3 ms·

Username definitely checks out, but are you advocating for automatically harsher penalties, scaled by net worth? What problem would it solve, except for encoura

by sk0g 6y ago

Username definitely checks out, but are you advocating for automatically harsher penalties, scaled by net worth? What problem would it solve, except for encouraging poor people to commit more crimes, since they'd now face relatively less severe? No offence, but this reads like Tumblr "communism" propoganda gone too far. The entire point of (Western) justice is to enforce impartially against the actions committed, not against someone's skin colour, gender, religion, or indeed, net worth.

justinclift 6y ago
> The entire point of (Western) justice is to enforce impartially against ... net worth. That's clearly not working.
genocidicbunny 6y ago
I'm advocating for a disjoint function in terms of penalties, disjoint on net worth. I am not saying we apply a scalar factor based on a person's net worth; but I do think we do need to acknowledge that people who hold hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in wealth operate in different worlds from the rest of us. The justice system is different for them, and unless you completely get rid of money and its influence, that won't change. As such, there needs to be _some_ cutoff where we can largely all agree someone holds a disproportionate amount of wealth and power, and thus should be held to a higher standard. I do take offense to this being called 'Tumblr communism'. Yes, Western justice systems should strive towards impartiality, but part and parcel of that is making punishments appropriate. If you fine someone making $35,000 a year $1000 dollars, you will do a lot of harm to them. If you fine someone making $35,000,000 a year $1000, they probably won't even notice. For a more practical example from my own backyard: carpool lane violators in the Bay Area. Before this pandemic, when traffic was still a thing, there would be a lot of BMWs, Audis and Mercedes violating the carpool lane. The common factor was that these were luxury cars and the owners were more likely to be able to slough off a carpool violation fine. They would rarely get ticketed, but for a lot of such drivers, even if they did, a ticket was just the price of business. On the other hand, if you were driving a '98 corolla that you could barely maintain and put the gas into, you would likely not risk a carpool violation just to save a couple of minutes, because if you did get the fine, it would be a serious impact on your finances. Because the law punished both these people the same, it made it financially viable for the wealthier people to ignore the rules, while poorer people had to follow them because they couldn't afford doing otherwise. If in this contrived scenario the punishment was scaled based on income, the fine would be sufficiently punitive for all strata of wealth, and thus no longer incentivize the more well off to break the rules. I was somewhat haughty with my earlier words, and I don't think we should judge people differently based on net worth. After all, if you murder 10,000 people, does it matter much if you live in a palace or a cardboard box? But I do think the punishment should fit not only the crime but the person, and that the very rich should be penalized more harshly than the average person, for the same crime. (As an aside, I'd also like to say that the username definitely does not check out. 'genocidic' is not a word, but it is meant to trip up people thinking it is and that it relates to 'genocide'. It's high school me being clever after watching Monty Python)

by sk0g 6y ago

justinclift 6y ago

> The entire point of (Western) justice is to enforce impartially against ... net worth. That's clearly not working.

genocidicbunny 6y ago

I'm advocating for a disjoint function in terms of penalties, disjoint on net worth. I am not saying we apply a scalar factor based on a person's net worth; but I do think we do need to acknowledge that people who hold hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in wealth operate in different worlds from the rest of us. The justice system is different for them, and unless you completely get rid of money and its influence, that won't change. As such, there needs to be _some_ cutoff where we can largely all agree someone holds a disproportionate amount of wealth and power, and thus should be held to a higher standard. I do take offense to this being called 'Tumblr communism'. Yes, Western justice systems should strive towards impartiality, but part and parcel of that is making punishments appropriate. If you fine someone making $35,000 a year $1000 dollars, you will do a lot of harm to them. If you fine someone making $35,000,000 a year $1000, they probably won't even notice. For a more practical example from my own backyard: carpool lane violators in the Bay Area. Before this pandemic, when traffic was still a thing, there would be a lot of BMWs, Audis and Mercedes violating the carpool lane. The common factor was that these were luxury cars and the owners were more likely to be able to slough off a carpool violation fine. They would rarely get ticketed, but for a lot of such drivers, even if they did, a ticket was just the price of business. On the other hand, if you were driving a '98 corolla that you could barely maintain and put the gas into, you would likely not risk a carpool violation just to save a couple of minutes, because if you did get the fine, it would be a serious impact on your finances. Because the law punished both these people the same, it made it financially viable for the wealthier people to ignore the rules, while poorer people had to follow them because they couldn't afford doing otherwise. If in this contrived scenario the punishment was scaled based on income, the fine would be sufficiently punitive for all strata of wealth, and thus no longer incentivize the more well off to break the rules. I was somewhat haughty with my earlier words, and I don't think we should judge people differently based on net worth. After all, if you murder 10,000 people, does it matter much if you live in a palace or a cardboard box? But I do think the punishment should fit not only the crime but the person, and that the very rich should be penalized more harshly than the average person, for the same crime. (As an aside, I'd also like to say that the username definitely does not check out. 'genocidic' is not a word, but it is meant to trip up people thinking it is and that it relates to 'genocide'. It's high school me being clever after watching Monty Python)