SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: The delicious fall of Sam Bankman-Fried.

In any case, FTX was big on ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance]. On a video from January this year the company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried and the vlogger Nas Daily — the first a shyster, the second possibly a naif — claimed that FTX existed only to make money that could then be given away. The two young men are weirdos in different ways — but the main one, Bankman-Fried, looks about fourteen and has a face like a stress ball being scrunched by somebody who’s very stressed indeed.

This pair talk about all of the things that our age values most, claiming as they do that making money to pass on to special causes is much better than merely getting rich and buying a Lamborghini. If you make money and give it away to these causes, they say, that makes you way more happy than spending it on yourself.

With some infelicitous turns of phrase, Daily says various things about Bankman-Fried, which the latter then responds to. “He is funding everything you can think of: global warming” (“It’s one of the biggest problems that we have to tackle together as a world”). “Covid-19 preparedness” (“We have to be ready for the next pandemic”). “Neglected tropical diseases” (“More than a billion people suffer from them — we have to eliminate these diseases”). “And of course animal welfare” (“Animals deserve to live just like we do; it’s also why I’m vegan”).

Putting aside for a moment whether animals deserve to live just like we do, this is a pretty comprehensive catechism of our day. Bankman-Fried might have added something about BLM, but it is possible that the most up-to-date shyster knows to veer ever so slightly away from last season’s ones.

For here we are in the realm of the sort of sanctimonious fraud that our species has known throughout history. The great writers from Chaucer and Boccaccio knew these types. Many classic works of literature feature them. But one of the strangest aspects of human beings is not that we continually throw up such people but that people always fall for them.

Well, not everyone. As The Onion joked in April: Man Who Lost Everything In Crypto Just Wishes Several Thousand More People Had Warned Him.