Steve’s Newsletter 1(6)

Steve’s Newsletter 1(6)

Shirley Jackson’s Lottery as Allegory for Fraud Prevention Laws

(I’m going to spoil an eight-page short story easily found on the internet, so maybe read that first if you haven’t already read The Lottery.)

The Lottery is set in a small, unnamed, presumably American community where inhabitants are excitedly gearing up for the annual event on June 27th. The rite of the lottery is said to ensure crop production, though many are skeptical. “Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon,” says one crotchety old man when someone suggests phasing out the lottery as many larger communities have done. The ritual has gone on for as long as anyone can remember, though no one knows why it is done when there is no obvious connection to crops. However, Mr. Summers, who leads the lottery reminds us that the event is the only thing that keeps us from living in caves. The “winner” of the lottery, Tessie Hutchinson is stoned to death, just like all past winners as long as anyone can remember.

If the impact of a single short story could be measured by a formula of word count juxtaposed with the number of literary critiques, The Lottery would be a clear victor. While the story is only 3,773 words long, it is subject to more than 10,000 individual literary critiques. Most of these use the story as an allegory to criticize outdated practices ranging from female genital mutilation to the electoral college.

I guess I’ll add one more observation to the heap. However, rather than criticize an outdated practice, I am going to criticize an ineffective practice. Just as the lottery has nothing to do with corn production, the occasional fraud indictment by the Department of Justice has little to do with combatting fraud.

In a nation of fiat currency, where the strength of our economy is “backed solely by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government” the market is only as strong as our faith in the system. If people don’t believe in the system, the system fails. So, we need an occasional sacrifice to feel good about the system and maintain our full faith and credit that an adult is in charge and the economy will keep on plugging along.

It’s only a lie we tell ourselves. No adult is running things.

The most recent sacrifice is Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, a student loan service company. After faking over 4 million registered users, Javice sold her startup to JP Morgan for $175 million. She was convicted of criminal fraud and is currently awaiting sentencing of up to 30 years in prison.

Though I call her a sacrifice, I am not defending the behavior. She committed fraud, got caught, and is paying consequences. My concern is that a criminal conviction of 30 years seems steep in comparison with the complete lack of criminal accountability for big banks who engage in serial fraud with few consequences.\

JP Morgan (Javice’s victim) is no exception. As recently as 2020, JP Morgan was fined $920 million for criminal spoofing (creating the illusion commodity demand that wasn’t there). No JP Morgan executive went to prison.

My generation (to which Javice belongs) came of age in an era of fraud. Election fraud, steroids in baseball, “safe opiates” and of course the defenestration of the American economy in 2008. Individual convictions are rare in institutional fraud. Not one single banker or credit rating agency head went to prison despite knowingly tanking the US Economy before the Great Recession. In the dozens of class action lawsuits against banks in the intervening years that have resulted in criminal fraud sanctions, no banking executive has ever been behind bars.

Let me make it clear. JP Morgan engaged in nearly $1 billion in fraud to create artificial demand, but no one went to prison. Javice engaged in $175 million in fraud and may be an old woman when she gets out of prison.

I’m not arguing that two wrongs make a right. I’m merely noting that these headline generating criminal cases of Charlie Javice, Elizabeth Holmes, and many others don’t actually go after meaningful fraud. The total sums of their crimes are budget dust when compared to the types of fraud going on every day in places like JP Morgan. If anyone ever pulled back the curtain on the big banks and meaningfully investigated their books, the whole system collapses.

Just as the sacrifice of Tessie Hutchinson in The Lottery has nothing to do with corn, the conviction of Charlie Javice has nothing to do with meaningful fraud prevention.

Lottery in June. Bank stock go up soon.

While the World is Paying Attention to Gaza War, Israel is Setting Itself Up for the Next Conflict in West Bank

I did a little editing above on the BBC article to reflect what is actually happening.

Why did I change the headline?

To answer that, I need to provide a brief and incomplete history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1967, Israel launched a preemptive strike against five nations who were massing armies in preparation for an invasion. Over the course of six days, Israel kicked the living shit out of the countries involved, seizing the Golan Heights from Syria, the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the West Bank from Jordan.

Israel suddenly found itself occupying conquered territories with nearly 1 million people—400,000 in Gaza and 585,000 in West Bank. (The 90,000 Muslim Syrians in the Golan Heights were ethnically cleansed so quickly that history books barely even acknowledge it.) Suddenly, what had been a pan Arabic-Israeli conflict started to become a Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In the intervening years, the population of Palestinians has ballooned to 5 million people. Peace talks have been brokered and agreements broken. Every solution from giving Israeli citizenship to Palestinians to a two-state solution has been suggested and rejected by those in power. Zealots in Israel think the land was given to them by God. Jihadists in Palestine chant that they are going to push Israel into the sea.

Meanwhile, with Gaza and West Bank separated by 93 kilometers of Israel, two rival political factions have come to dominate the respective territories. Hamas, a fundamentalist terrorist group, controls Gaza. Fatah, a secular and perpetually corrupt political party, controls West Bank.

We don’t hear much about West Bank because Fatah has typically sought conciliation and cooperation with Israel Hamas prefers random attacks on civilians that result in Israel counterattacks and the 50:1 kill ratios that have made headlines over the last 20 months.

As a thank you for Fatah’s apparent reasonableness, Israel takes from the West Bank in the form of “settlements.”  While the word settlements might evoke a Little House on the Prairie feeling, they are full-fledged cities whose total population in West Bank comes to more than 700,000 people.

Thus, the image above.

“Everyone” was shocked by the bloody Hamas attack in October of 2023. I put everyone in quotation marks, because plenty of people saw it coming. For those who pay attention to current events and history, it was just another Saturday.

Pay attention now.

Each Israeli person moving into West Bank brings more tension. That tension brings more soldiers. Those soldiers bring more checkpoints, more strip searches, more raids, more mosques and homes demolished. It is not a question of if but when a population finally snaps. “Terrorists” from West Bank will wage “senseless violence” on “innocent civilians.” The Israeli government will react with a bloody attack on hospitals, schools, and other civilian targets in the name of fighting terrorism. For every dead Israeli, there will be 10, 20, or maybe 50 dead Palestinians. Everyone acts surprised.

Cleanse, wash, repeat.

I’m not writing this to convince you to take sides. Your mind is likely made up on that. Just don’t act surprised when the inevitable conflict erupts on some idle Saturday. It won’t be a surprise.

An Update on Hermit Crabs