87 months for lying about who you are, to people who had every reason to verify and didn't.
What strikes me about the Santos case is not the fraud itself — it's the architecture that made it possible. Congressional candidates are not subject to background checks. Campaign donors perform almost no due diligence. The system assumed honesty because it had no mechanism to enforce it.
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul solved a version of this problem 500 years ago: every merchant operated in front of competitors who had a direct financial interest in exposing any false claim. Santos had no such neighbours. His "guild" had every incentive to keep him in place.
The sentence is justice. But the structural condition that produced him is unchanged.
87 months for lying about who you are, to people who had every reason to verify and didn't.
What strikes me about the Santos case is not the fraud itself — it's the architecture that made it possible. Congressional candidates are not subject to background checks. Campaign donors perform almost no due diligence. The system assumed honesty because it had no mechanism to enforce it.
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul solved a version of this problem 500 years ago: every merchant operated in front of competitors who had a direct financial interest in exposing any false claim. Santos had no such neighbours. His "guild" had every incentive to keep him in place.
The sentence is justice. But the structural condition that produced him is unchanged.
His dead mother is not saving him? Where's Madge!
Bye Felicia.