12 ms·

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost

• finikytou 6y ago
  that is not the number one learning and I think you are wrong. The real powerful and rich do not fear jail. They fear people like madoff that targets them. That is why Madoff ended his life in jail while banks/funds CEO in the 2008 are now richer than ever stealing money from the poors and taking 0 accountability for the subprime crisis that destroyed a whole decade. In my book he was better than any of those bankers. He shown to the world that some people are smarter than the banks and that they will be severely punished if they do not abide by the laws that helps those banks to win.
  • obmelvin 6y ago
    Oh, please. Madoff ruined plenty of "normal" people's life savings. Say what you will about other bankers, but please don't try to elevate someone who destroyed the life savings of others. EDIT: Yes, non-profits and pension funds as well. That's not taking from the rich. Madoff was not Robin Hood.
    • mathattack 6y ago
      Many non-profits who invested their endowments with him got hurt too.
    • finikytou 6y ago
      no he did not. 75% of what he robbed was recovered also. Wouldnt call it ruining life... if he did steal to "normal people" that is to a much smaller percentage than he robbed the rich ones. thousands of people that are still in wall street today robbed poor people and are still trading/working in the industry today. While I am not elevating him I am elevating the fact that he rot in jail for robbing the rich. Just look at the papers from 2008 if you don't believe it.
      • obmelvin 6y ago
        So, it's ok to steal from people as long as most of them are rich? And, it's ok to steal as long as you only steal 25% of it?
        • finikytou 6y ago
          I never said it was ok. I said he is in jail because he stole the rich. If he stole the poor he'd be on the trading desk of some bank in wall street. Who is in jail today for the subprime crisis?
          • bidirectional 6y ago
            How exactly are sell-side trading desks stealing from the poor?
            • finikytou 6y ago
              I meant Madoff would be free to do whatever he wants. But ill bite. Just look at all the robinhood millenials getting robbed by Citadel that literally has insider knowledge of all the robinhood transactions.
              • bobthechef 6y ago
                The more fundamental problem is that interest is usury and usury is theft. And naturally, the entire modern banking system runs on interest (which is probably the least egregious of all the wacky financial instruments out there). You'll hear nonsense about the opportunity cost and risk, none of which have any relevance to or rebut the notion that charging interest (as opposed to just fixed administrative fees) is theft. Time isn't a commodity, so why am I paying you more the longer it takes me to pay back my loan? Is your gold and silver ewes and rams? Shylock cannot tell. He makes it breed as fast.
                • bidirectional 6y ago
  • kingsuper20 6y ago
    "That is why Madoff ended his life in jail" That's an interesting point and probably true. The identity of your victim matters as much as the crime. It isn't like a serial car thief would receive the same sentence. I've always wondered if jail was appropriate for purely financial crimes. Maybe simply pauperizing people is the right answer and keep them pauperized from some time. Just imagine a prison system that doesn't contain financial criminals or drug cases. Transfer a certain amount of punishment to Singapore-style caning (probably a better mind-modifier than 6 months in the county clink) and you could shrink the whole industry to a tiny fraction of it's current size.
• jahewson 6y ago
  Doesn’t seem to be like Madoff feared jail. He did everything in his power to end up there.
• nemacol 6y ago
  Do you think that a system of public service / community service requirements instead of fines would be better for common offenses? Without any real research I have often thought that instead of fines for parking violations, noise complaints, (other misdemeanors) etc - having someone spend time instead of money would make those sorts of punishments more equitable. There are issues - child care if a parent has to spend time. This system would need to accommodate peoples schedules, shouldn't have to miss work for a parking ticket, etc. Much harder to administer than mailing fines.
  • dec0dedab0de 6y ago
    I do, it would also be more fair than fines because it wouldn't be worse on the poor. I also think we should have corporal punishment, not because I believe in it per se, but because I think it is more humane than prison and would satisfy societies need for punishing the guilty.
    • nemacol 6y ago
      I can see an argument that poor folks have less free time - if someone worked a couple part time jobs, has kids or other family that rely on them, several hours picking up litter is a pretty big deal. Vs my 9-5 M-F job, no dependants, etc. several hours picking up litter is a bummer or inconvenience. I think that corporal punishment proposal is batshit insane.
  • cletus 6y ago
    The criminal justice system already does this extensively. Often people are sentenced to community service. So I guess your question is really should this be extended to more low-level offenses like minor traffic violations? It's an interesting question. In Switzerland, for example, speeding above a certain level ceases to be a fixed fine and is instead a percentage of your income. I'm a fan of that. Fixed fines tend to discriminate against the poor disproportionately. I can imagine there are many people who would be better off and would prefer 2-4 hours of community service over a $100 fine. So that should certainly be an option instead of paying the fine. Yeah I think the idea probably does have merit.
• kiba 6y ago
  What is this obsession with jailing people? Prison is pretty inhumane, especially in the context of a limited lifespan. Even if we're immortal, it's still inhumane. Moreover, how does making people go to prison fixes anything? It's just a way to assign punishment and blame people.
  • zymhan 6y ago
    You can't just fine billionaires and expect that they'll reform.
    • Ekaros 6y ago
      Or maybe we could. Just make them go enough to negative without option of bankruptcy... Paying at couple billion back after selling all the holdings and property don't sound too unreasonable. We could even leave them some money to live like sum equal to minimum wage.
  • mpalmer 6y ago
    Time is the only asset we all mostly have in common. If your laws and the enforcement thereof are just (big if), then why shouldn't the punishment be exacted in a way that generally affects everyone equally? Beyond that, prison is inhumane as a rough function of where you are. Maybe you're thinking of a particular prison system. How does it fix anything? It should primarily be a deterrent, and secondarily a way to protect society from dangerous people.
    • cogman10 6y ago
      I have a sneaking suspicion that if more billionares spent time in prison, we'd see massive reform on the prison system towards the humane.
      • pydry 6y ago
        Or a class system for prisons.
• Bukhmanizer 6y ago
  As I posted a couple days ago, I have my doubts about whether Madoff actually was that worried about prison. Seems to me like he lived like a literal king until he was 70, then went to jail. Maybe 70 year old Madoff didn’t want to go to jail, but 40 year old Madoff may have been more than happy to make that deal. Seems to me that someone who was trying to avoid jail time would have spend more effort trying to ameliorate the situation rather than cover anything up.
  • elliekelly 6y ago
    And he fell on the sword so his sons could walk. There is absolutely no way they were both in the dark.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• ryandrake 6y ago
  Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual people inside bad corporations were responsible for deciding to do wrongdoing. "BigCo settled and paid an insignificant $20M out of their river of money" is not very satisfying to read. "Joe Bigshot, former SVP at BigCo, was sentenced to 5 years in jail, and had to sell two of his nine houses to pay the $20M fine" is much better.
  • ginko 6y ago
    I guess the corporate equivalent would be the forced shutdown of all company infrastructure for N months.
    • i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      that just burns all the regular people working regular jobs at that org.
      • hobs 6y ago
        So fix the social safety net, too big to fail is not something we want to have, especially when it comes to actively harmful companies...
        • i_haz_rabies 6y ago
          Jailing the people responsible seems like a way better option than putting potentially tens of thousands of people on welfare.
          • hobs 6y ago
            Managing the long term cost of reforming entire organizations is probably not worth it, better to destroy it AND jail the leaders.
• paganel 6y ago
  And if you do end up stealing, make sure to steal from the less-off. Afaik nobody has yet gone to prison for liquidating an employees' pension fund, for example.
  • Applejinx 6y ago
    Yet. Sounds like an aspirational goal to me! Long past time somebody did.
• backtoyoujim 6y ago
  I disagree. -- “Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Fishman said. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.” https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-madoff-not-only-as-a-crook-but-a-product-of-a-corrupt-system-2017-01-12 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-series-casts-bernie-ma... -- Bernie wasn't trapped with them. They were trapped with Bernie.
  • sushisource 6y ago
    Assuming that's actually true, what an amazing picture it paints of him just being a complete fucking dick. It's not like the money he was making from that mattered at all... he did it just for shits and giggles. What an unbelievable asshole.
    • lostcolony 6y ago
      Not at all. Now he has more buying power in the yard than anyone else. He successfully managed to leverage market forces to create economic inequality and make himself 'rich' in the micro context he operated in. Which is a great example for why great wealth is not a virtue, a 'free market' is not a savior, and why greater regulation and taxation on the super wealthy is acceptable - they got there by being, as you say, unbelievable assholes.
    • Ekaros 6y ago
      Also goes to prove that system was broken. It should not be possible for single individual to corner any market in prison. Either spendable money or amount of items sold per prisoner should be limited...
• paulpauper 6y ago
  >There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've. not true. people did go to jail for their role in the 2008 banking crisis
• dcolkitt 6y ago
  > the whole subprime disaster... no one went to prison and people really should've This is a pretty common sentiment, but nobody can really articulate specifically who should go to prison and what crime they committed. Being stupid, arrogant, reckless and willfully ignorant with money is not illegal. Just because hundreds of billions was lost does not mean that there's any criminal act. Major companies, and even financial institutions, fail all the time without there being any sort of crime. It's easy to fall into the trap of looking for mustache-twirling villains when you see a broken system. More likely the real culprit are misaligned incentives and dysfunctional institutions. If you actually dig into the details of the subprime crisis, the latter story is the much more plausible one. If you disagree, you have to specify who you think were the criminal masterminds behind the crisis. And more important, you have to show that you can prove criminal action and intent beyond a reasonable doubt. (And don't forget any would-be defendants will have access to the best legal defense teams on the planet.) I've never heard anyone actually present this case instead of just giving vague platitudes about how "the bankers should go to jail". The only real candidate for viable criminal prosecution are the mortgagees themselves. Many fraudulently misrepresented their income, assets or employment on their applications. And it would probably be hard for them to claim that they weren't aware. (In contrast the mortgage brokers could always claim they didn't bother verifying income because they genuinely trusted the applicants. That's obviously BS, but criminal liability is held to a much higher standard.)
• devmunchies 6y ago
  so you're suggesting that there should be different punishments based on how much money someone has?
• bennysomething 6y ago
  How do you know this? Who exactly do you mean by "the rich"
• Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Fines are just the cost of doing business. Isn’t that just because the fines aren’t high enough? I think we should make more fines based on an individual’s (or company’s) net worth.
• SkyMarshal 6y ago
  One other thing worth observing: Bernie Madoff had nothing whatsoever to do with causing the Global Financial Crisis. Yes he committed a financial crime and defrauded a few investors with a ponzi, but he wasn’t behind the systemic financial mass destruction of the GFC. Yet the media implicitly made him into a scapegoat for the GFC with heavy coverage of his trial filling the airwaves just as the public was authorities hold the perpetrators responsible. The media never explicitly claimed Madoff was part of the cause of the GFC, but rather used constant coverage of him to deflect attention from the real perpetrators of the crisis, who got away clean. What the media doesn’t report is often more telling about its integrity and agenda than what they do report.
• LB232323 6y ago
  The only reason this guy got charged is because he was a plain scam artist running everything out of his personal bank account. Unfortunately, the highest levels of financial crime are tied to lawmakers and corruption of the highest authorities of white collar law enforcement. It's usually outsiders and smaller operations that get caught. Corporations are in charge of a corporate oligarchy, which is the United States. These entities are "too big to fail". They are so essential to the economy that the best you can hope for from the government is maybe a scapegoat going to a comfortable prison or a hefty fine. TL;DR Bringing down the largest corporations for crime is like trying to arrest the US president for war crimes.
  • throwazero 6y ago
    > These entities are "too big to fail". They are so essential to the economy that the best you can hope for from the government is maybe a scapegoat going to a comfortable prison or a hefty fine. Norway faced a banking crisis in the 90s; to solve it, the government simply invalidated the shares and took control of the bank.[1] The government later reprivatized it - i.e. sold new shares - once it was no longer failing. That seems a pretty okay approach for entities that are too big to fail: let the shareholders, not the public, pay the price of failure. (You need a sufficiently strong government to do it, obviously.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiania_Bank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiania_Bank
• andrepd 6y ago
  Fines are also fine (no pun intended) if they are massively more expensive than the action they are punishing. In short they must make the risk-adjusted cost of doing $illegal_thing larger than the benefit from doing it. Fining a corporation 20 million for stealing 500 million... I mean I don't need to point how ridiculous this is. Of course, direct personal responsibility for the people calling the shots. Someone robbing a liquor store causes an infinitesimal amount of damage and misery compared to what powerful corpos lead by powerful men can cause.