Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Punishment for financial crimes should be proportionate to the average yearly income. (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks 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.