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On sociology and corporate crime
Dec. 17th, 2008 12:49 pmOne news story I've been following lately is the one about that Madoff guy who's scammed people out of literally 50 billions dollars, and as keeps happening during this vacation I keep thinking of texts that I read last semester in various classes.
Before in the power-outage thing I kept thinking about Robert Putnam's idea of social capital as illustrated in Bowling Alone and how crisis situations like this are arguably the reason communities exist, since if you try to completely go it alone you'll be completely screwed and despite what modern people like to think we are not completely independent or able to take care of ourselves, which of course flies in the face of Emerson's "self reliant man" ideal. But when you really think about it, the self reliant man would probably be a total jerk who didn't feel the need to help anyone else because he didn't need anyone and had no sense of reciprocity, and then you'd just have a bunch of self-interested people who only occasionally bump into each other and have to keep asserting their own independence (referred to as atomism in philosophy and obviously created by a guy who'd never read a sociology textbook in his life). This does not a productive society make, as any sociologist can tell you.
So now that was have a measure of independence back I'm thinking about a book called The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison by Jeffrey Reiman and how it applies to this douchebag Madoff in terms of corporate crime vs "crimes of the poor". Reiman's main sticking point was that here in the States (and the Western world in general) don't think of corporate or white collar crime as being as damaging as murder or robbery, even though the net effects of embezzling 2 million dollars or turning a blind eye to safety regulations that result in the deaths of several workers might be exactly the same if not worse. And when you think about it corporate crime is morally even worse since it's cold and calculated, it's not like they do just it on a whim, they plan every step of it despite knowing the consequences. The law already makes a distinction and punishes more for calculated crime than stuff that's done in the spur of the moment, and these guys are real criminals doing the equivalent of 1st degree murder on massive scale when you take the net damage into account.
So now this Madoff guy has basically pulled the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and what I hope happen is that they treat him like the massive criminal he is. I mean, really, he's taken money from charities, pension funds, non-profits, state and local organizations and kept it for himself. You can't tell me that this is less damaging than breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff. The sheer scale of this should have people in an uproar. Think about how many people are going to lose their livelihoods or their pensions because of this prick. I say throw him in prison for life and make him give his entire fortune back. Even if we have to take care of him in prison it'll cost far less than all he's stolen, and considering how precarious the world economy is right now this greedy bastard made it a lot worse on his own.
In short: throw the damn book at him, put him away for life and toss away the key, and I'm sorry that something this big might be what it takes to make people really start to think about this.
Before in the power-outage thing I kept thinking about Robert Putnam's idea of social capital as illustrated in Bowling Alone and how crisis situations like this are arguably the reason communities exist, since if you try to completely go it alone you'll be completely screwed and despite what modern people like to think we are not completely independent or able to take care of ourselves, which of course flies in the face of Emerson's "self reliant man" ideal. But when you really think about it, the self reliant man would probably be a total jerk who didn't feel the need to help anyone else because he didn't need anyone and had no sense of reciprocity, and then you'd just have a bunch of self-interested people who only occasionally bump into each other and have to keep asserting their own independence (referred to as atomism in philosophy and obviously created by a guy who'd never read a sociology textbook in his life). This does not a productive society make, as any sociologist can tell you.
So now that was have a measure of independence back I'm thinking about a book called The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison by Jeffrey Reiman and how it applies to this douchebag Madoff in terms of corporate crime vs "crimes of the poor". Reiman's main sticking point was that here in the States (and the Western world in general) don't think of corporate or white collar crime as being as damaging as murder or robbery, even though the net effects of embezzling 2 million dollars or turning a blind eye to safety regulations that result in the deaths of several workers might be exactly the same if not worse. And when you think about it corporate crime is morally even worse since it's cold and calculated, it's not like they do just it on a whim, they plan every step of it despite knowing the consequences. The law already makes a distinction and punishes more for calculated crime than stuff that's done in the spur of the moment, and these guys are real criminals doing the equivalent of 1st degree murder on massive scale when you take the net damage into account.
So now this Madoff guy has basically pulled the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, and what I hope happen is that they treat him like the massive criminal he is. I mean, really, he's taken money from charities, pension funds, non-profits, state and local organizations and kept it for himself. You can't tell me that this is less damaging than breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff. The sheer scale of this should have people in an uproar. Think about how many people are going to lose their livelihoods or their pensions because of this prick. I say throw him in prison for life and make him give his entire fortune back. Even if we have to take care of him in prison it'll cost far less than all he's stolen, and considering how precarious the world economy is right now this greedy bastard made it a lot worse on his own.
In short: throw the damn book at him, put him away for life and toss away the key, and I'm sorry that something this big might be what it takes to make people really start to think about this.
