[toyg]

Whenever people moan about enforcement of white-collar-crime laws, I can't help but think about the last scene in The Wolf of Wall Street: after a short stint in prison, DiCaprio's scummy businessman is still rich and admired, while the FBI guy who took him down shares a cheap subway ride with other poor, tired and depressed workers.

Incentives are wrong all over the place, Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless. Why would any civil servant sweat prosecuting big businesses, when he can just close an eye and wait for a revolving door to appear shortly after?

[jackgolding]

I agree, here's a great quote by Terry Pratchett on how I think the world should feel about these crimes...

“but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

[pm90]

I know it is unfair but honestly I can't think of a system with any kind of equality in these circumstances with the unequal distribution of income that we have now. The poor are prosecuted very harshly because there are statistically a LOT more poor than rich and if there was no "stick", it would lead to a breakdown in law and order. While for the rich... you prevent them from causing more damage, but you know that they can't cause chaos in the day to day. At least I believe that was the reasoning until the 2008 disaster.

[iliketosleep]

You've highlighted a contradiction in the general public which I find quite disturbing. The worship and admiration of the very people (or even companies, in some cases) who screw them over.

[koolba]

That applies to a range of social situations.

Ever heard the saying, "Treat them like dirt, they'll cling to you like mud?"

[autokad]

"Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless"

This topic is being abused by the most liberal companies in the most liberal cities. i get the feeling its mostly ignored and not prosecuted (like illegal immigration) is because they feel its better for everyone. I am not taking a stance on whether that is correct, but don't for one second blame that on Reaganism.

[toyg]

Reagan dismantled any ideological supremacy of the public good over private money, basically creating the "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" mantra that is now so popular. This creates a natural imbalance where money trumps everything else; at that point, big money is fundamentally unassailable by regulation, and all efforts to the contrary are little more than cosmetic - be it in immigration, finance or anything else. The Clintons are fundamentally Reagan Democrats, for example. This goes well beyond immigration (a topic that, at the time, wasn't really mainstream), it's an issue with the fundamental impossibility of public regulation of private companies' affairs when the money involved is beyond certain thresholds.

[humanrebar]

> Reaganism made authorities fundamentally powerless

Corruption between regulators and the regulated predates Reaganism by quite a lot. The problem here isn't a lack of authority on the part of the government. It's misaligned incentives and poor policy-making.