Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
I just realized that in Oct 28th, 2020. Thanks for that.
The origin of the phrase is in the classical detective story trope.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, itself doesn't derive from household staff taking the fall for their employers, but from them being omnipresent but, by strong social custom, ignored.
The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope).
It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/thailand-charges-agai...
(However, if you look at the incentives and deterrence, inflicting inefficient punishment like sending someone to prison for a long time, might still make sense.)
So there's a trade-off between handing out more of that punishment in fines to be paid to the victim or in economically inefficient activities like prison time.
As a related matter, I think corporal punishment deserves more consideration. Mostly because it's cheaper to administer than prison, and also avoids forcible socializing convicts only with each other as happens in prison.
(Of course, it's a punishment with a certain cruelty. Alas violence and injury are a common enough sight in overcrowded prisons, too.)
But restitution isn't punishment. Restitution helps reduce harm to the victim, and is a separate issue entirely to punishment.
I was more worried about issues like deterrence and restitution.
Punishment and deterrence are somewhat related, but not the same.
Justice isn't always about providing benefit to those harmed. It's also about providing a framework in which crime is avoided by all because they know there are repercussions they can't avoid.
When the expectation is that you're rich and you can get away with killing someone either through paying someone to take the fall or bribery, then that will happen more often. If the expectation is that everyone is equal under the law, that will happen less.
The US isn't perfect in this regard, but I think it's a lot better than what's being described here. If Ivanka Trump drove recklessly and killed someone, it would be a lot harder for it to play out the same way here. That's not to say she would necessarily face justice, just that it's a lot harder to get out of it, so there wouldn't necessarily be an expectation that it will go away. There's a huge difference in expecting to get away with something and knowing it's uncertain when the consequences are years in prison.
O.J. Simpson famously got off with 'not guilty' in the murder case, but lost the civil suit.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death_claim and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case#Civi...
This is somewhat inaccurate; while it is true that criminal cases can only be brought by the State, civil cases can be brought by the State or private parties.
Example 1: In countries that had little formal legal structures and rudimentary identification (e.g. India in the early 1800s), it was incredibly easy to be a criminal and just move from town to town while acquiring new identities. In other words, there was a huge upside to becoming a career criminal since it was both difficult to catch you (no forensic evidence) and even if you were caught, you could just reboot your life.
Example 2: He mentions a case where a gentleman was charged TWICE for crimes that were later found to have been committed by someone else who had only a passing resemblance.
I read this book before Twitter/Facebook became ubiquitous and every like, share, comment was public knowledge but even at the time, it was mind boggling how different "identity" was back then.
If you plead the 'benefit of the clergy', you were branded, so you didn't do it again.
I was watching a show on TV last night where they were minutely examining a newly discovered photo of Lincoln to see if it was really Lincoln or someone else. One analyst gave it an "85% probability it was Lincoln".
Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.
Would be interesting if there were a climate change coin...
oh wait, https://earth-token.com/
:-(
They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology:
What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell?
Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, guarantee a spot in heaven for their loved one. It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Are you saying it's true that indulgences can be obtained for others or that it's false that indulgences can be obtained for others?
In reality indulgences can be obtained for yourself, or for others, including those in Purgatory. They can't be obtained for people in Hell.
>It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Indulgences are not strictly monetary. The vast majority involve no money at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
For a sin that has already been forgiven, an indulgence is associated payment you owe that if you didn't pay, you will spend more time in purgatory.
If this is an accurate reading, does it not dilute the meaning of "forgiven"? Does it not amount to a money-making racket at best, or, more probably, extortion?
The vast vast vast majority of indulgences have no money aspect at all. See the list of plenary (meaning all temporal punishment is removed) indulgences on Wikipedia[1], none of them involve money.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
“ Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer's salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory. “
One might associate it with helping move an individual from a smaller circle to a larger circle of ethics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanding_Circle
“ Singer discusses the relationship between biological capacity for altruism and morality. He argues that altruism, when directed to one's small circle of family, tribe or even nation, is not moral, but it becomes so when applied to wider circles. “
E.g. charity where you sacrifice your individual goods for the larger community is good for the soul.
Indulgences still exist, and you can still purchase them in the sense that you can make a donation to a priest to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for a specific intention (like the remittance of a portion of the temporal punishment for the sins of a friend or loved one), and the offering of the sacrifice has indulgences associated with it in addition.
This is not the only way to gain indulgences. There are many ways to gain them. Praying for the souls of the faithful departed on All Souls Day (in combination with the usual conditions, i.e. a) being in a state of grace, b) having the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin, c) having sacramentally confessed their sins, d) receiving the Holy Eucharist, and e) pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) on November 2nd allows for one to obtain a plenary indulgence (which remit ALL temporal punishment) either for oneself or for a person of your choosing.
Source? If you do it with a mortal sin I can understand it would be a second mortal sin. But it seems harsh to make a venial sin into a mortal sin from this.
I'm hesitant to say it's always a mortal sin, because it seems like it can happen in a lighthearted manner. For example if someone struggles with gluttony, that person might think "I know I shouldn't have a 2nd hamburger, but I'm weak and it would taste so good, I'll have it now and go to confession later". That doesn't seem like mortal sin territory to me.
the companionship you feel with the others on the journey with you, the feeling of losing yourself in something much bigger than you, the structured life with a clear definition of The Good (do these is this order to achieve digital/eternal reward)...this analogy works.
Off topic, but reading it I just noticed it sounds an awful lot like ありがとう (“arigatou” as in “domo arigatou Mr. Roboto”).
I think there’s an etymology lesson in this, although I’m not sure which way it goes, probably Portuguese -> Japanese via Nagasaki.
Ironically, "Japan" is from an old Chinese word for Japan that was then imported to Europe… by those dastardly misnomerists of countries, the Portuguese!
Just for some fun of even greater coincidences between Japan and a Romance language, there are two almost identical words in Japanese and Romanian that have no etymological relationship: "sat" / "里" ("sa to") meaning village in both languages; and "baba" / "婆" ("ba ba") a derogatory term for an old woman in both languages ("hag").
>One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered.
A lot. More than you'd expect. And by people and organizations you wouldn't expect.
However, most people are objectively terrible at performing fraud. The things that ultimately lead to people being caught are so simple.
I'm asking, uh, for a friend. :-)
Perhaps being just better than terrible is enough to not be found out because things are generally as they seem.
(And I can see the temptation.)
I think there are probably some very talented solo operators who did their homework and have contingency plans and have OPSEC down who are able to pull off some long running schemes that may never be uncovered, just knowing the points of failure in th processes I've seen, but the amount of specialized knowledge and discipline required is going to be comparable to what's required to succeed in almost any field. Except for the very few at the top of the chain that nobody knows about, most people are better off getting a real job instead.A lot of those people who engage in fraud do it and get caught because ths isn't what they wanted to do butout of necessity, greed, or shortsighted assumptions they opportunistically engaged in the scheme. The internet does enable, I believe, single individuals to commit long term fraud operations as effectively lone-wolf actors whose necessity to employ a service offered elsewhere can be effectively done anonymously, and these are the dedicated, professional, and sometimes sometimes ideologically engaged types whose choice to engage is a long-term project and the sheer amount of knowledge in divergent fields of expertise required makes me wonder that if it wouldn't be better served to actually run amnesty programs to get these people into the legitimate sector even as consultants if not corporate jobs because our retributive criminal justice system renders that basically impossible. A bug bounty for fraud, perhaps? Just a thought.
> By chance, a co-worker recognised him on July 10, 1997, forcing him to go into hiding. At that time, an appointment was already set for an interview with Hans Geisler, then Saxony's Minister of State for social affairs, health and family, on the occasion of Postel's appointment to a professorship and to the position of chief of medicine at Saxony's hospital for psychiatry and neurology at Arnsdorf near Dresden.
In another case, a former barber worked for 20 years as a doctor, eventually becoming chief physician in a children's hospital [1].
Back in the 2000s there was a case of a medical student who failed her final exams 3 times, and instead of leaving university as she had to, she just continued her studies without the possibility to take any exams. After a few years, she printed a fake license and a fake diploma and secured a job as an assistance doctor in the children's hospital of the Hamburg University Hospital, eventually becoming a respected colleague (she was, after all, actually trained to be a doctor). After a few years, she failed to hand in the original license and her fraud came to light [2].
Last year, a fake anesthesiologist was uncovered in Fritzlar. She had no formal training and had handed in a fake diploma to get the job [3]. No one noticed until last year, at which time she had already accidentally killed 4 people.
Given that there are several such cases each year, chances are very high that there are still some fake doctors practising here.
We also had the famous Captain of Köpenick [4], an ex-convict who in 1906 put on a uniform, rounded up a few soliders, occupied a city hall in Berlin, arrested several employees, had them transported to the main Berlin police station for interrogation, ordered to block all local telephone calls for an hour, confiscated 4000 marks and disappeared. It took 10 days to arrest him.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel
[1] https://www.aerztezeitung.de/Panorama/Hochstapler-im-weissen...
[2] https://www.welt.de/welt_print/article1142757/Falsche-Kinder...
[3] https://www.fr.de/hessen/hessen-drei-falsche-aerzte-einem-ja...
We've recently had a similar case here in Lithuania, where doctor claimed to studied something in US. When they've called the university, they've said they don't even have such programme.
It's really surprising that someone with basically no knowledge of the subject could work for that length of time and not be discovered sooner.