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Bernie Madoff has died

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Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#161

Post by ginko »

ryandrake wrote: post #141
cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

I guess the corporate equivalent would be the forced shutdown of all company infrastructure for N months.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#162

Post by quchen »

saalweachter wrote: post #137
kolinko wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you just redefined a the name „Ponzi” to mean something else than the commonly accepted definition.

Here, let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponzi+scheme+definition Pon·zi scheme /ˈpänzē ˌskēm/ noun a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Ponzi is also derogatory. You should not dismiss the fact that Bitcoin kicked off blockchain as a technology, got a lot of people into a sort of financial playground, had questionable value and utility initially, and all that.

All that considered, you might still call it a Ponzi scheme if you really wanted to, but it certainly isn’t only a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#163

Post by karpour »

saalweachter wrote: post #137
kolinko wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you just redefined a the name „Ponzi” to mean something else than the commonly accepted definition.

Here, let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/search?q=ponzi+scheme+definition Pon·zi scheme /ˈpänzē ˌskēm/ noun a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Pretty spot-on! I think it's fair to call Bitcoin a ponzi scheme, it is not and will not be a stable currency, it's value isn't backed by anything and it needs constant new investment to work at all.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#165

Post by vidarh »

kiba wrote: post #98
cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

What is this obsession with jailing people? Prison is pretty inhumane, especially in the context of a limited lifespan. Even if we're immortal, it's still inhumane. Moreover, how does making people go to prison fixes anything? It's just a way to assign punishment and blame people.

In Norway, a "life" sentence used to be 21 years, with parole possible after 14. Now there is a stricter option that in theory can end up being actual life, but it requires extension by 5 years at a time after evaluation to determine if the prisoner is still an active threat to society, and it's rarely used.

US sentencing has always seemed absolutely crazy to me, to the point where if I through some magic found myself on a US jury I'd have a hard time justifying a vote to convict, and the sentences seem to be more about vengeance than about rehabilitation or making society safer.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#166

Post by anoonmoose »

mchusma wrote: post #150
beej71 wrote: post #21

That's too bad. I wanted him to live out his term. Given the amount of damage he caused, he has hardly paid his debt to society.

Doesn't that just cost society more? In actual dollars a 150 year sentence would cost taxpayers something like $10M (apparently prison costs like $81k/year in the US)

If his example deterred one person from committing the same crime, taxpayers may come out ahead anyways.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#167

Post by john_moscow »

ryandrake wrote: post #141
cletus wrote: post #30

Here's the one lesson I really want us to all learn from this: the only thing the rich fear is prison because prison robs them of time. Fines are just the cost of doing business. There are many other scandals: the whole subprime disaster, pollution from plants and the like where no one went to prison and people really should've.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

>Joe Bigshot, former SVP at BigCo, was sentenced to 5 years in jail, and had to sell two of his nine houses to pay the $20M fine" is much better.

Well, they sort of do that in Russia. So the CEO/founder of almost any sketchy company is a homeless person that signed the paperwork in exchange for some free vodka. Didn't particularly solve the problem.

Corporate fines just need to be sufficient to make such "business" unprofitable. "BigCo fined for 5% of its market cap" would be quite a deterrent. Except, it won't be happening as long as the regulators are in bed with the big business they are supposed to regulate.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#168

Post by willis936 »

anoonmoose wrote: post #109

From Wikipedia: "On June 22, 2009, Sorkin hand-delivered a customary pre-sentencing letter to the judge requesting a sentence of 12 years, because of tables from the Social Security Administration that his life span was predicted to be 13 years." Letter was submitted 11.81 years ago.

Now that's an actuary.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#169

Post by Spooky23 »

telesilla wrote: post #131
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it simply because screwing the rich and middle as hard as the poors on trivial issues is gonna make it real clear real quick how excessive penalties for common civil offenses are and pretty soon thereafter the laws will change. HN has this fantasy of $10k speeding tickets. In reality it's gonna look like 100mph speed limits, $100 fines for you and $10 fines for your nanny.

Don't excessive speeding tickets lead to a loss of license? This is the perfect response. Perhaps a more sophisticated society will one day know our fears and punish us accordingly (cue film script).

For a normal person, yes.

If you have money to light on fire you can hire attorneys to delay, appeal, etc. Eventually, it will catch up.

Re: Bernie Madoff has died

#170

Post by i_haz_rabies »

ginko wrote: post #161
ryandrake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations (which are usually the payer of fines for bad behavior) don't fear prison because they can't be physically imprisoned. You can't put Exxon in jail. And, lawmakers deliberately make it so damn hard to pierce the corporate liability veil and hold shareholders or directors personally liable for the corporation's actions. So, we need to both move more towards prison and start digging in to which actual peopl…

I guess the corporate equivalent would be the forced shutdown of all company infrastructure for N months.

that just burns all the regular people working regular jobs at that org.
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