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I find such white-collar crimes very interesting because of the math between crime and punishment. For the crime that SBF is alleged to have committed, we can
by AlexanderTheGr8 3y ago
I find such white-collar crimes very interesting because of the math between crime and punishment.
For the crime that SBF is alleged to have committed, we can reasonably expect 20 yrs (he will be out in 10-12). But if he had committed a murder, he would be in prison for life (no parole).
Mathematically speaking, this implies that a life is worth more than fraud worth 8 billion dollars. We can make a very reasonable assumption that the govt can save 1 additional life using a million dollars (giving necessary treatment to drug addicts / suicidal people / etc). Out of the 8 billion dollars from SBF, government would have got at least 50 million dollars from taxes (this is a lower bound). Out of that 50 million, maybe the govt puts 10-20 million back for public good. So the govt could have saved at least 10-20 people from the money that SBF is alleged to have defrauded.
Based on the above, can we say that SBF indirectly killed 10-20 people? What would be the punishment for someone who kills 10-20 people? Surely more than 20 years.
This balance between the scale of crime and the severity of punishment can be very interesting. Should someone defrauding 2 billion dollars suffer twice the punishment of someone defrauding 1 billion dollars? What about 2 murders to 1 murder? What about numbers on scale that can change an economy (what SBF did)?
More fundamentally, is our legal system scalable?
- Apofis 3y agoPeople aren't money, it's rather simple.
- AlexanderTheGr8 3y ago?? The basis of my argument was that the govt can save 1 person with a million dollars (by helping drug addicts, people with mental health issues, suicidal people, etc). People aren't money but money can be converted to saved lives.
- Apofis 3y agoEconomists love putting numbers on lives, but at the end of the day even if it was a lot of funny money it was funny money in an unregulated and uninsured market that the investors risked investing fully knowing those risks. It’s not really murder and it’s not really going to save any lives either because it would never have been used for that purpose. I get the sentiment, but it just doesn’t work that way.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoBy that logic, anyone who has saved a million dollars has effectively killed a person by not donating all their money to those causes.
- daniel-s 3y agoNobody thinks or reasons like this. Penalties are set by politicians. They are more a political decision than anything else.
- AlexanderTheGr8 3y agoThere must be some rationale while setting penalties. As for reasoning, what other reasoning is there except arbitrarily deciding penalties? That's just guessing the punishment for various crimes. There must be some math behind the decision.
- Waterluvian 3y agoHow did you come up with any of these numbers? For example, how did you determine that he’d get about half of a 20 year sentence? Particularly given federal crimes require a minimum of 85% time served. Is this just your feelings disguised as fact or is backed by anything concrete?