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Comment by snapcaster | Hacker News Reader

I kind of see it as the opposite of barbaric. Someone stealing billions of dollars has caused far far far more net harm than someone committing a one off violent crime. I guess roughly tying consequences to harm caused seems less barbaric to me

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Poverty kills people. (Statistically - you can't say "that person died from poverty", but you can say that a certain number of deaths were due to poverty.)

$27 billion is a lot of people in poverty who otherwise wouldn't be. How many people died (or will) from that? Died from lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of medical care, lack of hope?

Mind you, I'm not sure that the death penalty is the right answer. But if you accept the death penalty for murder, it's not completely absurd in this situation.

Not necessarily agreeing about this case, but a relevant quote:

> “Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"

> "Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.

> "What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"

> "I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.

> "I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be––all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

> "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

-- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

You will always get a +1 from me if you quote Mr Pratchett

And if I remember correctly, Mr Lipvig got the death penalty as well.

He was just given the, um, "choice", of taking the leap into the death penalty, or becoming the virtual prisoner of an extremely powerful "guardian angel". Who was in actuality more of a ruthless probation officer.

The message was clear, we should not be blind to the harm that indifference to corruption metes out on the larger society.

No sir, that was the late Alfred Spangler, and while hanging was rather excessive, at least he wasn't put into the scorpion-pit like a mime.

But slightly-more-seriously, I wouldn't read too far into the surface of the Ankh-Morpork dictatorship and criminal-justice system as a direct moral signpost for our times, since sometimes a plot device is just a plot device.

Shades of Rimmer being prosecuted by the Inquisitor.

This sounds like an argument for revenge justice.

I think of the death penalty as a way to remove someone from society who is dangerous and where there is no foreseeable path to freedom. When their freedom means others are likely be assaulted and killed if they are allowed to go free again.

It's an argument for example setting, that this is the consequence of causing such an enormous amount of harm to society, including indirect and possibly direct deaths, for nothing put personal material gain. Deterrence. And the amount of damage these acts cause mean that even a 1% improvement in reducing the rate at which this happens, is worth it. The general problem with the death penalty is the risk of wrongful convictions, which is indeed a huge problem when applying it for things such as simple murder, as parts of the US have shown time and time again. Luckily, when talking about this kind of case, that's pretty much not an issue. "Whoops, we got the wrong person who stole $27 billion, it was actually someone else from a different town who looked similar!" is not something you'll hear. Framing someone in this way to get them killed is also a hilarious hypothetical, a less efficient way to get rid of someone is hardly imaginable.

I'd go as far as to say it's outrageous to argue that someone capable of the above is not dangerous to society and how they would have a foreseeable path to freedom. Their freedom would indeed come at a big risk of repeat grave harm to society. Another problem with imprisonment in cases like these is that these are exactly the cases which end up getting pardoned X years from now because parts of the power structure that they built up are still in place and will at some point come in politically handy for an opportunist.

>When their freedom means others are likely be assaulted and killed if they are allowed to go free again.

"Made to commit suicide" should be equivalent to killed here, and that is the case.

She owned more of a bank than she was supposed to, and used that bank to get bigger loans than she would normally be able to get, and then she bought commercial real estate with those loans.

Where does the net harm come in here? I guess other mega rich property developers were prevented from acquiring the commercial real estate...maybe a few hundred millionaires were harmed by this billionaire. Is there anything more than that?

> Where does the net harm come in here?

The harm comes from the possible worlds where the loans don't get paid back. That's the reason why there are loan limits in the first place.

Also if banks are loaning money to her, that's money that's not being loaned to other people.

Not entirely. She used almost 1,000 fake loan applications to to appropriate the $12.5b from the bank. Then 3 employees at the bank committed suicide from October 6th-14th in 2022 which resulted in a bank run.

There are 82 other defendents, many of them being leadership at the bank, with 5 of them in hiding.

There is some efficiency loss: capital was deployed less efficiently than it would have otherwise been, and that costs money, which means it costs lives.

Depending on the particularities of the corruption/fraud, that could be in the millions, could be in the billions. So anywhere from one human life to thousands. It's just diffuse, so we can't pinpoint a particular person who died due to it, just society at large.

(Not saying I support the death penalty for this.)

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