this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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This is the way.
No, this is the way. But the above article is a good start.
I would love to see counterarguments to this instead of just downvotes
I mean my own counterargument to it as that no state should have the power to execute people, and if it should it shouldn't use it on criminals, and if it should it shouldn't use it on financial crimes. Yeah $12bil is a lot, and I am absolutely in favor of hard time as a punishment for financial crimes, but I don't think seriously think anyone should die over it.
I would present a counterargument to that, as all states in the world ultimately have this power, only the circumstances differ. I mean, grab a gun and try to shoot at armed police anywhere in the world. You will be killed, and nobody can sue the state or the police who shot you for unjustly executing you. Killing you is always fair to protect other people from being killed.
From there, we are arguing whether states should be able to kill in cold blood, which is a different conversation, and my opinion is that we should keep making penalties for "financial crimes", which usually kill more people than any mass shooter or serial killer could, harsher and harsher until there is a clearly visible deterrent effect.
The case of the lady in Vietnam is not even a direct "cold blood" case by the way, as the state agreed to spare her if she puts at least most of the money back, which means that lives lost because of the absence of that money might be spared. In my view, this is analogous to shooting at an active shooter, and an okay thing to do. Lives are being saved by doing this.
I was making an argument about should, not does, and executing people is rather different than shooting someone in defense of yourself/others.
I agree that financial crimes should have harsh penalties, just not death. The problem is that we don't generally apply penalties to this type of crime at all; fining a company $500mil after they made $40bil or whatever by circumventing laws/regulations is not a penalty, it's the cost of doing business.
Death penalties should never be used since you can never be 100% sure of a crime. Otherwise you will get innocents executed.
Even CEOs can be scapegoats.
That is a very good argument, however these financial crimes are on the one hand much more trackable than direct violent crime and can affect more people.
My opinion is that we shouldn't execute serial killers who kill dozens of people, because usually it's hard to prove beyond doubt to the point such an irrevocable act can be taken and the process takes very long and is very expensive and is not that useful as a deterrent since these people are usually mentally ill in the first place.
But with the Boeing CEO whose actions caused several plane crashes, it's pretty easy to prove since instructions had to come from somewhere and the buck stops at the top, it has deterrent value, just look at UnitedHealth, and the crime is much more severe than that of a serial killer, as most serial killers don't kill multiple hundreds of people.