years? Sure, often monitored, evaluated, and with stringent conditions. Sure, only if the chance they'll do it again is very low. But still. It doesn't feel right. Same thing with nice prison cells. Show the average American a Norwegian prison cell, and tell them it houses a rapist, and they'll be understandably offended. Think it isn't fair. Which it almost certainly isn't, but you don't lower the chance of repeat offending by sticking someone in a cage for ten years.
Also, I do wonder if these kinds of prisons are possible in a country without a semi-decent social safety net. If jail's better than being homeless, and homelessness is rampant, people will commit crimes just to escape. You end up rewarding criminals, because jail is comparatively nice compared to their existence outside jail.
The American political stance of “hard on crime” is why we will never see legislation reforming our prison system.
Start talking about prison reform, lowing mandatory sentences, zero tolerance, prisoner rights, and living conditions and see how hard you get attacked.
It’s funny because the little shits like him who think they are smarter and above the law, are the same people who are going to power trip on him in jail. I really hope he spends the rest of his life there, see what it’s like to be shorthanded for once.
Most of the fruit, veg, rice, beans, oats, grits, bread, salad, condiments, pasta, juice etc. on the menu would be vegan any way. There might some mixed with milk or butter, but most is just going to be boiled, baked or fried in oil. Plus all the stuff from the commissary.
I think you vastly overestimate how many foods are made without animal products. I'm not even fully vegan and I often find it hard to get food that doesn't have some kind of dead animal in it.
Some of the replies here are absolutely vile: if you’re going to endorse locking people in cages for years if not decades and pretend that’s a justified response to anything short of their being an immediate physical danger to the people around them, then the least you can do is accommodate their most basic needs and ethical positions.
Prisons are pitched to us as places of rehabilitation - somewhere to pay penance and right wrongs before returning to the community, better for having served the time. I think it’s a deeply disingenuous characterisation which serves mainly to let people avoid facing up to the reality which is prison’s purposeless and ultimately harmful cruelty, but it is the dominant characterisation nonetheless.
But, if we blindly accept the rehabilitation narrative, then how exactly do we expect to rehabilitate people by fracturing them psychologically? By forcing them to violate ethical commitments which are sacrosanct to them, by alienating them from their communities and forcing them to abide by a clockwork dictatorial regime without any semblance of comfort or dignity, by leaving them to rot miserably for years?
No, and no wonder prisons are factories for broken people and recidivism if this is how people think about them. Get a hold of yourselves.
Also, before anybody retreats to the flimsy position of “but prisoners shouldn’t eat better than schoolchildren” or “but what about the poor” - yes, those people are also underserved, and we have resources available to improve conditions for all of them too. All that’s lacking is will.
Last but not least, if you concede that you care about neither the incarcerated nor the society they come from and will return to in time - then there’s also the question of why animals should suffer? If people aren’t even worthy of being afforded their basic preferences, then why should the default be the option which necessitates the lifelong suffering of sentient beings on an industrial scale?
Prisons are pitched to us as places of rehabilitation - somewhere to pay penance and right wrongs before returning to the community, better for having served the time
In America? many states don't even pretend with that pitch. They want to be "hard on crime" and "give justice to victims". And voters vote for that.
Glad to know veganism is more important than justice.
He doesn’t have the right to be a vegan in prison. He’s in PRISON. Being justly punished. When you’re in prison, you don’t get to live the way you want barring basic human rights, and being vegan isn’t a human right, it’s a lifestyle choice.
Get over that fact and take your cultists out of the thread
he already has PBJs and PBJs are given specifically as a vegan option.
he doesn’t have the right to be vegan when he’s locked up
you don’t have the right to exploit crime threads to push your shitty political agenda.
This thread is not about you, not about vegans, and you coming in here brigading and unethically deciding the fact that a dude who stole billions is claiming to be vegan (whether that claim is true or false) is more important than justice and literally everyone else is unacceptable, get the fuck out of the thread
You. Unless you think we haven’t noticed you’re hiding behind a debate about the importance of punishment, the viability and legitimacy of the prison system and abuses of the U.S. prison system in a situation that has nothing to do with them because you’re trying to promote veganism.
It’s weird though. It’s literally just the guy you were talking to, and another who’s account is only a couple hours old and solely has comments on this post.
It’s weird that every single comment he made would have exactly 3 upvotes only an hour after posting on a 2 day old thread, deep within a comment chain of nearly 20 back and forths.
But maybe not, honestly it’s possible you’re right. It was just pretty suspicious.
I don’t especially care whether there’s a formally enshrined right for incarcerated people to be vegan - I’m saying that if we continue to insist upon locking people in cages with an ostensible objective of rehabilitating them and not simply performing retributive cruelty for its own sake, then we must treat the incarcerated people with diligence and respect as baseline. You can’t expect for well-adjusted people to emerge from a system of institutionalised dehumanisation, cruelty, and uncaring indifference.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to respect an incarcerated person’s ethical commitment to not exploiting animals, and to be diligent in providing food of a reasonable nutritional standard which doesn’t violate those commitments to consume. Peanut butter sandwiches do not fulfil that criteria by themselves.
I’m not sure what you mean by “my cultists” - I didn’t bring anybody here, and I found this thread independently through my own feed.
In order to preemptively address some of your assertions in reply to another person in this comment thread:
This thread is not about you, not about vegans
It’s not about vegans, no.
It’s about respect for a person’s ethical commitments in a scenario where you’ve deprived them of the ability to satisfy those commitments themselves. My argument would not have to substantively change in order to comment on a person whose religious dietary restrictions aren’t being respected by the available options, to give an alternative example.
It’s true that the final paragraph of my original response speaks specifically to animal liberation, but that’s because I’m passionate about that issue independently of this one. That said, I think my original reply would remain perfectly sound with that paragraph removed if you’d prefer to take it that way.
the fact that a dude who stole billions
I don’t think the crime or characteristics of the incarcerated are especially relevant here. My argument would remain unaltered if the incarcerated person was poor, from a marginalised background, and in prison for much less exceptional reasons.
is more important than justice and literally everyone else
I don’t think that whatever justice there is to be found in the prison system is nullified by respecting incarcerated people’s ethical commitments, and I think that applies to all incarcerated people.
Unless you think we haven’t noticed you’re hiding behind a debate about the importance of punishment, the viability and legitimacy of the prison system and abuses of the U.S. prison system in a situation that has nothing to do with them because you’re trying to promote veganism.
I’m a prison abolitionist first and foremost, and I thought that’d be clear from the overall thrust of my original post - but apparently not. Respect for the incarcerated, their humanity, and their ethical commitments is very much the compromise position.
Well, good news: prison absolutely is for punishing people, not rehabilitation. And it never should be. Prison should never go away, specifically to spite disgusting monsters like you who want to do away with justice, ensuring that no one who does evil things will ever see meaningful life-rendering consequences for their actions.
You’re the kind of person who ruins the lives of abuse victims. Who tells rape victims that they need to put aside their emotions for your idea of a greater good while nothing is ever expected of their rapists or of you. People like you destroy millions of lives peddling this shit – there’s even a CSA survivor in the comments calling out another one of your ilk.
I’m a prison abolitionist first and foremost, and I thought that’d be clear from the overall thrust of my original post - but apparently not. Respect for the incarcerated, their humanity, and their ethical commitments is very much the compromise position.
No, what you are is an apologist. The idea of doing away with punishment, even prison, is nothing more than cheap apologia, anti-survivor, anti-justice, completely immoral and anti-human. Though given veganism is being used as the main driver for you to peddle your evil political agenda in this thread, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you truly did not give a fuck about any of that.
I nor anyone else with decency, goodness and common sense are going to give you or your evil ideas any quarter nor should they. The very idea of doing away with punishment or even prison given the horrific reasoning you hold for it is morally repugnant and can be dismissed on its face.
You are disgusting. Get away from me. I hope you never get what you want.
I don’t care about sharp words from a brutish authoritarian.
You’re free to continue endorsing an institution and approach which generates further undesirable behaviour as recidivism whilst preventing little wherever it’s implemented. You can continue to pretend that criminality is a phenomenon completely local to the actor and not a reflection of broader social and structural issues which we need to address. You can proceed with turning out more victims by proxy of the traumatised ex-incarcerated continuing to deal harm if it’ll satisfy the sadistic streak inside of you demanding that infractions incur the infliction of suffering and trauma in turn.
Regions which engage with mass incarceration and operate more sadistic prison regimes overlap with those regions with the highest rates of repeat offending. That’s not a coincidence, but a product of thinking like yours.
Prisons which exist with actual commitments to rehabilitation, and which respect the dignity of the incarcerated, while imperfect, turn out far fewer repeat offenders than those who don’t.
If you care about victims of abuse, as I do, then you’ll turn instead to approaches which result in fewer of them to be counted: alternatives to incarceration, and the pursuit of relative normalcy within the institution for the incarcerated where it still exists.
I hope for a future without coercion, abuse, violence, or pain. I would hope that we all do.
Don’t listen to him, pretty sure he’s a troll. Also looks like he has alts, as every one of his comments immediately gets upvoted two or three times, while comments like yours get downvoted. It’s pathetic.
I don’t care about sharp words from a brutish authoritarian.
But you do care about writing a half-page’s worth of the most obscene, arrogant, self-satisfied, apologist garbage you can muster because ultimately, this is about the lack of respect you have for other people, especially abuse victims who you step all over to get what you want. Like here:
If you care about victims of abuse, as I do, then you’ll turn instead to approaches which result in fewer of them to be counted: alternatives to incarceration, and the pursuit of relative normalcy within the institution for the incarcerated where it still exists.
Who, in the world, would reasonably listen to someone like you? Someone who thinks like that? You know there are actual CSA survivors in this thread, right? Possibly even rape survivors? And you’re here talking that kind of shit thinking you know them better than the rest of humanity and have the right to speak for them?
Did you know I am an abuse survivor? That most of my friends are? Did you ever even think to emphasize with me, or ask me who I am or why I feel the way I do?
No. You absolutely did not. It didn’t even cross your mind to, because you’re a disgusting abuse apologist who doesn’t give a shit about anyone other than yourself. You likely only support getting rid of punishment specifically because you know it will hurt everyone else.
I knew one of you loonies was going to start demanding he be released.
Well, you’re wrong. He absolutely should be in prison, preferably for the rest of his life along with every other scumbag who stole money out of innocent people’s retirement funds, 401Ks, home equity, and every other heinous white collar crime committed on the American people by the ruling class.
You don’t care about justice, you only care about what makes you feel better and that’s wrong.
Hmmm, 4 hour old account with comments solely on this post? Pretty suspect.
Especially when you’re using the exact same language as another user in this thread.
You don’t care about justice, you only care about what makes you feel better and that’s wrong.
I’m pretty sure they even used this exact line on me. Lol any chance this is the same person, and you made more accounts to upvote your own comments and downvote those you disagree with? That’d be pretty sad.
Always accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.
It doesn’t occur to you that maybe you just come off that way and that other people disagree with you? That maybe, just maybe, you’re a douchebag defending terrible ideas?
But go ahead and keep playing the victim. I’m sure Sam Bankman-Fried’s actual victims will appreciate you shitting all over them, defending someone who stole their life savings, just so you can satisfy your little persecution complex.
Care to quote where I was shitting on anyone? I feel terrible for those people - it’s fucking awful what happened to them.
Also not sure where I played the victim. I literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Not to mention the whole bit about a persecution complex, it’s so random it almost makes me think it’s projection.
Either way I hope you eventually learn that things aren’t so black and white, and to soften those edges a bit. Living with so much hate isn’t good for you.
It doesn’t occur to you that maybe you just come off that way and that other people disagree with you? That maybe, just maybe, you’re a douchebag defending terrible ideas?
And here’s another little roach crawling out of the woodwork. One quick look through your post history shows I’m right – you all ARE working together and brigading and being douchebags. When other people started giving you pushback, it angered you. And here you two are now, completely unironically ganging up on me like you all think this is Reddit because you’re being called out on it.
Have you ever considered that maybe you’re the baddies?
I keep seeing the sentiment in this thread that if you go to prison you basically deserve whatever happens to you, which is a fucked up stance in itself, but more importantly:
Why do the cows, chickens, etc. deserve to suffer because someone is in prison? Does that make sense in any moral framework? How would you feel if we bagged random people not guilty of anything and forced prisoners to watch them tortured “on their behalf” as a form of punishment? That’s pretty much the same situation ethically and everyone would agree it’s fucked up.
I’m confused about what you mean by animals suffering because someone is in prison. Don’t they suffer regardless of if someone is in prison? Like, the animal would die and be eaten, regardless of where the meat is sent.
I’m pro animal rights and all that btw, I just don’t get the connection you are making here.
The meals will (I assume) be allocated on inmate numbers, so the animal will be reared, killed, transported, then thrown in the trash because someone doesn’t want to eat it.
More generally this is the weird ‘opt out’ culture of food, where vegan is considered the exceptional position, which is kinda stupid, in my opinion.
Sure, but you could e.g. start with slop and then let people request something different. That’s what I meant by ‘default’. Perhaps there’s a better world?
I sure there’s a fancy word in psychology, but it’s like if everyone is given choice x automatically, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that x seems to be what people prefer.
I’ve noticed a similar thing in the Subway sandwich store: there are approximately the same number of vegetables and meats available, but if you look at the menu there is just one ‘veggie’ option, and a multitude of different meat combinations.
Here’s the definition of default I’m using (from Google):
a preselected option adopted by a computer program or other mechanism when no alternative is specified by the user or programmer. (weird it specifies “a computer program or other mechanism”, but whatever)
My argument is that the default meal including meat is what makes including meat the most popular choice, not the other way around.
It’s not weird that it specifies a computer program, the use of the term to mean the standard option comes from computing. It’s the value chosen when the computer defaults, as in fails to pay it’s debt (in this case debt being the value it was looking for).
I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that people prefer meat because it’s the default option and not the other way around.
They did not say that at all. They said, if you are a vegan and consider animal slaughter a form of torture for animals and you are for some reason imprisoned, is it reasonable punishment to force you to accept this torture of a third party (the animals) on your behalf?
I think the missing link is that the prison warden doesn’t even think about the animals - they just think, this is food, eat the food. They aren’t intentionally causing animal suffering, its just a build in part of the system that society as a whole has accepted as normal. So someone not eating the food is just being annoying, in their eyes, regardless of their reasons.
Is this ethical? Fundamentally no, because it accepts animal suffering as a premise. But it makes sense why the prison isn’t accommodating them.
Yeah I admit I’m very torn about this. On the one hand this idiot kid managed to blast through 50 fucking BILLION dollars of other peoples’ money and shows zero remorse. On the other hand, I’m wondering what the ethical responsibility of the state is for accommodating prisoners’ dietary needs from medical conditions, religious observation, and ethical/personal preferences eg vegetarian/veganism etc. I don’t like punishing people beyond what the court orders, and it is really disturbing when people cheer and joke about things like prison rape.
Seems to me it shouldn’t be too difficult to make a vegan “meatloaf” type food that checks all the boxes. Sort of like ordering the Kosher meal on an airplane. It’s not gonna be great but it’ll get you there.
I’d quickly be tempted to adopt a personal conviction requiring medium rare sirloin, loaded baked potatoes, whiskey/cokes and similar fare. If there’s no economy of scale, that’s not my issue. Respect my religion. It’s very specific.
Veganism is considered a protected characteristic in the UK now (defended in court) so there is precedent for this. What religion or protected ethical stance requires you to follow such a diet?
It’s the same thing with the trans woman Jan 6th rioter. She deserves punishment, but it should be humane. No one should be forced to serve a sentence where they don’t belong, and we shouldn’t be OK with it in any instance just because we disagree with the person. We should take the opportunity to improve things for everyone.
(We can still appreciate the irony of a trans person supporting Trump/Republicans and then being upset that their gender is not being recognized, then asking MTG and that lot for help. It shouldn’t happen, but it is ironic.)
Do conservative reactionary predictions ever come true? From everyone dying of vaccine complications years ago, to QAnon and his “Nostradamus for Nazis”, to violent video games turning children into killers, to reefer madness and satanic panic, to interracial marriage, all the way back to the adoption of electricity.
It’s not just backing a team that never wins, it’s backing a team that never wins yet insists they’re going to win the next match by 200 points.
Anytime a big corp gets caught fucking with poor people worse they get is a slap on the wrist fine maybe 10 of what they profited and maybe 1-2 years max in prison time for a few fall guys.
That’s what happened with Elizabeth Holmes, too. She defrauded both her investors and the patients using her products. She was only convicted of one of those. Guess which one?
Yeah, I object to that as well. It may not be easy having empathy for a billionaire vegetarian but ….
When my kids were little, they took tours to meet first responders and see the facilities and equipment. However when police got to the hold facilities, they decided it was a “scared straight” opportunity. Part of their standard procedure was to steal make you pay to buy you disgusting greasy swill their choice of kids meal their quantity at the nearest fast food place. You have no choice, no reasonably healthy options, no allowance for anyone not used to all that grease, and you have to pay for it. I guess spending the day half starving while sitting on the toilet is “justified” for people who haven’t even had a chance to face charges yet.
…. Oh and they were practically gleeful to point out that after a certain time Friday afternoon, the magistrate wouldn’t respond until the next week, so you would be stuck.
Hard disagree, the point of veganism is literally to stop victimization of animals, you want to justify victimization because you don’t like someone who’s requesting it doesn’t happen? That stance is just horrific.
Can you explain how it helps the people who got ripped off by FTX to have a bunch of animals killed to feed SBF. Or how killing a bunch of animals to feed SBF somehow victimizes humans. Since you’re accusing me of not caring about humans, for some frigging reason.
The animal is not already dead since we’re talking about what he’s fed in the future. “Humans are not herbivores” is nonsensical because humans do “fine” on either an herbivorous or omnivorous diet (shorter life expectancy on an omnivorous diet to be exact). Your taxes are already going to feed criminals and feeding them meat and dairy costs more than feeding them beans, rice and greens. And don’t be proclaiming you’re “too good to argue with someone” the second they ask you to back up the bullshit attack you just launched on them in public.
You think people in jail are getting fresh beef from the butcher? If rice and beans were cheaper, I’m sure they’d serve it. Also, vegans do fine with supplements you mean, sometimes. Or they starve to death or have health problems from malnutrition
Oh, OK, so you formed your entire opinion about the suitability of a diet based on a news story you saw about one person on TikTok. You’re right, what do I know about veganism after being vegan for a decade.
Yes this chain was very revealing. I’ve done the same. No need to interact with that ilk. Kudos for humoring his dumb takes long enough that it would encourage me to do the same.
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