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The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

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Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#71

Post by munin »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #56
buzer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. Most (all?) antibiotics aren't sold without recipe. If they were and people started using them without good reason, we could end up in situation where there are no longer any effective antibiotics for the species (this is already the case to some degree, but accelerating it certainly isn't ideal).

When something has negative externalities, the answer isn't to ban it, it's to tax it in proportion to the pro rata share of the negative externalities (and then maybe waive the tax if you have a prescription; but maybe not -- they seem to be overprescribed as it is, and the negative externalities don't disappear when you have a prescription). If you want to pay $2000 for useless antibiotics, no problem. But the pric…

Cigarettes are legal and people still smuggle and sell them on the black market to avoid paying taxes. Your scheme would be mostly indistinguishable from the current prohibition and would still be dominated by cartels and SWAT teams.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#72

Post by sokoloff »

dragontamer wrote: post #67
cronix wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. Take the recent Tesla fiasco. Do you think a $20M fine means a damn thing to Musk? That's like $0.01 for most people. Now a $20M fine and a year in prison would make them think twice. More often than not, they make more in the commission of their crimes than they are fined, so they still come out in the black. In other words, they aren't truly punished.

> I totally agree with this. Take the recent Tesla fiasco. Do you think a $20M fine means a damn thing to Musk? That's like $0.01 for most people. Elon Musk was forcibly removed as Tesla's chairman. That was the real punishment. Furthermore, Elon Musk agreed that two new board members would be selected by the SEC. Finally, Tesla promised that they'd watch Elon Musk's twitter account better. The $20 Million was a slap…

After his “Naughty by Nature” and “Shortseller Enrichment Commission” tweets, do you believe that his twitter behavior has been curbed effectively?

I guess, neither of those are blatant securities fraud or libel against a person, so maybe it has, but...

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#73

Post by forapurpose »

Kaveren wrote: post #59
forapurpose wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The United States needs to reduce its prison population, not increase it. I don't think most people are concerned with CEOs of large corporations overflowing the prisons.

It's about a mindset of the purpose and necessity of imprisoning so many people, not an individual case. Aside from that, do you believe that Elon Musk in particular deserves to have his freedom restricted, be in a potentially dangerous situation (even in low security), and be locked away from society because of a series of tweets that heavily jumped the gun and stated funding as "secured" when it wasn't? Being barre…

You've already characterized any disagreement as "bloodlust".

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#74

Post by jstanley »

Latteland wrote: post #63
jstanley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a willing buyer, and a willing seller, and the goods aren't stolen, and the seller isn't lying about what the goods are, then who is the victim? If there's no victim, there's no crime. (And, yes, identical logic does apply equally to illegal drugs).

But the law doesn't work that way, what's technically illegal is illegal. Prostitution and illegal drug use are two things in that camp.

Right, but the question was about why it should be illegal, not why it is illegal.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#75

Post by Kaveren »

forapurpose wrote: post #73
Kaveren wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about a mindset of the purpose and necessity of imprisoning so many people, not an individual case. Aside from that, do you believe that Elon Musk in particular deserves to have his freedom restricted, be in a potentially dangerous situation (even in low security), and be locked away from society because of a series of tweets that heavily jumped the gun and stated funding as "secured" when it wasn't? Being barre…

You've already characterized any disagreement as "bloodlust".

Why wouldn't being banned from serving as CEO or Chairman of any publicly traded company for some certain amount of time be enough? Why wouldn't increasing the fine be enough? Say it were $40m, $80m, $100m.

You can punish someone without throwing them into a box. I don't see how that benefits Musk or society in any way. If he's unlikely to do anything like this again, he had power taken away from him, and investors recooped losses, what possible gain is there?

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#76

Post by tptacek »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #65
tialaramex wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I lack relevant local knowledge (I am not a US citizen) but seems like this describes a situation where a government agency had discretion to perhaps do something legal but immoral back in 2016. Did they, in fact? That is, did the IRS tell Vanguard it owes a large new tax bill on a "transfer pricing" rationale? The UK's GAAR has this trick called a "double reasonableness test" which it uses to get rid of some t…

What this is really exposing is a facet of the sham of "transfer pricing" in general. The problem with transfer pricing is that "market price" is a context-dependent volatile fiction. If you buy a jar of peanut butter, it might cost $2 at one store and $2.50 at another on the other side of town. Which one is the market price? The difference is 25%, which at scale is enough to consume most companies' entire profit mar…

It's much more bizarre than that. Vanguard is organized upside-down from most funds companies. Instead of a company that owns mutual funds, Vanguard funds own the management services company (and investors in turn own the funds). This aligns the incentives of Vanguard with its investors --- which is exactly what you want from a fund manager.

Vanguard is in trouble for "charging" the funds below-market rate on the services provided by the management company. But the only reason there are charges to pay attention to at all is that Vanguard deliberately organized itself to return as much money as possible to investors.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#77

Post by techntoke »

sokoloff wrote: post #72
dragontamer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I totally agree with this. Take the recent Tesla fiasco. Do you think a $20M fine means a damn thing to Musk? That's like $0.01 for most people. Elon Musk was forcibly removed as Tesla's chairman. That was the real punishment. Furthermore, Elon Musk agreed that two new board members would be selected by the SEC. Finally, Tesla promised that they'd watch Elon Musk's twitter account better. The $20 Million was a slap…

After his “Naughty by Nature” and “Shortseller Enrichment Commission” tweets, do you believe that his twitter behavior has been curbed effectively? I guess, neither of those are blatant securities fraud or libel against a person, so maybe it has, but...

Right! He settles for twenty (420) million and then goes on to mock the agency he settled with afterwards. People also seem to quickly overlook this and his other bizarre tweets:

https://people.com/music/elon-musk-responds-azealia-banks-al...

Not sure where all the fan-love for Musk comes from, but him and Kanye would do well together because of it.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#78

Post by jjeaff »

pjc50 wrote: post #14

Well, yes: if you leave enough crime by the well-connected alone for long enough, in a country with poor election integrity and unlimited campaign finance spending, then you get a country run by gangsters. It came about pretty rapidly in Russia where there was no established democracy to displace.

While there have recently been some issues with some elections in the US, we definitely don't have an "election integrity" issue.

There is very little evidence that any elections in the US have been affected by fraud by any significant amount.

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#79

Post by DrJokepu »

themagician wrote: post #10

You'd have to completely reframe the penalty for crimes to be percentage based instead of fixed amounts. Even when caught the penalties are often so low that they don't matter, so white collar criminals go right back to it. When you can routinely make $10 million doing something a $1 million fine the one time you get caught just isn't a big deal. The cost-benefit analysis almost always favors the criminal for white c…

A percentage of what though? A percentage of unlawfully obtained income or a percentage of personal wealth, whether or not it’s connected to any unlawful activities?

Re: The U.S. Needs to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime

#80

Post by leetcrew »

munin wrote: post #71
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When something has negative externalities, the answer isn't to ban it, it's to tax it in proportion to the pro rata share of the negative externalities (and then maybe waive the tax if you have a prescription; but maybe not -- they seem to be overprescribed as it is, and the negative externalities don't disappear when you have a prescription). If you want to pay $2000 for useless antibiotics, no problem. But the pric…

Cigarettes are legal and people still smuggle and sell them on the black market to avoid paying taxes. Your scheme would be mostly indistinguishable from the current prohibition and would still be dominated by cartels and SWAT teams.

i would argue that if taxes are so onerous as to support a black market for a legal good, the taxes are probably much too high. for instance, consider the price of cigarettes in the state of new york. the average cost of a pack (after tax) is $12.85. the federal tax is about $1 per pack, and the state government levies an additional $4.35. without accounting for local taxes that are added in some counties/cities, that amounts to a ~70% tax on a pack of cigs. in addition to being an absurd tax from the get-go (in my opinion), it is also quite regressive, since poor people are significantly more likely to be smokers. when you add states that levy per-pack taxes of less than $1 to the mix, you basically guarantee that people are going to bootleg cigarettes.
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