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.
Ie
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
Punishing people harder has never in human history actually solved a problem.
Considering with many financial crimes the fine is less than the ill begotten profits, changing the fine from the current “cost of doing business” to an actual punishment is a matter of correcting a perverse incentive.
If the profits were ill-begotten then they should be paid back. Usually that’s what happens, and it’s a constructive form of justice.
But sending people to jail for years is just retribution. It’s not a deterrent. If it were, then countries that jail people a lot would have less crime, when in fact the opposite is true. If people advocating JAIL! JAIL! JAIL! were honest with themselves, they would admit that their real purpose is just to make the culprits suffer. Okay, although personally I like to think we can be better than that. In any case, it’s not gonna solve anything.
This thread is about financial fines, not jail time, but regardless, here’s the ‘The Formula’ scene from Fight Club. This is effectively how it works in the real world. The money isn’t paid back.
Imo, I don’t think that OP is necessarily advocating for a harsher punishment for anyone, but more that whatever punishment is enforced should be felt equally by everyone.
Ok, rich boi bootlicker.
Unsure if this is sarcasm or not. But in any case it’s not a counter-argument.
Beating your wife used to get you little to no punishment, and was much more commonplace.
Punishing people at all has solved many problems though. The shit they’re dealt now are discovery taxes, not punishments.
Examples please.
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.
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.
Yeah fair enough. Change that to the civil rights act.
Then what’s your answer to murder? You can’t restore a human life.
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.
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.
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.