Iran Courts CdM and Ide

[Ideologue]

As far as I can tell, you're the only one that does.

The more important question, the one that Seedy is incapable of answering, is what constitutes an "economic crime."

Fraud is an economic crime.  Violating securities regulations would be an economic crime.  Wage theft would be an economic crime.  Hiring illegal workers would be an economic crime.  Failing to adhere to OSHA guidelines would be an economic crime.  There are already many economic crimes.  They are not, however, sufficiently prosecuted or carry sufficient punishments.

[Admiral Yi]

Wage theft?

So to be clear, are you in favor of the death penalty for all those things?

[Ideologue]

Depends on the severity of the harm, reversibility of the harm, mitigating factors, and all sorts of other nuanced questions that would be considered by a sentencing judge.

[Ideologue]

Plus, the type of white collar criminal we're talking about is generally not the impulsive and desperate street criminal against whom the death penalty holds comparatively little deterrent value (there was an interesting thought piece I read about how a lot of stereotypically poor behaviors, including criminality, could be explained by a framework that they value the utility of their continued existence as negative, and I think this has some predictive power).

We're talking about generally intelligent people who can do rational cost-benefit calculations and fear can in fact keep them in line.

[Admiral Yi]

It seems that your line is somewhat different than Seedy's "death to bankers."

Are there people who you think have committed white collar crimes and gotten off too easily?

[Ideologue]

Ken Lay.  Bernie Madoff.  Erwin Chemerinsky.

[Admiral Yi]

You think Bernie Madoff's 3,000 year sentence was too light?

[Ideologue]

Well, I don't believe in prisons.

[DontSayBanana]

Sounds awesome, indeed.  Here's the thing: stealing can be worse than killing.  Defrauding folks out of $2.6 billion is worth about a thousand average persons' entire working lives.  If they are never made whole (and often even if they are, given the costs and inefficiencies imposed in seeking justice) isn't that actually much worse than knifing one guy in an alley and taking his wallet?

My point is that you can define financial crimes in terms of hours of destroyed value--the hours of someone's mortal existence.  It is very much akin to murder.  The death penalty is appropriate if the amounts are large enough, because even if they amount to spreading a dozen or a hundred or a thousand deaths out over millions, it is stealing from us the time we have on this Earth.

Congratulations, you just described the economy from that terrible Justin Timberlake movie.

[Sheilbh]

We all agree Friends with Benefits was awful, but it wasn't a Stalinist dystopia.

[Valmy]

We all agree Friends with Benefits was awful, but it wasn't a Stalinist dystopia.

[DontSayBanana]

We all agree Friends with Benefits was awful, but it wasn't a Stalinist dystopia.

Actually, I was talking about this particular gem:

[garbon]

Hey that movie wasn't so bad. At least not in a day drinking in a beach house whilst sunburnt sort of way.

[Ideologue]

It's not Andrew Niccol's worst movie...

[Sheilbh]

I have a friend who's made everyone he knows watch Lord of War at least twice