Execute Ken Lay? (Enron)

[.Shane.]

Dying and being murdered is two completely different things.

If I die because I couldn't afford to heat my home due to your greed or I die because I was temporarily unable to afford decent health care, again, due to your greed, you could argue that's murder and I think its a good case.

 

[luiz]

I'm not making the argument.

Just read the last sentence of your post.

I'm extending it from what we already do. If I shoot you and you don't die, will I be executed? No, because you didn't die. Therefore, we've made a valuation on life.

How is that putting a monetary value on life?

We also must consider motivation. So, if I shoot and kill you out of self-defense, that's different that if I kill you to collect on your life insurance policy or to steal your car.

Of course. Which is precisely why we shouldn't look only at the consequences of the crime.

So, in Ken Lay's case, his motivation was akin to what is worthy of execution. Meaning, he did it maliciously, with intent, and was willing to harm people to enrich himself.

Yeah but he didn't kill anyone.

And, the damage he caused, on net, to 1000s and 1000s of people is a much greater harm to society than the murder of 1 person.

And we're back to my scenario where the total good exceeds the total harm.

 

[luiz]

If I die because I couldn't afford to heat my home due to your greed or I die because I was temporarily unable to afford decent health care, again, due to your greed, you could argue that's murder and I think its a good case.

I don't. Ken Lay is responsible for your lack of money, not for your cancer.

Taking your money away, regardless of the consequences, is different from putting a bullet in your head.

 

[.Shane.]

I see what you are doing, but I don't see the point of the exercise. Why debate something you do not believe.

This this is a total tangent, I thought I'd answer it in a separate post.

There are lots of reasons:
*highlights the disparity between how we treat white collar crime vs. other crime (should we call murder blue collar crime? )
*if, like me, you're opposed to the DP, isn't any discussion of it, useful?
*just for the intellectual stimulation. Its valuable and insightful to challenge your ways of thinking and let others challenge it or to look at things from a different point of view.
*lastly, I am sincere in that IF I did believe in the death penalty, I would advocate it for white collar crimes of this magnitude.

anyhoo...

 

[Zarn]

If I die because I couldn't afford to heat my home due to your greed or I die because I was temporarily unable to afford decent health care, again, due to your greed, you could argue that's murder and I think its a good case.

You still are not being denied of your family, and you can still recover from it. You can't recover from your own murder.

 

[Stile]

The motivations are completely different for murder. They stole sure, but any harm to others was incidental. It's like claiming a drugabuser contributed indirectly to gang-related murders and should be executed,or a speeding driver that causes an accident that shortens someone's life should be executed. It's totally absurd.

 

[luiz]

It's like claiming a drugabuser contributed indirectly to gang-related murders and should be executed

Excellent point! I don't know how I missed that one.

Drug abusers KNOW that their habit is feeding one of the most vicious industries on the planet, and causing pain and death in many different countries in an astronomic scale.

Should we start executing drug users? Huh?

 

[betazed]

What's wrong in putting a monetary value of life?

IMO, not only is there a nice and cleanly quantifiable value to human life, all human lives are not equally valuable.

As to whether someone can be let off for murder if he pays $100 billion is tricky.... but given the fact it is $100 billion I will say hell yeah! Why not?

 

[warpus]

What's wrong in putting a monetary value of life?

IMO, not only is there a nice and cleanly quantifiable value to human life, all human lives are not equally valuable.

As to whether someone can be let off for murder if he pays $100 billion is tricky.... but given the fact it is $100 billion I will say hell yeah! Why not?

Because it gives a select few members of society the right to commit murder?

 

[betazed]

Because it gives a select few members of society the right to commit murder?

Really? Can you name the select few who have $100 billion in chump change?

 

[.Shane.]

The motivations are completely different for murder. They stole sure, but any harm to others was incidental.

I disagree w/ your arguments and examples.

When I car jack you and shoot you because you won't get out. That's incidental. I wanted the car, I didn't want to shoot you, but you may have given me no choice. Ken Lay didn't want to ruin peoples lives, but, they gave him no choice, they were in the way. He consciously and with foresight and malicious intent did what he did.

@Luiz, like it or not, human life is currently measured and valued in all kinds of innumerable ways, I've given several examples already, not sure if you missed those, but they are there. I'm only using logic already in play by the govt., the criminal justice sytem, employers, insurance companies, and applying it to areas that it hadn't been applied, but should be.

 

[warpus]

Really? Can you name the select few who have $100 billion in chump change?

Doesn't matter - Giving the rich & famous the ability to break laws simply because they're well off is not a good idea.

 

[Che Guava]

Well, like Shane, I don't condone the death penalty at all, but I do see the hypocrisy of giving the maximum penalty to a mentally disabled thief-turned-murderer, and not to a man who scammed thousands out of thier money, health and worldly possessions.

OTOH, I agree with Luiz that there simply isn't enough money in the world to give a dollar value to human life. I know that it happens all the time in all sorts of situations, but if its not a case of choosing the lesser of two evils (which option causes the fewest fatalities), I don't see how I or anyone else could tell a person what thier life is worth.

So why raise the bar to capital punishment for Ken Lay? Why not just lower it for our grandma-killer and give them both life? I've always thought that life behind bars would be worse than death anyhow....

 

[luiz]

@Luiz, like it or not, human life is currently measured and valued in all kinds of innumerable ways, I've given several examples already, not sure if you missed those, but they are there. I'm only using logic already in play by the govt., the criminal justice sytem, employers, insurance companies, and applying it to areas that it hadn't been applied, but should be.

If this is the case than escaping punishment because of murder by paying a huge sum is OK.

@betazed
100 billions was obviously just a random big number. Use 10 billions if you must.

 

[betazed]

Doesn't matter - Giving the rich & famous the ability to break laws simply because they're well off is not a good idea.

Apart from the fact that there is no one rich enough, it can be argued that the rich person breaking the law is definitely paying his dues to the society (after all he is paying $100 billion). So he isn't going scott free? So how is it any worse from a poor man breaking the law and paying his dues by spending more of society's money in jail?

 

[Che Guava]

If this is the case than escaping punishment because of murder by paying a huge sum is OK.

Not necessarily. If I steal a car, I can't avoid jailtime by paying for it after the fact, right?

 

[betazed]

@betazed
100 billions was obviously just a random big number. Use 10 billions if you must.

Ok. Lets work with $10 billion.

Say a person (someone like Bill Gates) commits a murder. Everything has been proved beyond reasonable doubt and all fingerprints and DNA has been matched. Now we have to decide punishment. We have many choices, we send him to jail for a long time, we give him the death penalty or we give him a choice of going scott free for a $10 billion fine.

Which makes the most sense?

Using the $10 billion we could save many lives, or sending him to jail which accomplishes next to nothing from the societal point of view?

In any case, it would be impossible to send him to jail in real life, because he has an army of the best lawyers that money can buy who will happily fight for the rest of his natural life and keep him out of jail. So for all practical purposes he is already beyond the grasp of law that pertains to you and I.

So all we are really doing is acknowledging that fact and asking him to part with some of his money.

 

[luiz]

Not necessarily. If I steal a car, I can't avoid jailtime by paying for it after the fact, right?

Good point.
Which goes to show that we punish crimes not just on the extent of damage, but also on the nature of the crime itself.

(If punishment was only based on the exten of the damage than paying would be enough to get rid of jail).

In any case I think that paying is enough to escape jail if you steal a car once. But point taken.

 

[luiz]

Ok. Lets work with $10 billion.

Say a person (someone like Bill Gates) commits a murder. Everything has been proved beyond reasonable doubt and all fingerprints and DNA has been matched. Now we have to decide punishment. We have many choices, we send him to jail for a long time, we give him the death penalty or we give him a choice of going scott free for a $10 billion fine.

Which makes the most sense?

Using the $10 billion we could save many lives, or sending him to jail which accomplishes next to nothing from the societal point of view?

In any case, it would be impossible to send him to jail in real life, because he has an army of the best lawyers that money can buy who will happily fight for the rest of his natural life and keep him out of jail. So for all practical purposes he is already beyond the grasp of law that pertains to you and I.

So all we are really doing is acknowledging that fact and asking him to part with some of his money.

My point was precisely that for society as a whole it would be far better for Gates to pay 10 billions than to Gates go to jail.

But if we put society's interests above everything else in cases like this we end up in a very screwed up society. Paying to get rid of murder just isn't righ, specially when you consider that Gates could pay those 10 billions and still live as a king.

 

[Stile]

He consciously and with foresight and malicious intent did what he did.
.

Sure, but what he did has a cost in dollars. Your links to decreased lifespan is tenuous at best. I don't see where he manipulated energy markets- atleast by the link you provided, if usually lies with energy traders I would think- and I doubt there is a single person who lost their life from not affording heat (maybe ac, but it's a luxury anyway, there's no right to ac or heat). Seems to me, his crime was insider trading and fraud, which cost investors money through lying. The business was poorly run which would have cost the employees their jobs regardless. Running a business poorly isn't a crime, so loss of health insurance isn't an issue, and in America it would only result in degraded health care anyway not an utter lack of it. Atleast the examples I gave someone actually died.

Now I actually believe one has the right to defend his property with deadly force. A car that someone spent a year of his life working to purchase has that value. And a thief who tries to steal it is attempting to take a year of that man's life away. Defend your life! But if the thief makes away with the car and then wrecks the car, there is no point in killing him, because there is nothing left to defend. It then falls to the judicial system where the loss was merely monetary. That is about as much as I care to blend the value of life and money.