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It's harder to mentally connect white collar crime with real harm because there are so many abstraction levels between the crime and the victims. Whereas with p

by umvi 6y ago

It's harder to mentally connect white collar crime with real harm because there are so many abstraction levels between the crime and the victims. Whereas with pretty crime it's easy to see who the victims are.

newsclues 6y ago
Who is the victim when people illegally smoke cannabis? Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people?
- hansvm 6y ago
  > Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people The bigger question is who are the criminals? You can't throw the building in jail, and just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability.
  - db579 6y ago
    > just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability. If that is true (and I think it is) I would argue the law is wrong. It should absolutely be the case that senior executives have criminal liability for criminal behaviours that emerge under their stewardship whether or not they personally contributed to them. Either they knew about it in which case they're complicit or they didn't in which case they're negligent. The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies.
    - hansvm 6y ago
      > or they didn't in which case they're negligent I think some care should be taken in being too reductive here. If a CEO oversees just 50 people (maybe companies should be capped at smaller sizes?) then there will be at least a 50:1 information reduction even if they spend all their working hours in 100% efficient information transfer. Moreover, in many cases I would expect the bulk of that missing information to be the more negative aspects of the business -- who wants to look bad to their superiors? Adding to that, defaults matter. If by default a CEO is culpable then it's suddenly possible to force them into jail by simply joining as a malicious employee. > The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies. Not necessarily (I think the idea is that they're paid a lot because they bring in proportionally more profits/cashflow/etc?), but I agree it's a little fishy that a CEO can take credit for large gains and be handed a golden parachute when a company's fraud sees the light of day.
  - srswtf123 6y ago
    This is absurd. The buck stops with the C-level and, if need be, the board. Toss them in prison, in gen-pop, and see if it doesn’t reform some behavior. Part of the job of running a business is ensuring said business doesn’t run afoul of the law. If that doesn’t happen, well the boss needs to go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200mm golden parachute. “We can’t figure out who to charge so we charge no one” is not an acceptable answer in a just society — or a society that strives to be just.
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    If we can't hold owners responsible, maybe we should have state take over the company with some reasonable ratio of days to damage/stolen amount of money...
    - hansvm 6y ago
      I agree with you in spirit -- even if it's difficult to distribute the blame for a corporation's misdeeds, _something_ should probably be done about the misbehaving company anyway. I'm curious as to why you think the state taking over temporarily would have positive effects. Would you mind elaborating?
- acct776 6y ago
  Legally? Their neighbors, who are the ones calling.
elil17 6y ago
I don’t think it’s actually that hard for most people to see that wage theft is theft, for example. It’s the choices of lawmakers, the media, prosecutors, and others that minimize white collar crime in the public discourse.
- Aunche 6y ago
  If you're using wage theft as an example of how the game is rigged, then you also need to consider time theft: logging additional time that wasn't actually worked. Obviously, wage theft is worse, but the reason both aren't prosecuted is because they're difficult to prove, and when it does it caught, it usually gets resolved by other means.
javajosh 6y ago
Totally. The number of people who really felt the implication of the Libor scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal) among the general population, for example, is close to 0. Not only this, but term "white collar crime" has been abused to include what is properly termed "implies unwanted externalities", and so it weakens the meaning. Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry. Crime specifically requires breaking a law! Another related disturbing trend that weakens the concept of "white collar crime" is the "wouldn't you gave done it, too?" argument. That is, to defend cheating or bad faith behavior by arguing that you would have done if you were in the same situation. There is a lot wrong with this kind of argument, and it is similar to "whataboutism" in that it functions as a kind of strawman that tacitly assumes egoism and moral relativism, and moreover projects that lack of principle onto the counter-party. (And if you claim you wouldn't do that, the other person can say you are posturing, etc. A very nasty rhetorical tactic indeed! None of these effects are really new, but I think what is new is that the attention economy has as a side-effect cause an overall drop in the critical thinking skills needed in a large chunk of the population to ensure these cognitive mistakes don't become official policy. There has always been an unofficial bulwark against populism in America, comprised of the "elite" - the well educated, thoughtful, articulate, careful men and women trained in philosophy, morality, and religion, and who are wealthy enough to have time to spend on such matters. Obama was and is such a one. But apocalyptic levels of egoism and intellectual laziness has spread to all corners of our society, even, shockingly, to the elites themselves. (See: Josh Haweley). The net effect is to weaken the notion of "white collar crime" into nothingness, which is great news for those that do it, and terrible news for the rest of us.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry. Not sure about this point. They're only not criminals because their industries can afford lobbyists and few others can.

by umvi 6y ago

newsclues 6y ago

Who is the victim when people illegally smoke cannabis? Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people?

hansvm 6y ago
> Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people The bigger question is who are the criminals? You can't throw the building in jail, and just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability.
- db579 6y ago
  > just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability. If that is true (and I think it is) I would argue the law is wrong. It should absolutely be the case that senior executives have criminal liability for criminal behaviours that emerge under their stewardship whether or not they personally contributed to them. Either they knew about it in which case they're complicit or they didn't in which case they're negligent. The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    > or they didn't in which case they're negligent I think some care should be taken in being too reductive here. If a CEO oversees just 50 people (maybe companies should be capped at smaller sizes?) then there will be at least a 50:1 information reduction even if they spend all their working hours in 100% efficient information transfer. Moreover, in many cases I would expect the bulk of that missing information to be the more negative aspects of the business -- who wants to look bad to their superiors? Adding to that, defaults matter. If by default a CEO is culpable then it's suddenly possible to force them into jail by simply joining as a malicious employee. > The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies. Not necessarily (I think the idea is that they're paid a lot because they bring in proportionally more profits/cashflow/etc?), but I agree it's a little fishy that a CEO can take credit for large gains and be handed a golden parachute when a company's fraud sees the light of day.
- srswtf123 6y ago
  This is absurd. The buck stops with the C-level and, if need be, the board. Toss them in prison, in gen-pop, and see if it doesn’t reform some behavior. Part of the job of running a business is ensuring said business doesn’t run afoul of the law. If that doesn’t happen, well the boss needs to go to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200mm golden parachute. “We can’t figure out who to charge so we charge no one” is not an acceptable answer in a just society — or a society that strives to be just.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  If we can't hold owners responsible, maybe we should have state take over the company with some reasonable ratio of days to damage/stolen amount of money...
  - hansvm 6y ago
    I agree with you in spirit -- even if it's difficult to distribute the blame for a corporation's misdeeds, _something_ should probably be done about the misbehaving company anyway. I'm curious as to why you think the state taking over temporarily would have positive effects. Would you mind elaborating?
acct776 6y ago
Legally? Their neighbors, who are the ones calling.

elil17 6y ago

I don’t think it’s actually that hard for most people to see that wage theft is theft, for example. It’s the choices of lawmakers, the media, prosecutors, and others that minimize white collar crime in the public discourse.

Aunche 6y ago
If you're using wage theft as an example of how the game is rigged, then you also need to consider time theft: logging additional time that wasn't actually worked. Obviously, wage theft is worse, but the reason both aren't prosecuted is because they're difficult to prove, and when it does it caught, it usually gets resolved by other means.

javajosh 6y ago

Totally. The number of people who really felt the implication of the Libor scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal) among the general population, for example, is close to 0. Not only this, but term "white collar crime" has been abused to include what is properly termed "implies unwanted externalities", and so it weakens the meaning. Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry. Crime specifically requires breaking a law! Another related disturbing trend that weakens the concept of "white collar crime" is the "wouldn't you gave done it, too?" argument. That is, to defend cheating or bad faith behavior by arguing that you would have done if you were in the same situation. There is a lot wrong with this kind of argument, and it is similar to "whataboutism" in that it functions as a kind of strawman that tacitly assumes egoism and moral relativism, and moreover projects that lack of principle onto the counter-party. (And if you claim you wouldn't do that, the other person can say you are posturing, etc. A very nasty rhetorical tactic indeed! None of these effects are really new, but I think what is new is that the attention economy has as a side-effect cause an overall drop in the critical thinking skills needed in a large chunk of the population to ensure these cognitive mistakes don't become official policy. There has always been an unofficial bulwark against populism in America, comprised of the "elite" - the well educated, thoughtful, articulate, careful men and women trained in philosophy, morality, and religion, and who are wealthy enough to have time to spend on such matters. Obama was and is such a one. But apocalyptic levels of egoism and intellectual laziness has spread to all corners of our society, even, shockingly, to the elites themselves. (See: Josh Haweley). The net effect is to weaken the notion of "white collar crime" into nothingness, which is great news for those that do it, and terrible news for the rest of us.

guerrilla 6y ago
> Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry. Not sure about this point. They're only not criminals because their industries can afford lobbyists and few others can.