this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024

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Punishment for financial crimes should be proportionate to the average yearly income. (self.showerthoughts)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by Lupo to c/showerthoughts

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I.e. 100k embezzlement gets you 2.5 years

Edit.

I meant this to be the national average income (40k if I round up for cleaner math), not based on the individuals income, it's a static formula.

Crime$$$/nat. Avg. Income = years in jail

100k/40k = 2.5 years

1mill /40k=25 years

My thoughts were, if they want to commit more crime but lessen the risk, they just need to increase the average national income. Hell, I'd throw them a bone adjust their sentences for income inflation.

Homie gets two years (80k/40k=2), but the next year average national income jumps to 80k (because it turns out actually properly threatening these fuckers actually works, who'd've figured?), that homies sentence gets cut to a year he gets out on time served. Call it an incentive.

Anyways, more than anything, I'm sorry my high in the shower thought got as much attention as it did.

Good night

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[–] reddit_sux 1 points 3 days ago

I think it should be proportional to the lives affected. You embezzeled 100000 people you will spend 100000 years in jail. White collar crimes deserve harsher punishment than blue collar crimes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I.e. 100k embezzlement gets you 2.5 years

For whom? Your post title seems to talk about having proportionate punishments:

Punishment for financial crimes should be proportionate to the average yearly income.

yet you only stated a single punishment without mention to whom it would apply, and how it would differ for someone else.

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[–] tehWrapper 3 points 4 days ago (6 children)

I have no income.. does that mean I can hold up a bank?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

There could theoretically be a mandatory minimum fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Yes

[–] Lost_My_Mind 1 points 4 days ago

Well that would be income.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fueling the for-profit incarceration/slavery industry even more?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How so?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Years in jail. A fine in proportion to their wealth is better imo.

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[+] JubilantJaguar -14 points 4 days ago (9 children)

Punishing people harder has never in human history actually solved a problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Beating your wife used to get you little to no punishment, and was much more commonplace.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Punishing people at all has solved many problems though. The shit they're dealt now are discovery taxes, not punishments.

[–] JubilantJaguar 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Punishing people at all has solved many problems though

Examples please.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Um... Just to be clear, you're implying that literally all forms of punishment for any crime are unnecessary and ineffective? Because one problem that was greatly lessened by punishing perpetrators was the more transparent forms of discrimination. If you want to argue that Title VII was useless then... Uh... Good luck.

[–] JubilantJaguar -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not sure what Title VII is. I'm saying that non-restorative punishment is basically useless to everything and everyone except the party inflicting it. And it may not even be useful for them (if, for example, they were earnestly following New Testament Christian principles).

I think we would all do well to consider this fact. Punishment in the form of retribution (which is usually what people mean by punishment) is just not effective at solving problems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Not sure what Title VII is.

Yeah fair enough. Change that to the civil rights act.

I'm saying that non-restorative punishment is basically useless to everything and everyone except the party inflicting it.

Then what's your answer to murder? You can't restore a human life.

[–] JubilantJaguar 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Murder is not too difficult: you lock 'em up on the grounds of protecting society, since this was premeditated violence and they might do it again.

Accidental homicide is where it gets tricky. Obviously someone who runs over a child by accident is going to jail. The usual constructive justification is that this "an expression of society's outrage", or similar. There's truth in that. But the real, underlying, motive is surely to inflict suffering on the perpetrator as they inflicted it on their victim - in this case, completely unintentionally. My point is that it's not constructive, it doesn't solve anything except add misery to misery. And it's hypocrisy, because we all know, deep down, that retaliation is about us, not them, but we won't admit it. I hate hypocrisy.

I once got badly injured in a road accident entirely caused by someone else's gross negligence. There were no witnesses and they got off by brazenly lying about what happened. Did I hate them? Yeah, a bit. But then the lying was rational and I might well have done the same in their place. They wanted to escape punishment, which after all serves no purpose to anyone. Did I even want them to go to jail? Actually, no. I would have accepted a sincere apology and some symbolic act of making amends. A day of community service, perhaps. But our system is not set up like that. I think it's a shame.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

in this case planned murder is tricky. because the person they killed is directly responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths and the government was unwilling to lock them up for everyone's safety.

[–] JubilantJaguar 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But a financial criminal does not directly cause anything much, let alone a ton of murders. That's the whole point. It takes lots of other people, all with their own agency, to effect the harm. As for locking them up "for everyone's safety", I would say that that is pure sophistry for a case of someone who sits behind a computer. We will agree to disagree on this whole subject.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Wrong person mate. Unless you meant to completely change the context of the conversation.

Neither of us were talking about financial crimes. I was very explicitly countering your narrative that planned murders are easy to decree as a danger to society vs accidental; and therefore somehow less ambiguous/ simpler.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I see many down-votes. I assume these are the positions people are having (please correct me if I'm wrong or mischaracterizing):

JubilantJaguar: There is no evidence for harsher punishments having an effect any more than moderate punishments. I even go as far as saying that punishment at all is not beneficial.
Comments critical of JubilantJaguar: How can you say that punishment doesn't work when rich criminals basically can go home for free after committing their crimes? How can you say that punishment doesn't work when domestic abuse used to be widespread?

While looking for the middle ground or a compromise can be seen as absurd, the evidence seems to support parts of both of these stances. For example, moderate punishment has been shown to reduce crime much more than harsh crime.

A simple example is how many countries around the world no longer execute people in public as a form of punishment. For the vast majority of those countries, violent crime has been reduced drastically. In the light of these two facts (less executions and less violent crime), is it really tenable to argue that "harsher punishments result in less crime"? So, what is actually causing crime to be deterred?

Some people have thought long and hard about this problem, and we now have the evidence to understand what drives crime down. Here's one such person and their summary of their findings: "An effective rule of law, based on legitimate law enforcement, victim protection, swift and fair adjudication, moderate punishment, and humane prisons is critical to sustainable reductions in lethal violence" (https://igarape.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Homicide-Dispatch_1_EN.pdf)

I know lethal violence is different to non-violent crime, such as wage theft. However, imagine a CEO making the decision to steal wages. Where is he located? Who, if anyone, surrounds him? What is his demeanor? Now imagine a society with "an effective rule of law, based on legitimate law enforcement, victim protection, swift and fair adjudication, moderate punishment, and humane prisons". What kinds of institutions would this society have? How would you feel walking in the streets or laboring in this society? Now, think about the CEO and the society at the same time. Are those two compatible? Would that criminal CEO really go home free in a society with those characteristics?

I assume there is an impulse to say that capitalism leads to classes of people who are treated fundamentally differently. Indeed, there is clear evidence that capitalism can lead to persistent inequalities (e.g. Piketty, Shaikh), which can enable extractive political institutions. Money can buy political privileges. However, capitalism is not the only force that shapes the world. Democracy is also incredibly powerful. They are two different vectors, two different carts pulling societies around the world in different directions. Without democracy as a counterweight, we wouldn't have the kinds of protections, rights, and guarantees that so many of us have. Are we ready to deny the legacy of democracy by insisting that we cannot remotely bring justice to wealthy criminals? Are we ready to deny the democratic values that so many of us have today? Are we ready to deny the effect that collective action for democracy has had in our institutions?

[–] JubilantJaguar 1 points 3 days ago

This seems like a fair synopsis of the debate, well done for taking the time. You summarized my position accurately enough.

To be clear, I was making a very narrow point which should not really be controversial. Punishment, when understood as retribution, is an affront to human dignity and also just ineffective. It irritates me that so many people (the vast majority of us, let's be honest) seem stuck in this medieval mindset of "let's hurt the perpetrator".

But punishment does have other more positive aims, such as restoration (making amends to victims) or rehabilitation (of the perpetrator). Well: the evidence is pretty clear. Places with liberal (progressive) criminal-justice systems, countries like Norway with its ultra-light-touch sentencing and "holiday camp prisons", these places have far less crime than places like the USA where most people are still stuck in their conviction that things must be made miserable for the perpetrator. Ultimately, we have to decide what we want: do we want to feel good about ourselves for having got revenge on someone who did harm, or do we actually want a fairer society with less crime, including financial crime? If it's the latter, retribution is a dead end.

Back in the land of hard choices, of course wage thieves and tax evaders need to pay some kind of price for their misdeeds. Not least for the symbolic value, and for the shame (rather than suffering) that it inflicts on them. This is roughly what happened in Iceland after the financial crisis, BTW. A bunch of bankers did actually go to prison there. But the sentences were short and, IIRC, it was basically some form of house arrest. That seems to me like a decent solution.

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