no govt should be allowed to murder its citizens

The headline is less sever that it looks at a glance.

In the Chinese legal system, a death sentence with a suspended sentence usually means that in the absence of new crimes, the sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment.

That said, it's the age-old is/ought problem of governance. Would love to see China abolish the death penalty. But I'm glad to see someone complicit in social murder through the powers of the state is not held to a lower standard than a peer who committed grievous harm to his neighbors through more direct methods.

Lets say a real person, who is doing very well in a job that contributes to society, can take home 150k a year. And lets say they work from 18 to 65, that's about a $7M career over 50-ish years.

The crook in OPs post stole more than 440 lifetimes of wealth. Even if he were to be put to work paying off that debt in the highest paying position which productively aids society (no lawyering, no managing, no marketing, no internet fame bs) it wold take him over 440 LIFETIMES to pay it off.

You can sentence him to 18,000 years of prison but he will never receive even 0.5% of that punishment.

Counter point - many of greatest society failures were due to insufficient isolation of bad actors. Hitler failed his first coup attempt and came back after 5 years in prison - very few people remember this.

So some form of banishment is required and obviously death is the easiest, full-proof option so this is not a black/white issue as you make it out to be.

I appreciated the sentiment, but here's my counterpoint: Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, etc. That's only one industry and is nevertheless incomplete, but if I kept going it would take too long.

It's the same everywhere. If it's illegal to do crime and people go to jail why is there still crime.

Well at least for that corrupt politician, it seems like he'll have a hard time doing any future grifts

So don't bother holding them accountable at all? Why punish crime if it doesn't bring an end to crime?

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Sounds like a good plan. Start over with a new batch

People from the cities are banned from buying property in the countryside, and people from the countryside can’t afford city property (banks are also banned from owning country property hence no mortgages). Until recently, property was the only asset people were allowed to inherit, so there was a massive construction boom.

That’s all collapsed so you have a stagnant market and millions of unoccupied or half-finished buildings, often of such poor quality they’re falling apart.

Plenty of spaces to hide tons of money.

The 13.5 tons of gold had me curious. 13.5tons = 27000 lbs = 432000 oz

Gold is between $4700 to $4900 per oz

The value is between $2.03 to $2.12 billion usd

To be fair, 13.5 tons of gold is about 700 L (using a density of 19.3 kg/m3). That's a lot, sure, but still far smaller than your average cupboard.

You could literally fit this stuff under a decently sized bed (2m x 1.8m, with 20cm elevation), inside a fridge, or behind the clothes in a wardrobe.