A German court has sentenced two former Volkswagen executives to prison and handed suspended sentences to two others for their roles in the company’s diesel emissions scandal.
I would present a counterargument to that, as all states in the world ultimately have this power, only the circumstances differ. I mean, grab a gun and try to shoot at armed police anywhere in the world. You will be killed, and nobody can sue the state or the police who shot you for unjustly executing you. Killing you is always fair to protect other people from being killed.
From there, we are arguing whether states should be able to kill in cold blood, which is a different conversation, and my opinion is that we should keep making penalties for “financial crimes”, which usually kill more people than any mass shooter or serial killer could, harsher and harsher until there is a clearly visible deterrent effect.
The case of the lady in Vietnam is not even a direct “cold blood” case by the way, as the state agreed to spare her if she puts at least most of the money back, which means that lives lost because of the absence of that money might be spared. In my view, this is analogous to shooting at an active shooter, and an okay thing to do. Lives are being saved by doing this.
I was making an argument about should, not does, and executing people is rather different than shooting someone in defense of yourself/others.
I agree that financial crimes should have harsh penalties, just not death. The problem is that we don’t generally apply penalties to this type of crime at all; fining a company $500mil after they made $40bil or whatever by circumventing laws/regulations is not a penalty, it’s the cost of doing business.
I would present a counterargument to that, as all states in the world ultimately have this power, only the circumstances differ. I mean, grab a gun and try to shoot at armed police anywhere in the world. You will be killed, and nobody can sue the state or the police who shot you for unjustly executing you. Killing you is always fair to protect other people from being killed.
From there, we are arguing whether states should be able to kill in cold blood, which is a different conversation, and my opinion is that we should keep making penalties for “financial crimes”, which usually kill more people than any mass shooter or serial killer could, harsher and harsher until there is a clearly visible deterrent effect.
The case of the lady in Vietnam is not even a direct “cold blood” case by the way, as the state agreed to spare her if she puts at least most of the money back, which means that lives lost because of the absence of that money might be spared. In my view, this is analogous to shooting at an active shooter, and an okay thing to do. Lives are being saved by doing this.
I was making an argument about should, not does, and executing people is rather different than shooting someone in defense of yourself/others.
I agree that financial crimes should have harsh penalties, just not death. The problem is that we don’t generally apply penalties to this type of crime at all; fining a company $500mil after they made $40bil or whatever by circumventing laws/regulations is not a penalty, it’s the cost of doing business.