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Comment by avaika | Hacker News Reader

Why massively put people in jail for everything?

In most countries jails are no good to prisoners. They are used to isolate people from society, not to help people to become a better person. And society is putting tones of money to support penitentiary system.

I believe for economical crimes people who took the decision should be fined a lot and banned from taking positions where they can do the same things again. No need to isolate them from society. At least for the first time. The same for other crimes where people do not hurt or threaten to hurt other people.

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>The same for other crimes where people do not hurt or threaten to hurt other people.

Isn't that the thing though? Don't these bankers actually hurt more people, and hurt them worse, than any violent criminal could? So the person who hurts one family gets jail but the one that hurts thousands "doesn't get to work in the industry" anymore? That sounds like hogwash to me.

Has everyone just forgotten about the principle of equality under the law?

No, we've just gotten really good at interpreting our contract from the late 1700s really well.

The Lucas critique, or Campbell's law, both refer to the same concept. Any metric that becomes a target is no longer a sufficient metric.

The Constitution has been our metric for 250 years. I don't have a superior alternative, but it occurs to me that we've demanded it be a literal document, but when its our own skin on the line, we suddenly forget the inconvenient parts, and contort our minds to find absolution for something we are going to do anyways.

While I agree prisons are overused, making it a purely economical matter means it's just another investment. Benefit if you get away with it vs risk of getting caught. You have to be pretty draconian to make no one take that risk.

Banning people from an activity is also hard. They can just take a position where they advise others who will make such decisions, or other loopholes.

Jail time may not be the answer, and we clearly do a bad job of making these acts a financial risk (not to mention preventing recurrence), so your suggestion is undoubtedly an improvement over current day, but I don't think we can stop there. (Not that I have better ideas yet)

I would tend to agree with you because I feel the point isn't to ruin these people's lives, but to prevent them from causing further harm. Banning them from ever working in economics and seizing a large chunk of their wealth could be effective. That being said, it would also do society some good to actually punish these people and make an example out of them. The way they are just allowed to collect a bonus and keep going, at the moment, is terrible, it only reinforce's the impression on Wall Street that they are above the law (which they effectively are). Putting them in jail, like normal people, would serve to correct that.

Well, the bankers have always had their own threat of isolation as a hole card. If you don't like my money, I know a nice place in the Alps where they are isolationists to a fault, Switzerland.

Not that I agree with the idea, but it seems to work in practice.

Massively? How many C Level execs are there?

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