“A white kid gets killed and the damn whole world stops… Fuck that white motherfucker,” said Seth’s killer, who pled down to manslaughter.
I’ve been doing lots of random punditry on Substack lately (Covid, Ukraine, crypto, prediction markets… etc.) and most of my readers are newer readers, so they wouldn’t necessarily know that Karlstack was originally set up to cater to academic economists. This is still an economics themed Substack. So, when I see injustice happening in the economics profession, I feel compelled to cover it.
There is no greater injustice in economics than Seth Smith; just hearing his name makes me boil with anger and depression and nihilism. It is so sad. Now that his killer’s court case came to a conclusion this week, and we have ostensibly obtained some semblance of closure, I am sadder than ever.
Seth Smith was a double major in economics and history at UC Berkeley. He was only 19 but a third-year student, scheduled to graduate next spring at the age of 20… he must have been very smart. He was a beautiful and brilliant young guy who had everything going for him. His dream was to attend graduate school at the London School of Economics.
At ~10 pm on June 15th, 2020 — almost exactly two years ago — Seth went out for a walk. On this walk he was shot in the back of the head, execution-style. His body was found half an hour later by a man walking his dog, sprawled on his back with one of his earbuds still in his ear, indicating he was listening to music.
Unfortunately for Seth, nobody cared about his murder, except for his mom, who was tweeting about it. It was not a national news story.
R&I ~ KC
Gellieman
Article URL : https://karlstack.substack.com/p/his-name-was-seth-smith?s=r