The judicial process focuses on how “purely” what you did was harmful, rather than the overall impact. Otherwise, no one could scale any project: you’d do too m

The judicial process focuses on how “purely” what you did was harmful, rather than the overall impact. Otherwise, no one could scale any project: you’d do too much harm right away. What kills the most people around the world are more likely treatments for common, dangerous disease, cures that have known secondary effects (most likely chemotherapy). Pharmacists who develop those know that and test them against the (considerable) harm that would happen without it; those with a seemingly positive balance are approved, not those that are the least toxic. Same thing: the bank that does the most terrible decisions is probably the one with the most customers, not the one built with nothing but criminal intent. Otherwise: you are probably right, but it’s not relevant to judge banks overall. If you find clusters of bad behaviour (even in large banks) you probably want to focus on those, but not blame the whole institution right away: people, companies still need banks, and you wouldn’t find an honest banker if your criteria is “no harm at all”.