Quote:
Originally Posted by Tangurena  With the severity of the time, he's not going to club fed as other white collar criminals have done, he's going to medium security, which means that his life expectancy there is under 2 years in general population. He's going to be beaten (or stabbed) to death by some homie who needs to prove his manliness (or maybe to join a gang that requires blood-in).
There is no deterring sociopaths. They never believe that they are going to get caught. So even if he was fried in boiling oil on prime time TV, the next guy to do the same thing isn't going to think "wow that could be me." Justice isn't about "deterring" the next guy. It isn't about revenge. It is about punishing the one who did it. It is about society saying "this is the price for what you did." |
Who ever said Madoff was a sociopath? Did he kill anyone? Before you answer, yeah, to be a sociopath you pretty much had to have at least tried, or have been diagnosed as one prior
to trying to kill someone. Otherwise Bill Gates is a sociopath, yeah, seriously he just stomped the shit out of all of his competition with hard line deals and reaped the profit so he could start the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a modern Robin Hood right? (Gates has Asperger's) So would be any teacher who likes to fail students.
Justice is definitely about deterrence and revenge, but it's more deterrence. If someone killed one of my loved one's I'd want to kill them myself, not have them be punished by a third party.
Does this deterrence always work, no, obviously it doesn't. Does it work a lot, fuck yes. If you don't believe our use of "deterrence" as a logical abstraction from nature, then you don't understand basic biology.
Here's a little test, go over to your stove/range and turn one of the burners on, wait for it to warm up and stick your hand on it... Now Try and make yourself do it again. Chances are you won't do it the first time.
Guess what?
That's a deterrent.
You know how easy most locks are to unlock? Do you know how easily you can get your hands on alphabet key sets for say Masterlock (I know someone who got an entire set off the interwebs)? Do you really think locks keep people out because they're impossible to break into?
Locks only keep "honest" people "honest". A lock is a reminder to any individual in society where their place is. If you don't believe that then go around craigslist and post your address, tell them that you leave your door unlocked. See how many, "sociopath's" come to your door.
The truth is it's never as black and white as what you want to make it out to be. Honesty is to some degree about altruism and to some degree it's about saving your neck.
If you can call sociopath on an individual whose willing to steal, based on the degree for which he's stolen, then you can call sociopath on anyone whose willing to make money based on the degree and means to which they've made it, without considering the ramifications. Capitalism is an abstract concept made by us, there's no hard line moral base that stems from our biology based on it. And in nature, THEFT happens all the time.
But how many of you are willing to call the Pioneers of Silicon Valley, sociopaths? How many are willing to call the Wall Street guru's sociopaths? I will grant you that most of these individuals, do have a different mind-set, many are narcissists, and egotists, and have some different wiring going on in their brain.
But if you want to call Madoff a sociopath, without taking them into account, then your doing it just to preserve
your own mindset. And of course if you do call them all sociopaths, well then your probably a communist, or at least a socialist...maybe an anarchist.
In order to be a sociopath you'd have to be willing to kill to serve your benefit, and chances are if your 71 you've run into several encounters in your life where ending someone else's life would be beneficial to you in some way. Sure it doesn't say that in most text books, but yeah it's pretty much a universal truth.
