[cstross]

Playing devil's advocate here -- I'm totally opposed to the death penalty. However ...

From the government's point of view, why should crimes of violence like murder or aggravated sexual assault warrant a harsh punishment, but economic crimes that affect vastly greater numbers of people receive more lenient treatment?

Given that we can approximate a lifetime's productive labour to, say, $1M, a fraud involving multiple millions in stolen money amounts to alienating multiple life's worth of work. Steal $500M and you've done the equivalent of wiping out five hundred lifetimes' work.

If your perspective is that the judicial system exists to punish crimes against the state, then a $500M fraud is considerably worse than the actions of a serial killer.

(That's not the judicial theory we run on here in Scotland, but it's rather closer to the way things work in one-party states.)

[Tycho]

The problem of who decides what's good/bad for 'the state' immediately rears its ugly head. If the government can literally kill political enemies, the people are more likely to rebel. Like imagine if Russia actually executed that tycoon who funds the opposition (who they keep jailing for 'fraud'). At least the death penalty for murder is somewhat objective. Regardless, I think that type of judicial theory is a few methods short in the object factory to start with.

[varjag]

Your point makes perfect sense if one is of opinion that human life can be pegged to monetary value at some exchange rate. And this is indeed the founding assumption at which many totalitarian regimes operate.

[tzs]

It is the assumption of every country and society, not just totalitarian ones. Every time we set food, safety, environmental, or medical rules we assume there is an exchange rate between life and money and make our regulations accordingly.

[brazzy]

Your point makes perfect sense if one is of opinion that human life can be pegged to monetary value at some exchange rate.

If you hold any other opinion, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people will go to great length to deny it, but if you think about it unprejudiced, you'll have to accept it. There are just too many instances where spending amount X of money can save a life and people make the conscious decision not to do so because X is more than they can or want to afford. Usually they'll rationalize or otherwise hide this reason (or even the fact that they even made a decision), but it's there.

And this is indeed the founding assumption at which many totalitarian regimes operate.

How does this have anything to do with totalitarian regimes?

[varjag]

> If you hold any other opinion, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people will go to great length to deny it, but if you think about it unprejudiced, you'll have to accept it.

Now this is a promising beginning. Put that Randian tone aside if you want to be taken seriously.

> There are just too many instances where spending amount X of money can save a life and people make the conscious decision not to do so because X is more than they can or want to afford.

We're not talking about saving someone's life in varying circumstances. We are talking about cut-off figure that makes e.g. financial crime punishable by death. Those societies that practice it, tend to be totalitarian, with the conversion rate to e.g. RMBs or Soviet Roubles written down in criminal law.

[Dylan16807]

Don't forget that taking enough money from enough people will kill some of them. So you can decide purely on deaths caused without caring about money amounts, but your numbers will be less accurate.