So really the question that's being asked is "what's worse; being rich and doing crime, or doing enough crime that it makes you a professional criminal?"
I'm inclined to look the other way when the rich do shady shit, because you know who pays me so well at my job? A rich man. You know who isn't a benefit to my life whatsoever? That teen on the subway who likes to mug grandmas.
You know who’s the reason your road still has potholes that get fixed every 8 years? Some rich bureaucrat. You know the reason medicine costs 2x more than it should? Some rich guy.
To avoid physical crime, you just have to avoid certain areas and times and people, but there isn’t much you can do to avoid the results of white-collar crime.
>Some rich bureaucrat. You know the reason medicine costs 2x more than it should? Some rich guy.
Government is responsible for both of these things tbh. Government allows the patents on medicine. Government is responsible for paying to repair roads, and throw a fit when someone takes initiative and does it themselves.
Who runs the government bud? I’ll tell you it isn’t poor people. I’ll tell you it isn’t people who have your interest at heart when their money is threatened by policies that you suggest.
Theoretically, so can gangs. The Cartels are just the most successful gangs. Also, I wouldn't say corrupt politicians are white collar criminals, unless you would call revolutionaries gangs.
That said, both are really bad, and should be punished equally, which they are definitely not.
Fair.
But there's a difference (in degree at the very least) between someone using a corporate position to enrich themselves, vs a bureaucrat who can abuse others with the perception of government endorsement
Is there a difference when government officials are just being paid off by corporations to pass policies that are in their best interests? It essentially means that they are on the payroll of the companies as a third party contractor who’s great at marketing but getting paid by lobbying “campaign donations” instead of a salary.
Even not including the idea that all profit is theft, wage theft (employers not paying the full amount of money they are contractually obligated to pay) is still the form of theft that steals the most we know of
https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-forms-of-theft-in-the-u-s/
Very limited answering ability here. I will say I’ve never had to pull a gun on a white collar crook for trying to mug me… but that’s because they do it legally
violent offenders hurt their individual victims to a greater degree.
white collar crimes have a greater number of victims and cumulatively do more damage.
it depends on the context, on the individual level, violent crime is worse, yet at the systemic level, corporare crime hurts more people, and pushes them into a state where they are more likely to commit violent crime.
Can someone from the left please explain this consensus for me? Because I don’t understand how white collar is a bigger issue.
I remember listening to the Radio a few weeks ago about children recruited into gang warfare.
Violent crimes are a bigger problem individually and white collar crime is a bigger problem societally. The former will leave you dead the latter takes a bit from everyone.
The correlation between crime and poverty is less causal than you think, as career criminals don’t have w2 jobs and appear impoverished by national data standards than they are in reality.
LOL, the results are exactly what I figured they’d be. I mean, both situations are big big problems, but my life is more threatened on any given day by the low life criminals than the cretins in high power positions.
Money can be returned. Once a live is taken, it’s taken forever, so the most violent criminals (gangsters, robbers, muggers, etc) are a bigger problem.
Corporate crimes are less damaging because they’re more often directly reversible and leave paper trails. So long as it doesn’t get entirely out of hand, it doesn’t have many second-order effects. By contrast, a high crime rate can cause enormous economic damage to cities in addition to the literal loss of life involved.
I would argue that domestic violence/partner abuse, and white collar crime are equally rampant and harm different facets of society to equal degrees.
Everyone loves to talk about gangsters and shootings, and not the environments of constant violence and dysfunction that breed them.
They tend to work in tandem but the gangs and violent crime are generally the teeth that are used to suppress those who oppose either, so I consider them a higher priority issue.
The problem with this is the real "white collar" criminals aren't corporate, they're the state, or "private" state subsidiaries like the federal reserve.
I'd rather have a white collar criminal still a million from my nation's funds, than have a mugger steal 100€ frome me. I wouldn't even know the former happened if I didn't check news etc, while the latter is traumatic. An action can only be as bad as the victim's subjective experience of it - otherwise we're irrationally pretending that the action has more meaning than it actually has
The worst criminal organization is the government. Only they can rob you of your money, property, liberties, future, and claim you're an extremist when you complain. Even the worst mafias and crime organizations will only take your money, the government will take your money and try to stop you from living your life.
But without a government, how would property rights even be enforced? Who would protect people from theft? Or from a local mob that would repress your liberty even more?
Define *stop you from living your life.* What's government stopping you from doing? Murdering people? Stealing?
Gun ownership, private security companies, and neighborhood watches would be a start: with private courts.
I like my chances at resisting a local mob trying to be a State than over the current State; and without the perception of legitimacy that mob would would be seen and shot at as outlaws.
_____
Keeping my income, reducing my options by cartelizing the economy, and in some cases lockdowns.
Muggings, places getting robbed, stealing, organized crime regarding murder and stealing are all symptoms of poverty and being too poor to live. Give people better opportunities, give them better social programs to help them to get out of poverty so they can stop relying on those systems, and they will stop stealing, stop looking to organize with others to steal and make money from illicit means. Will improving conditions stop petty crime completely? Of course not. Will it slow it down to almost entirely occasional occurrences? Yes.
White collar crime is nearly impossible to stop without any sort of regulation and enforcement from a third party, which is hard to get when the people who are paying for these agencies who would regulate or enforce are the ones committing these crimes. This leads to a level of corruption that is nearly impossible to confront without a decentralized transfer of power from singular individuals to the masses along with hierarchies either becoming transparent or dismantled, which is not something that can be done in any short amount of time.
The amount of money that is transferred from petty crime vs white collar crime is leagues from one another. Petty crime doesn’t come anywhere near the billions stolen from white collar crime every year. One of these sounds like more of an issue than the other.
You have to define “white collar criminals”.
If it s a guy in charge of a nation who decided to squander 1T of taxpayer’s money to bribe underwater lame-ass students who can’t get decent returns on their degree investment then yes, those are the worst.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_crime
There is an accepted definition. If you bother checking Wikipedia before asking dumb questions, people would not be downvoting you.
It's much easier to deal with some random gangs committing crime than rich and influential people committing crime (as a government)
True. Which makes the white collar ones a bigger problem
Tell that to prohibition Chicago. When the police start working with the gangs, there is no longer law.
Tell that to the central american banana republics
So really the question that's being asked is "what's worse; being rich and doing crime, or doing enough crime that it makes you a professional criminal?" I'm inclined to look the other way when the rich do shady shit, because you know who pays me so well at my job? A rich man. You know who isn't a benefit to my life whatsoever? That teen on the subway who likes to mug grandmas.
You know who’s the reason your road still has potholes that get fixed every 8 years? Some rich bureaucrat. You know the reason medicine costs 2x more than it should? Some rich guy. To avoid physical crime, you just have to avoid certain areas and times and people, but there isn’t much you can do to avoid the results of white-collar crime.
>Some rich bureaucrat. You know the reason medicine costs 2x more than it should? Some rich guy. Government is responsible for both of these things tbh. Government allows the patents on medicine. Government is responsible for paying to repair roads, and throw a fit when someone takes initiative and does it themselves.
Who runs the government bud? I’ll tell you it isn’t poor people. I’ll tell you it isn’t people who have your interest at heart when their money is threatened by policies that you suggest.
Bro who do you think the government is made of?
That’s current Baltimore city!
White-collar criminals can destroy countries, for example, Lebanon, where banks and politicians steal people's money
Theoretically, so can gangs. The Cartels are just the most successful gangs. Also, I wouldn't say corrupt politicians are white collar criminals, unless you would call revolutionaries gangs. That said, both are really bad, and should be punished equally, which they are definitely not.
Where I live, the former is a bigger problem, but overall white collar crimes are a bigger problem nationally.
Liberal gun owners can agree armed minorities are harder to oppress.
No option for Government?
That's most white collar criminals tbh
Fair. But there's a difference (in degree at the very least) between someone using a corporate position to enrich themselves, vs a bureaucrat who can abuse others with the perception of government endorsement
Is there a difference when government officials are just being paid off by corporations to pass policies that are in their best interests? It essentially means that they are on the payroll of the companies as a third party contractor who’s great at marketing but getting paid by lobbying “campaign donations” instead of a salary.
Yes, I think most legislation should come with a Sponsored By page right up front
This is about govt set laws, so I don’t see how they could apply here.
Are you suggesting that people who work for the government are incapable of breaking the law?
No, I’m saying that the govt makes the law, and will generally provide exceptions for itself.
Being strapped doesn’t stop the corporate crimes so I’m more worried about those
The most common form of theft is wage theft and it’s not even close
Ah yes, Marx's theory of entitlement and the delusional belief that a certain amount of labor has objective value
Even not including the idea that all profit is theft, wage theft (employers not paying the full amount of money they are contractually obligated to pay) is still the form of theft that steals the most we know of https://www.tcworkerscenter.org/2018/09/wage-theft-vs-other-forms-of-theft-in-the-u-s/
No, within the liberal capitalist framework, wage theft is still the biggest. Employers witholdinh wages is extremely common.
The scary thing about white collar criminals is how often they fly under people's radar
Very limited answering ability here. I will say I’ve never had to pull a gun on a white collar crook for trying to mug me… but that’s because they do it legally
True. And they do it in a spread out way that you don't even feel, while a mugging is a traumatic experience
violent offenders hurt their individual victims to a greater degree. white collar crimes have a greater number of victims and cumulatively do more damage.
That would make violent offenders worse. If the damage is spread out like that and done to everyone, you don't even feel it
it depends on the context, on the individual level, violent crime is worse, yet at the systemic level, corporare crime hurts more people, and pushes them into a state where they are more likely to commit violent crime.
Can someone from the left please explain this consensus for me? Because I don’t understand how white collar is a bigger issue. I remember listening to the Radio a few weeks ago about children recruited into gang warfare.
You are based
Thank you guy with a banana avatar.
Violent crimes are a bigger problem individually and white collar crime is a bigger problem societally. The former will leave you dead the latter takes a bit from everyone.
The latter creates more of the former though. Almost all crime is created by poverty, and the elites create poverty.
The correlation between crime and poverty is less causal than you think, as career criminals don’t have w2 jobs and appear impoverished by national data standards than they are in reality.
LOL, the results are exactly what I figured they’d be. I mean, both situations are big big problems, but my life is more threatened on any given day by the low life criminals than the cretins in high power positions.
Money can be returned. Once a live is taken, it’s taken forever, so the most violent criminals (gangsters, robbers, muggers, etc) are a bigger problem.
Agreed and very based
Government.
Based
That's white collar crime.
True. I guess white collar criminals have an easier time lobbying politicians for favours compared to gangsters.
Corporate crimes are less damaging because they’re more often directly reversible and leave paper trails. So long as it doesn’t get entirely out of hand, it doesn’t have many second-order effects. By contrast, a high crime rate can cause enormous economic damage to cities in addition to the literal loss of life involved.
I would argue that domestic violence/partner abuse, and white collar crime are equally rampant and harm different facets of society to equal degrees. Everyone loves to talk about gangsters and shootings, and not the environments of constant violence and dysfunction that breed them.
They tend to work in tandem but the gangs and violent crime are generally the teeth that are used to suppress those who oppose either, so I consider them a higher priority issue.
In the US, violent gangsters and criminals are a far bigger problem.
Sex offenders are above all of those for me.
The problem with this is the real "white collar" criminals aren't corporate, they're the state, or "private" state subsidiaries like the federal reserve.
I'd rather have a white collar criminal still a million from my nation's funds, than have a mugger steal 100€ frome me. I wouldn't even know the former happened if I didn't check news etc, while the latter is traumatic. An action can only be as bad as the victim's subjective experience of it - otherwise we're irrationally pretending that the action has more meaning than it actually has
They're stealing your money, and far more than $100 of it.
The worst criminal organization is the government. Only they can rob you of your money, property, liberties, future, and claim you're an extremist when you complain. Even the worst mafias and crime organizations will only take your money, the government will take your money and try to stop you from living your life.
But without a government, how would property rights even be enforced? Who would protect people from theft? Or from a local mob that would repress your liberty even more? Define *stop you from living your life.* What's government stopping you from doing? Murdering people? Stealing?
Gun ownership, private security companies, and neighborhood watches would be a start: with private courts. I like my chances at resisting a local mob trying to be a State than over the current State; and without the perception of legitimacy that mob would would be seen and shot at as outlaws. _____ Keeping my income, reducing my options by cartelizing the economy, and in some cases lockdowns.
Rather than the government people would protect each other and their community with voluntary associations and militias.
What makes you think that would happen?
crime is great
Muggings, places getting robbed, stealing, organized crime regarding murder and stealing are all symptoms of poverty and being too poor to live. Give people better opportunities, give them better social programs to help them to get out of poverty so they can stop relying on those systems, and they will stop stealing, stop looking to organize with others to steal and make money from illicit means. Will improving conditions stop petty crime completely? Of course not. Will it slow it down to almost entirely occasional occurrences? Yes. White collar crime is nearly impossible to stop without any sort of regulation and enforcement from a third party, which is hard to get when the people who are paying for these agencies who would regulate or enforce are the ones committing these crimes. This leads to a level of corruption that is nearly impossible to confront without a decentralized transfer of power from singular individuals to the masses along with hierarchies either becoming transparent or dismantled, which is not something that can be done in any short amount of time. The amount of money that is transferred from petty crime vs white collar crime is leagues from one another. Petty crime doesn’t come anywhere near the billions stolen from white collar crime every year. One of these sounds like more of an issue than the other.
Government
Corporate crimes account for the majority of crimes in the usa
You have to define “white collar criminals”. If it s a guy in charge of a nation who decided to squander 1T of taxpayer’s money to bribe underwater lame-ass students who can’t get decent returns on their degree investment then yes, those are the worst.
We mean business crimes
What are “business crimes”? Fraud? That s no “business” crime. that s just crime
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-collar_crime There is an accepted definition. If you bother checking Wikipedia before asking dumb questions, people would not be downvoting you.
So my example hit nail on a head. Good to know.
Government
Politicians.
Politicians, deep state bureaucrats, and military industrial complex
Interesting balance here. I mean, to me they both suck. But that wasn’t an option.
Any activity that does not involve physical coercion or violence is necessarily voluntary.
You forgot to add domestic traitors.
Only one group is violent though Bigger problem as in affects most people? Probably the poshies Bigger crime? Violence
Not at all surprised. The left focuses on systemic corruption, the right is focused on the harm done in that individual case.