If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior the feds allow) is plenty.
> If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years.
This unfortunately widely held belief is measurably wrong and reeks of all kinds of biases. White collar criminals are one of the categories most likely to reoffend. Recidivism is much higher in white collar criminals precisely due to the leniency they often experience and the powerful financial motives associated with these types of crimes.
For violent crime 38.9% of convicts were arrested for new crime within 3 years of release. White collar crime on the other hand had a 58.8% 3-year recidivism rate.
White collar crime poses systemic risks which violent crime doesn't to the same extent. It undermines confidence in institutions by creating corruption and waste, enriching few at the expense of many. When it becomes normalized and widespread this kind of crime can destroy a country's economic and political systems.
I very much agree with your last paragraph. I would go so far as to say that white collar crime is worse than violent crimes because it is the pernicious ability of white collar crime to perpetuate the environment that it flourishes that can lead to the social decay that you're talking about which ultimately causes violent crime.
Another aspect of white collar crime vs violent crime is that there's no real legal concept of self defense against white collar criminals while in most places there's varying degrees of force you can use in response to a violent crime being committed against you or a stranger. With white collar crime a psychopath wearing a corporation can act with impunity and ruin your livelihood in all kinds of ways and there's nothing you can do about it.
> In analyzing recidivism of violent criminals, the
criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who
had been convicted of rape, homicide, assault, other sexual abuse, or
other violent crime.
> In examining at white collar criminals, the criteria used were any
prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who had been convicted of
larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, or other property crime (which
included types of fraud, embezzlement, etc.).
I wonder if you removed the "two or fewer" if you'd get a different result.
Feels low to me too. I think the distinction between "violent" is completely irrelevant. I think taking money from people does just as much harm as physically injuring them -- many people would rather have several bones broken than lose their pension.
The benefit is the deterrent. It's especially important for wealthy people who we may wonder if they greased wheels behind the scenes.
If you want somebody to cry about, cry about a man doing a life sentence for marijuana possession, not sbf. [1]
FWIW people have a viceral reaction to extremes of violence that they can comprehend.
When you consider that a 1% unemployment rate increase generally correlates to ~5,000 deaths then you can consider gross financial negligence to have an actual tangible human mortality cost.
We just don't, because it's too indirect and your laywer would argue confounding factors until you are all dead; but don't be mistaken: financial crimes do cost lives.
I've always been in favor of the Norway sentencing model [0]. 21 years is the max prison sentence, with 5 year extensions possible. Punishment must always carry the possibility of rehabilitation and return to society, even in the most extreme cases. A small amount of people will show no remorse or willingness to improve and will remain in prison for life.
Ouch! I hadn't heard of this before, and I gotta say I'm not a fan.
I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details.
If you maintain your innocence, is that a lack of remorse? Can you be any kind of 'model citizen' in prison - engaging in charity or volunteer work? Who brings the +5 year charge or provides evidence for it? The prison staff who don't find your personable, or the shrink who doesn't think you're taking the sessions seriously (if shrink visits in prison exist)?
> I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for injustice in all practical details.
Yep, instead of "you definitely get out of prison after X years have passed" you instead get "you get out of prison in 21 years! (or never, depending on how we feel)".
Per the wiki page, the five year extensions are for the indeterminate penalty, not for any prison sentence. The alternate to this sentence is "We will kill you in prison" or "You will die in prison".
I think that might be the best normal path, but I think there's a (relatively small) population of offenders who we can know have no real prospect of rehabilitation.
Perhaps the more important distinction: if we're going to let people out of prison eventually, we should make sure that prison is a place that is set up in the best way to make that eventual return to society successful. Right now, it feels like we do the opposite.
What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Who should carry the burden of re-offense without remorse?
People make mistakes, to err is human, and forgiveness should be provided to those with the capacity to change (ie harm less). Compassion is important. But if you don't believe you've done anything wrong, can we not project future potential outcomes? Prison duration is a risk assessment of harm reduction.
EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear.
> The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise.
Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Aren't we doing society a disservice by ever allowing criminals to leave prison?
> Ostensibly
I chose this word carefully, because I think a lot of our preconceived notions on criminal behavior have not been validated by the real world, including the deterrent effects of long-term imprisonments.
> Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102?
Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines provided by law as written by legislature, considered case-law, the specifics of this case and applied their professional judgement to come up with a 25-year sentence as an appropriate one for the crimes committed. If the defendant disagrees, they can appeal the sentence to get a second opinion.
You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison sentences - I'll apply it to your argument in turn - why send guilty people to prison at all? What's the difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60, or 6000? A sense of proportion is the difference between a black-and-white world and the one we strive for in reality.
> EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear.
No. Prison should be about punishment combined with rehabilitation, neither at the expense of the other.
It is perfectly OK to say that punishment, the infliction of pain, for a crime, is warranted even if it has no rehabilitative value, assuming that it is not demeaning or cruel.
Why? Several reasons:
1. Punishment has it's own value for the sake of justice. A hypothetical: Imagine there was a drug, with a 10% fatality rate, that perfectly rendered the receiver incapable of murder without any other side effects. They just perfectly gain control of their emotions and reason, or something to that effect. If a person goes and murders 50 individuals, but takes the drug and lives; they've been theoretically perfectly rehabilitated and need to be let back into society, right?
If you think, "of course not," you are now admitting that punishment has a value by itself.
EDIT: Also, this hypothetical, actually exists. Imagine this case with SBF. Imagine if the only penalty for his actions, were that he could not run a banking organization ever again, or hold more than $1,000,000 in any account that he controls. Perfectly rehabilitated, my hypothetical with the drug, in one swoop. He will never be able to commit this crime again.
I think I might very well run and do a financial fraud tomorrow. At least I'll enjoy the high life for several years. You are literally telling me, in that case, I could live for years, possibly decades (if I'm Madoff), and my only punishment will be that I can't do it again. After all, it's only about rehabilitation for myself; and to do otherwise would be punishment for punishment's sake.
2. If punishment is not given out fairly, and is only contingent upon rehabilitation; you are ignoring the rights and feelings of the victims and focusing too heavily on the rights and feelings of the criminal. Victims have feelings and rights, and considering they are the harmed, their feelings and rights ought to be first priority, and the criminal's second. Otherwise, victims feel the need to take things into their own hands. Always have, always will, as part of human nature. That's how you get societal meltdown, followed by vigilantism.
While there's some benefit (deterrence) to there being perceived costs to bad behaviour, it's arguable whether punishment for the sake of punishment stands up on its own merits.
In your proposed world, where murderousness is recognised as a treatable illness, it doesn't really seem reasonable to punish to punish or to imprison as a deterrent.
I'll kill your daughter, scatter her remains on the road, take the drug, and see if you think otherwise.
Think about it. Under this hypothetical (which I think is OK, everybody does Trolly Problems all the time), you should be just fine with this result. The deterrence value is there (10% chance of death), I've been rehabilitated permanently so I can be let out a week after I did the murder, it's all good. I might as well add some torture to the mix as well, because the drug will perfectly rehabilitate that too, of course, so it doesn't really matter how I did it either.
Some people are. Some people who have been victimized do forgive and ask for leniency.
There is an emotional and personal aspect to that, but typically we don't set laws that way.
I'd also argue that "it's all good" is not a fair measure for when we consider justice to be served. Practically, when there's nothing left to gain, the scale tips from justice to pure retribution.
The punishment so that the universe feels more fair to me isn't all that useful. Maybe as you suggest the mob lynchings in this case are unavoidable but I'm not convinced.
Happily (both for those who want to subjectively See Justice Done, and for those who upon reflection find it all a little perverse), the two don't really seem to be separable beyond a certain point.
Retribution shouldn't be the driving force, but I can understand it from a societal standpoint. Victims and the families of the victims will want to see a punishment applied for the harm they've suffered. It's in the state's interest to make sure that it's not excessively applied, but to degree there's a mix of correction and retribution that has to be taken into account at sentencing. One person's spite is another's justice.
I think that if too many people see retribution as no longer being applied, some people will start to take matters into their own hands to seek vengeance.
The state has an interest in preventing that and assuring retribution is applied as evenly as possible, and counterbalanced by other mitigating factors (e.g. the degree of offense, the circumstances under which it occurred, likelihood of reoffending, penitence of the guilty, etc.).
I find your points quite interesting. If I'm understanding correctly, that if the victims, families of victims, or frankly, anyone who feels pain and wants to seek retribution, don't believe that the retribution is sufficient, then they may take action into their own hands. I witnessed this living in Tanzania, where if people didn't trust the police to arrest and punish someone who stole, sometimes the people would track down and seek mob justice (violence?) against the person who stole.
So if the government would take a true rehabilitative approach, and maybe arrest people but treat them well, try to help them so they don't do the same behaviors in the future, a percentage of the population might see that as insufficient and take retribution into their own hands.
You've helped me realize why I've actually shifted my professional focus from wanting to change politics to wanting to change culture. Seems a lot of being in government is doing what the people want, and if the people want retribution, then the government has to follow it.
I hope for (and am working towards) a world in which we help people know our pain not by trying to cause the same pain to them, but by expressing our pain to them with more granularity, because the pain they'd feel as a result of retribution will never be the exact same pain we feel, as our contexts are way too complex to replicate exactly.
I really appreciate your comment, thank you for helping me think more deeply about this.
Yes, I think you've eloquently summarized my thinking on this. Thankfully I've never had to witness people trying to take justice into their own hands, as you have, though I imagine it must be harrowing to witness especially in a mob situation.
It sounds like you're trying to be part of the solution, which I deeply commend. Thank you also for your very thoughtful reply. It's appreciated.
I think both of those are flawed views. Not necessarily mistaken, but incomplete. One of the key reasons we imprison people is to prevent them from doing further harm to society: i.e., we put them in prison for our benefit, not theirs. It's definitely good if they're rehabilitated along the way, but rehabilitation isn't necessary for their imprisonment to be a net benefit to society.
I think it depends on how we define victim, and especially how direct and tangible the harm needs to be to be considered a victim.
But maybe it also has to do with whether people feel victimized. If no one felt victimized, would we punish?
So I imagine it's probably a combination of who feels victimized and who society believes should feel victimized. Because as others may respond, white-collar crime has people who get harmed as a result of the actions, even if it's not as obvious as the person directly punching them in the face.
One could argue that even the fact of breaking the law can harm those who went through great lengths to not break the law.
What SBF has done is not a victimless crime though: lots of fairly ordinary people lost money because of what he did, some of them lost everything.
Yes, I know some of the people who lost money are rich, and much is being made of that by people who want to troll by saying that's the only reason he really got into trouble (e.g., on Reddit). But that's not true: there are plenty of victims from SBFs crimes, both rich and not rich.
And in this kind of discussion I suggest it's helpful to avoid hypotheticals and to look at the real situations and outcomes relating to the case we're talking about.
What is a victimless crime? Speeding? Even though excessive speed is strongly correlated with crash deaths?
Fraud? The money comes from somewhere; someone is harmed by it (Pratchett's Going Postal has a good line on it - "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
IMO an important component of punishment is convincing society that justice has been served. Too light a punishment, and vigilantism will become prevalent.
Your comment and another above has me thinking that it's almost like vicarious punishment. "If you don't punch them, I will, so you better punch them hard enough."
It makes sense. We empower the government to act on our behalf, including with violence. Arguably it is one of the fundamental reasons for government to exist.
And I wonder if certain calculations, like preventing vigilantism, tend to act on the behalf of not the majority of a population but an extreme few. Or in other words, if 95% of the population support an idea but 5% violently opposes it, does the government cater more to the 95% or 5%? At what point are government officials afraid that the 5% will commit violent acts against society or them and their loved ones and therefore cater to their perspective more than the majority?
I'll try to find the article, I think the point was that we think we are being violent to others with a conscious intention of trying to prevent future violence, but that most of the time we are doing it with the intention of them knowing our current pain that we think they caused to us, not really thinking much about the future.
So if the spite causes people to feel sufficiently afraid to do the action in the future, maybe it deters people from acting that way?
I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment) and it seems like something where people would bring in a ton of bias.
Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
At some point its not about deterrent or social benefit but justice. People can say its not fair or productive for people like him to be locked up forever. Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life? And likely a comfortable well off one at that. He already had a privileged family and I have no doubt it will be easy for him to profit off his story once he gets out. The hardly seems right.
> Well, what about their victims? How many people's financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he will get to live a normal life?
That sounds more like retribution than justice. I.E. wanting to cause him pain because he caused pain in others.
Of course, i don't have a better answer by any means.
It is deterrence: it sends the message of don't do the same thing or you'll wind up in prison for a long time. It really isn't retribution, this kind of enforcement is meant to scare other potential white collar criminals into not breaking the law as well.
It protects potential future victims - both from SBF and from those who might want to emulate him.
Which is why I think the sentence is too low.
There are other ways he could make reparations. One would be to have one-to-one meetings with his victims, where they tell him in person how his actions affected them.
There's a fair chance it would bounce right off SBF, because he clearly has serious personality issues.
So, legal theory provides three reasons for punishment:
1) revenge ("an eye for an eye") - that's not considered a factor anymore today except as an upside-limit on the punishment, ie, the punishment should not exceed the damage caused. Here, the damage caused was immense, so don't think that'll be a limiting factor.
2) specific prevention - keep that particular perpetrator off the streets, so they can't commit crimes again. There's some argument that old people commit fewer crimes, so when the perpetrator is old enough, one can let them go. Maybe one shouldn't let SBF out until he's older than Madoff was...
3) general prevention, aka deterrence - make sure that the punishment (in conjunction with the probability of being caught) is sufficient to discourage others from committing the crime. This is problematic as apparently most perpetrators seem to think that they won't be caught (which is why capital punishment doesn't necessarily reduce crime rates). I think in this case it's good that the many, many crypto "operators" see that there is some downside in scamming people.
Imo 5 means 3 and that is too low for most serious crimes, it feels almost like an incentive to just not get caught, more than an incentive to not do it all.
Losing 20 years of your life though will have a drastic effect on the rest of your life. As it should for some crimes.
Or is your argument we should skip from 10 to death, I'm honestly not sure.
My perception of some of these financial crimes - Madoff included - is they start off with a small slip, rather than a full dive into fraud. A lot of times it snowballs while the person responsible keeps searching for a way out.
I wonder at what point SBF would have even said what he was doing was immoral. If you're running a Ponzi scheme you think you can salvage, would you compare yourself to Madoff, or would you think "I'm trying to set things right"?
From what I read on Wikipedia, Madoff didn't make a single investment with the money given to his wealth management program. He deposited it all into a bank account and paid people out of the same bank account. This is notably different from SBF's case.
Rather, I'm suggesting that in the eye of the beholder, a very clear case of fraud might be self-perceived as a bump on the road to lawful, legitimate financial dealings.
So the question is if SBF didn't see himself as committing the same crimes as Madoff (even if he was), would Madoff's sentencing and fate even register as a potential deterrent?
We don't know to what extent prison is a deterrent. It's classic survivor bias - we only get to see the cases where the deterrent failed, not where it succeeded.
I guess the nuance is that SBF can get paroles if he behaved well. That is, this 25 years can be punitive, but he will also has a chance to earn some trust and reduce the punishment.
He can’t get parole, but can get RDAP, halfway house, first step act, good behavior (15%), in theory a rule 35b (not sure what he knows), and whatever else gets invented in the future. Maybe a commuted sentence but probably not for a while.
Probably out in 17 years which is still a long time.
I was most surprised by the recommendation of medium security. Not sure how well Sam will do in a medium.
There is a possible "good behavior" reduction, but the maximum of that works out to around 15% off the sentence. He'll serve at least 21 of those years or so.
The problem is, criminals think they will not be caught. There is a deterrent, but the difference between 10, 20 and 30 years is abstract for someone who thinks they are not caught.
The judge provided a good counterargument: if a thief burgles a bank, goes to Vegas and doubles his money and gives the original amount back to the bank, does that deserve punishment?
So he stole stuff in 2022 at a low point, and now his victims are going to be paid 30% the cost of what it would take to rebuy it? That's "repaid in full" in your mind? Losing 70% of their BTC?
not to be too unsympathetic but if those people he defrauded (which yes is a very bad thing) were all crypto degens gambling on things they knew they shouldnt be gambling on, does that change the calculus at all
The USA has an incredibly robust, tightly monitored and regulated financial market. The SEC, FDIC and associated regulators and auditors carefully control bank reserves, prosecute insider trading, prevent and insure against fraud.
Some people decided to opt-out of that system and send their money to an unregulated entity in the Bahamas to buy imaginary money without government oversight.
Honestly the government shouldn't have intervened here at all. The people who lost money should have been laughed at and told that's why you put your money in the regulated market. If you intentionally try to avoid taxes, anti-money laundering regulations, audits and securities law by buying crypto overseas, then taxpayer resources don't go bail you out.
I agree. However, I think there's something to be said about how people don't understand what kind of protections are afforded to them by regulation.
A lot of these people were likely acting in some level of good faith, assuming that a company so big it could afford a Super Bowl commercial starring Larry David would never scam them. I know, it's stupid, but people don't understand where the guardrails are, what FDIC insurance really is, what sort of insurance exists on retail brokerage accounts, etc. And they didn't just lose money off of crypto losing value, they lost beyond that amount off of this business co-mingling funds when they were not supposed to.
But I do not feel that badly for anyone whose life was 'ruined' over this for one big reason: they were trying to get rich quick. That's the fact that underpins so much investment in crypto. BTC to the moon! SHTC to the moon! ETCC to the moon! These people were hoping for their 'investments' (speculative gamblings) to explode in value. And they weren't planning on sharing any of it with you or me, not beyond what they're legally required to through taxes (and sometimes, not even that, like you say as well).
I'm not sure I fully agree that we should just sit by and let them be robbed, but the point you make about the government doing nothing is an interesting one as it would be great marketing against a disruptive currency.
If you ask to borrow $500 and I give it to you, and you run off with the money with no intent to ever pay me back, did you commit fraud? Or was I just a rube who should have known better?
You seem to wish to live in a zero trust world model where everyone is out to scam everyone at all times and "caveat emptor" if you do get scammed. We should do our best as a society to not turn into that.
I'm reading their comment as the opposite - there are mechanisms for a high trust society in place (which is good), but if you go out of your way to opt out of it then you're on your own.
The difference is there is no such thing as "unregulated" in the concept of fraud. Doing fraud is illegal. Even if FTX had done all the paperwork to be compliant, it would still be illegal fraud.
Same as there's no place where murder is allowed. You can't "opt out" of parts of society. It's not even "take it or leave it", society is "take it or get out of our reach"
Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but
prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime.
Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more effective
crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize
many to the threat of future imprisonment.
See “Understanding the Relationship Between Sentencing and Deterrence” for
additional discussion on prison as an ineffective deterrent.
———
5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent
effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment
increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”
That is certainly correct for "street crime" where premeditation and risk reward analysis aren't a part of the equation.
I have some pretty serious doubts about it when it comes to large financial crimes where both those things are absolutely part of the process. A death sentence probably isn't going to stop someone from killing another person, they're already off the deep end of irrationality. However 25 years of prison is probably going to be a significant deterrent to someone choosing to commit billions worth of fraud, maybe the profit margin isn't that important.
Yeah, I really think comparing common street crime with high financial crime is Apples and Oranges. Common criminals don’t have much to lose, yes going to prison sucks, but it means less when you live in low income housing with other people, can’t afford basic shit and/or are in significant mental distress. On the other hand Financial criminals usually have a LOT to lose, and to get into the position to commit those crimes they likely have a degree of rationality that’s less guaranteed than in street crime.
Frankly, I think we need a lot more of this kind of punishment to get more trust back into our high-trust society. More rich people need to go to prison for crimes against society, because honestly it feels more like Madoff and SBF were one offs rather than business as usual.
Yes but at the same time, anyone attempting to set up legitimate crypto exchanges and engage in the kinds of shenanigans SBF indulged in will know to check with their lawyers before moving now, because they'll have to think "Will doing this (possibly fraudulent activity) land me in jail for 25 years like SBF?" - that's a decent deterrent.
I don’t know if I disagree, because I have not thought seriously about the risk/reward.
My point along with the grand parent is that at a certain point it is more costly than it is worth in deterrence. And the data backs that up, generally.
>5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters criminals. According to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”
Capital punishment is cheap though. And more humane than life sentence. Actually I think that we should return some form of corporal punishment and shorten prison sentences for non violent crimes. Subject SBF to Singapore style caning every month and 2-3 years in prison, forbid him to ever work with other people's money and be done with him.
In terms of "ruins your life", anything past a few years does that.
Speaking purely for myself, I don't feel much difference in the deterrent effect from the punishment being 5 years or 25 years. Either one would utterly wreck everything about my life, and although the latter is worse it's not enough so to change my decisions.
If he gets out in 5 years he'll be doing the same thing. He showed no remorse or understanding that he did anything wrong. A 25 year sentence means we've got 20 more years of public safety.
I would easily go to jail for 8 years for $50+ million. 25 years would not be worth it to me for any amount.
I am from El Paso, which is on the border with Mexico and grew up with many kids whose parents were smugglers and cartel affiliated.
I know several parents who went to jail for ~10 years while were were in elementary school, the kids never wanted for anything, and then when the parents got out and started capital intensive business.
One parent did 12 years and got out to start a a series of high end mexican restaurants, one started a steakhouse, one bought a small hotel, one started a commercial construction company.
It's all part of the game, just how startup founders grind for years for the money.
Honestly? I sincerely doubt you, or anyone would actually, really, for realsies, go to prison for eight years for $50M. Anyone would beg to be released after a few weeks.
The main purpose of imprisoning white-collar crime is to act as a deterrent. If the upside for a financial crime is billions of dollars, and the potential risk is 25 years in prison, lots of people will be willing to take that risk, especially if 25 years actually means 17ish with good behavior.
If the punishment is life in prison with no chance of parole, it'll act as more of a deterrent.
Punishment lengths don't act as a deterrent to petty and violent crime, because the people commiting those crimes are not intelligent or are crimes of passion. Systematic fraud like this is slow, calculated and methodical.
In this case, could he be considered a violent economic threat to society? His defense did try to argue that he was not a "ruthless financial serial killer".
Most deep discussions require some amount of discussing your terms. A surprising amount of insight can be gathered by playing with and altering previous assumptions of a word's meaning.
For instance, by seeing violence as a spectrum you can see that while lying to the Nazi about the Jewish person in your attic is "committing violence" against said Nazi, you can also recognize that the lie is quite obviously justified violence -- and there is a spectrum of justified violence in that case.
When you lie to someone you damage their ability to see reality as it is, especially the reality of yourself (your thoughts, motivations, etc). Its not as severe as a punch to the face (in most cases at least) but it still causes harm.
At least if you are making statements going against the general understanding of the society you're in then make a reference to the ideas or theories that prompt you to make these statements.
Note: many forms of theft obviously involve violence.
Definitions vary depending on context. I think of violence as a spectrum. Talking peacefully and negotiating is extremely low violence. Threats etc are more. All our war and atomics are about the limit.
> Some definitions are somewhat broader, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."
Violence IMO is anything which causes harm or can be used to force a condition.
No, screaming at someone is not violence. The WHO definition you cite also restricts its definition to physical force. If screaming were violence, we'd have prisons full of sports fans after every football game.
"Harming someone" is anything which causes harm. We have different words to describe different things. In this way, we can tell them apart when communicating with each other.
Not all violence is wrong or illegal, and not all screaming is violence.
Words are defined by people. By seeing violence as a spectrum you can see the spectrum of possible responses to violence. We can then distinguish the different forms of violence with other words, like "physical"
It is ridiculous that finance owns such an outsized position in our economy, with the wizards of finance hailed for their key role in the efficient performance of the economy rewarded to the tune of megabillionaires...
and people will say with a straight face that defrauding large numbers of people of their money might not have numerous health / fatal consequences: anxiety, stress, divorce, loss of benefits, working longer past retirement.
It's like saying Mafia bosses or Hitler or Stalin weren't violent and dangerous because they ordered the deaths of millions with a stroke of a pen.
"But financial cons are VICTIMLESS CRIMES! Give the guy a slap on the wrist and let him clean someone else's life's savings again! They may or may not kill themselves. VICTIMLESS!"
This unfortunately widely held belief is measurably wrong and reeks of all kinds of biases. White collar criminals are one of the categories most likely to reoffend. Recidivism is much higher in white collar criminals precisely due to the leniency they often experience and the powerful financial motives associated with these types of crimes.
For violent crime 38.9% of convicts were arrested for new crime within 3 years of release. White collar crime on the other hand had a 58.8% 3-year recidivism rate.
White collar crime poses systemic risks which violent crime doesn't to the same extent. It undermines confidence in institutions by creating corruption and waste, enriching few at the expense of many. When it becomes normalized and widespread this kind of crime can destroy a country's economic and political systems.
https://medcraveonline.com/FRCIJ/FRCIJ-02-00039.pdf