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Am I inferring correctly that you are suggesting I may cause a perverse incentive, wherein they would be more motivated to cover it up due to the potential of p

Am I inferring correctly that you are suggesting I may cause a perverse incentive, wherein they would be more motivated to cover it up due to the potential of punishment? I don't think that applies, as the punishment I'm suggesting is for the cover-up and knowing prosecution of innocent people, so the incentive would be to not do that. Not to mention they already seemed fully motivated to continue saving face anyway Having rich people face actual material consequences to their life, rather than "punishments" like losing a job or honor, would hopefully reduce corporate malpractice, yes, as they now know that they are not invincible (obligatory note that I am talking about criminal responsibility, not suggesting we do away with LLCs or something)

dan-robertson 3y ago
I think that might be an effect, but I’m not sure. If something like this were to happen again, the thing I would most want would be whatever rules would most speedily lead to any prosecutions against subpostmasters being sopped and any convictions being overturned (with just compensation for the wrongful convictions). I think to achieve that it has to be better in expectancy for someone who knows about the problem (and widely believed by that person too) to act sooner to resolve the problem than to try to cover things up, but I don’t really know what rules would help. For example, maybe an alternative thing that would work would be some kind of whistleblower rules like in finance[1]. In the hypothetical where I am stood with my hand on the lever choosing between stopping the scandal sooner and letting executives off entirely or having more wrongful convictions for longer but later throwing the executives in jail, I will choose the former every time, even though it feels unjust. [1] In finance the whistleblower rules are designed to incentivise people to not be accomplices to crimes done by their superiors/coworkers. The incentives must be high because, no matter what the rules say about it, whistleblowers will expect to not work in finance again after blowing the whistle. The rules work because those large-scale financial crimes generally are hard to without one’s competent colleagues finding out.

dan-robertson 3y ago

I think that might be an effect, but I’m not sure. If something like this were to happen again, the thing I would most want would be whatever rules would most speedily lead to any prosecutions against subpostmasters being sopped and any convictions being overturned (with just compensation for the wrongful convictions). I think to achieve that it has to be better in expectancy for someone who knows about the problem (and widely believed by that person too) to act sooner to resolve the problem than to try to cover things up, but I don’t really know what rules would help. For example, maybe an alternative thing that would work would be some kind of whistleblower rules like in finance[1]. In the hypothetical where I am stood with my hand on the lever choosing between stopping the scandal sooner and letting executives off entirely or having more wrongful convictions for longer but later throwing the executives in jail, I will choose the former every time, even though it feels unjust. [1] In finance the whistleblower rules are designed to incentivise people to not be accomplices to crimes done by their superiors/coworkers. The incentives must be high because, no matter what the rules say about it, whistleblowers will expect to not work in finance again after blowing the whistle. The rules work because those large-scale financial crimes generally are hard to without one’s competent colleagues finding out.