Comment by Hendrikto
13 hours ago
In Germany, financial crimes are often punished much harder than capital crimes too. Tells you where the priorities lie.
13 hours ago
In Germany, financial crimes are often punished much harder than capital crimes too. Tells you where the priorities lie.
Well, you could look at it from the perspective of incentives. The number of people who would commit a financial crime for $LARGE_SUM in exchange for a short stint in prison is much higher than the number of people who would commit rape or murder for the same stint. Most people don’t even want to commit murder or rape. But most people do want money and if you presented them the opportunity to get it in a non violent manner that they could rationalize in any way…well, now you need some heavy disincentives.
That's true in the US as well. It's because that kind of crime undermines faith in the financial system, something it must have to function. People grumble about white collar criminals getting light sentences, but the easiest way to get sent to jail for fifty years is to swindle a bunch of pensioners out of their life's savings.
There's a huge difference though, at least in the US: If a company (or very wealthy individual) commits a financial crime, then after they are caught (maybe) and investigated (maybe) and they mount an unsuccessful defense (maybe) and they are fined (maybe) and they lose their five appeals (maybe), after all that happens, they might pay a small token fine that doesn't even approach the damage they did, and have to pinky-swear to a judge that they'll never do it again. Nobody's going to prison. If a normie individual commits a similar financial crime, they're going to be financially ruined and go to prison.
I don't think this is true, though, is it?. Jeffrey Skilling got a 24 year sentence for his involvement in the Enron collapse. Ken Lay would have gotten even more but for the fact that he died before he could be sentenced.
Bernie Madoff got 150 years in prison for his Ponzi scheme.
All three of those guys are the very definition of wealthy and powerful, and there are endless other, albeit smaller, examples.
That is if you do it the stupid way. If you do it the plausibly deniable way, or with sufficient political backing, such as the current US president or one of the US senators from Florida, then nothing happens, except maybe gaining more power.
Always have your conversations in person and have underlings sign documents relating to transactions.
Also, you can systemically steal from future generations with no consequence, as a voter and leader. Promise people today big pensions and retiree healthcare, underfund today by telling actuaries to use unrealistic assumptions, or just straight up ignore funding recommendations, and then let the debt pile up for others to deal with.
>"It's because that kind of crime undermines faith in the financial system"
LOL. The whole system is based on constantly stealing fruits of one's labor by way of inflation and 2 classes of haves and have-nots in regards to real assets. How can regular Joe have faith in it is beyond my comprehension.
To be fair, that’s pretty common and the justification is that it’s much more difficult to get caught (and the criminals are usually much smarter and better at not getting caught too).
Where is that justification given?
It's criminology 101. Expected punishment = probability of being caught * severity of punishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory
Well it's not shocking given your countries history. Both target crimes usually committed by their minority groups.