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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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As it stands, even a pyramid scheme operator will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice.

My expectation is that pyramid scheme fraudsters (and similar) behaving even less prosocially will be more than outweighted by curbing stealing that currently is de facto legal. And that sketchy businessmen will switch to other technically legal or forbidden by unenforced bans or punished but not enough things. Rather than going around and vandalising stuff because some specific scam is no longer viable.

And I disagree with this argument as it seems to be general argument against punishing any criminals short of murderers. For reasons similar as I would disagree with "As it stands, even a thief will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice." arguments against actual punishment for theft.

(I do not see a real difference between thief breaking in and causing damage of 10 000$ and stealing things worth 10 000$ and banker convincing the same person to gamble 20 000$ on "it is risk-free, ignore that standard warning template about risks" and proceeding to lose that, and I would love to see both actually punished and treated both behaviour as antisocial evil)

Though at least in USA with current asset forfeiture laws it is clear that care about such things as blocking currently legal stealing is nonexisting among lawmakers.

"triumphalist copyright laws result in software/music pirates who laugh in your face if you make moral arguments about the wellbeing of content creators" (that's me, too!) to pretty general ones like "minority that believes it is being discriminated against will steal and vandalise anything the moment the eyes of the state are looking away".

That is legitimate risk, but currently financial fraudsters will basically laugh at victims, fully aware that in the worst case they will lose what they stolen and get slap on the wrist as their activity was technically legal or de facto legal. Except outrageous cases like FTX where there is a decent chance for some punishment at least for some.

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