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I had a thought.
Jan. 14th, 2009 03:26 pmI'm sure it's not an original one, but I still think it's good, so there. Anyway, we don't like to think of human life as having a dollar value, but for practical purposes, it does, if for no other reason than corporations use such values to determine how much any given death with affect their bottom lines. So, maybe we should start treating large scale corporate criminals as we would murderers.
For the sake of argument, let's say that a human life is worth 5 million. That means the asshole who embezzles 50 billion, should be treated as if he killed 10 thousand people, and punished accordingly. After the first couple white collar crooks get sent up for life in maximum security prisons*, I bet the rest of them would get the hint.
*Note: I'm all for the death penalty in principle, but I don't think our current justice system is anywhere near impartial enough to apply it in practice. Even corporate scumbags _might_ get convicted wrongly, and then we'd all be as bad as the genuine crooks if we offed an innocent by mistake.
For the sake of argument, let's say that a human life is worth 5 million. That means the asshole who embezzles 50 billion, should be treated as if he killed 10 thousand people, and punished accordingly. After the first couple white collar crooks get sent up for life in maximum security prisons*, I bet the rest of them would get the hint.
*Note: I'm all for the death penalty in principle, but I don't think our current justice system is anywhere near impartial enough to apply it in practice. Even corporate scumbags _might_ get convicted wrongly, and then we'd all be as bad as the genuine crooks if we offed an innocent by mistake.