It may not have direct monetary impacts as large but I would argue the effects of high street crime are much higher and harder to account for. People know that backroom deals by fat cats negatively affect their lives, but they don’t feel physically unsafe because of them. Conversely if street crime is prevalent the people are fearful and feel unsafe in their homes. It only takes one break-in in a neighborhood to put everyone on their toes.

The relationship between feelings of safety and actual crime rate is incidental. Feelings of safety are moreso a product of the media up until a certain threshold we are very far from.

Conversely, white collar crime absolutely does cause physical harm, as does most economic ruin, which is highly correlated with morbidity for the less fortunate.

> The relationship between feelings of safety and actual crime rate is incidental.

Two things that strongly support this are stranger kidnapping and domestic terrorism. Among possibilities that might take loved ones away from us, these are about the least likely.

> Feelings of safety are moreso a product of the media

The media reports distant tragedies as if they occurred in our own communities, leading the public to carry a sense of threat that doesn't reflect reality. However, the media is parroting (and amplifying) the messages that are given to it from LEO, Gov's and other official channels.

The media's shortfall is to trust Gov/LEO messaging, without spending the few moments of analysis to vet it's integrity.

Let's not give the media such a pass as simply trusting Gov/LEO messaging. Their interest is in getting and retaining your attention, and creating fear and anxiety is a proven way to do that. They do it knowingly and with intent.

> Let's not give the media such a pass as simply trusting Gov/LEO messaging.

I was pointing out their ineptitude. Vetting info before publishing is 101.

Another supporting data point is fast of random murder or random rape when walking through streetd. Those are the most rare of murder and rape respectively - both are most likely to be committed by someone you know.

That may be the case on a local level, but if we could stop corporate crime we would all (theoretically) be better off -> less street crime overall.

A better off thug is still a thug. How rich or poor a country is doesn't really imply how safe.(the other implication might exist though, high crime culture can lead to decline of a country)

> A better off thug is still a thug.

Citation needed.

> How rich or poor a country is doesn't really imply how safe.

Well, only because that's measured in a way that means Bill Gates could make Tuvalu the world's richest country simply by moving there. That has no bearing on whether rich people are safer – and whether extreme poverty makes people more of a risk to others.

Contrary to the breathless screeds from fox news, "thug" is not a type of person.

Crime is something a person does, not who they are. When people do things, they do them for a reason. The most common reason for street crime is extreme poverty, and the most common cause of extreme poverty is white-collar crime.

> and the most common cause of extreme poverty is white-collar crime

You lost me there. Do you mean that a) of the set of extremely poor people, most are extremely poor because they've been the direct victim of white-collar crime, or b) white-collar crime as a whole is the leading cause for extreme poverty in a society?

Both interpretations seem very wrong to me. Do you have any data to back up that assertion?

So a cobbler is not a cobbler?

Yes, but they can also be a criminal.

Criminal is not a race. It is not a class. It is not a profession. Nobody is a criminal until they do a crime, and anyone can do a crime.

Most crimes are done by poor people in desperation at great risk. The most harmful crimes are done by rich people out of greed with very little risk.

With thugs I mean criminal as a profession.

I guess it depends on the nature of the street crime. If people don't feel physically safe and that they can't reasonably protect their belongings, then yes that would have broad negative impact.

> but they don’t feel physically unsafe because of it.

That seems like a mistake since it can so easily and often cause poverty.

It's harder to mentally connect white collar crime with real harm because there are so many abstraction levels between the crime and the victims. Whereas with pretty crime it's easy to see who the victims are.

Who is the victim when people illegally smoke cannabis?

Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people?

> Who is the victim when banks steal from millions of people

The bigger question is who are the criminals? You can't throw the building in jail, and just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability.

> just because a negative emergent behavior manifested doesn't mean any one person had to have taken an action rising to the level of criminal culpability.

If that is true (and I think it is) I would argue the law is wrong. It should absolutely be the case that senior executives have criminal liability for criminal behaviours that emerge under their stewardship whether or not they personally contributed to them. Either they knew about it in which case they're complicit or they didn't in which case they're negligent. The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies.

> or they didn't in which case they're negligent

I think some care should be taken in being too reductive here. If a CEO oversees just 50 people (maybe companies should be capped at smaller sizes?) then there will be at least a 50:1 information reduction even if they spend all their working hours in 100% efficient information transfer. Moreover, in many cases I would expect the bulk of that missing information to be the more negative aspects of the business -- who wants to look bad to their superiors?

Adding to that, defaults matter. If by default a CEO is culpable then it's suddenly possible to force them into jail by simply joining as a malicious employee.

> The risk of criminal liability is also the only possible justification for the high current level of CEO pay relative to average salaries at most big name companies.

Not necessarily (I think the idea is that they're paid a lot because they bring in proportionally more profits/cashflow/etc?), but I agree it's a little fishy that a CEO can take credit for large gains and be handed a golden parachute when a company's fraud sees the light of day.

If we can't hold owners responsible, maybe we should have state take over the company with some reasonable ratio of days to damage/stolen amount of money...

I agree with you in spirit -- even if it's difficult to distribute the blame for a corporation's misdeeds, _something_ should probably be done about the misbehaving company anyway.

I'm curious as to why you think the state taking over temporarily would have positive effects. Would you mind elaborating?

Legally? Their neighbors, who are the ones calling.

I don’t think it’s actually that hard for most people to see that wage theft is theft, for example. It’s the choices of lawmakers, the media, prosecutors, and others that minimize white collar crime in the public discourse.

If you're using wage theft as an example of how the game is rigged, then you also need to consider time theft: logging additional time that wasn't actually worked. Obviously, wage theft is worse, but the reason both aren't prosecuted is because they're difficult to prove, and when it does it caught, it usually gets resolved by other means.

Totally. The number of people who really felt the implication of the Libor scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal) among the general population, for example, is close to 0.

Not only this, but term "white collar crime" has been abused to include what is properly termed "implies unwanted externalities", and so it weakens the meaning. Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry. Crime specifically requires breaking a law!

Another related disturbing trend that weakens the concept of "white collar crime" is the "wouldn't you gave done it, too?" argument. That is, to defend cheating or bad faith behavior by arguing that you would have done if you were in the same situation. There is a lot wrong with this kind of argument, and it is similar to "whataboutism" in that it functions as a kind of strawman that tacitly assumes egoism and moral relativism, and moreover projects that lack of principle onto the counter-party. (And if you claim you wouldn't do that, the other person can say you are posturing, etc. A very nasty rhetorical tactic indeed!

None of these effects are really new, but I think what is new is that the attention economy has as a side-effect cause an overall drop in the critical thinking skills needed in a large chunk of the population to ensure these cognitive mistakes don't become official policy. There has always been an unofficial bulwark against populism in America, comprised of the "elite" - the well educated, thoughtful, articulate, careful men and women trained in philosophy, morality, and religion, and who are wealthy enough to have time to spend on such matters. Obama was and is such a one. But apocalyptic levels of egoism and intellectual laziness has spread to all corners of our society, even, shockingly, to the elites themselves. (See: Josh Haweley).

The net effect is to weaken the notion of "white collar crime" into nothingness, which is great news for those that do it, and terrible news for the rest of us.

> Enron executives are not criminals simply because their industry pollutes! Nor are bankers criminals simply because their industry depends entirely on enforcing artificial scarcity and information asymmetry.

Not sure about this point. They're only not criminals because their industries can afford lobbyists and few others can.

I'm not speculating about why they aren't criminals, or even whether or not they should be criminals, only that unless they break the law, they aren't criminals, by definition.

To put it another way, lobbying is not illegal, therefore the fruit of the lobbying, to make something legal that should not be, is also therefore allowed. But this (roughly speaking, campaign finance reform) is another issue that, like white collar crime, is too abstract to produce outrage, and therefore, too weak to produce enough votes for change (as Bernie discovered).

It's not a conspiracy. Street crime is much easier to prosecute and has far fewer eyes looking onwards. Much easier to abuse the metrics in that area to look good at your job, whereas tackling corporate fraud is expensive, time consuming and likely to attract all manners of unwanted attention, even physical violence and intimidation -- thus making people look worse on paper.

Systemic issues/consequences don't need conspiracy to manifest, they're a manifestation of misplaced incentives/causes. I don't think OP implied any conspiracy on any part.

I'm sorry to get the big name out, but. It's really part of the Marxist framework that there's mostly no willful conspiracy against the worker class, the balance of power is a result of a complex but understandable system, with some corrupt actors but they don't need to be, they just have conflicting incentives.

The last thing is why Marxist analysis is so revolutionary. It was the first real systemic critique that didn't rely on principles of individual morality, and in essence it's also why it's probably always going to be relevant.

What is your definition of "conspiracy"?

The pretty awesome "Philosophize This" podcast* episode on Foucault, where he discusses crime and punishment over the years, makes an interesting point that always stuck with me regarding punishment of white collar crime:

"9 times out of 10 they are not going to see the inside of a prison cell because their behavior...doesn't really need much reformation in the eyes of the people in power. Keep doing almost everything you're doing...keep working, keep creating jobs, keep starting new companies and going to badminton on Sundays...just pay your taxes. Whereas the guy that robbed the Taco Bell...it doesn't matter if he marches back into the store...hands over the 85 bucks directly to the manager...baby birds the burrito supreme back into his mouth...9 times out of 10 that guy is going to jail because the goal of the penal system is reforming criminals to fit a pre-existing mold of what a normal person is."

Of course this doesn't get into the very real issues of how modern US police departments work, systematic racism and other factors, but it's still an interesting perspective IMO.

*transcript: https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/episode-121-transcr...

I think it simpler than that. White collar crime isn't punished because half the government would be in prison if it were. Your average city government is at least as corrupt as your average corporate organization, and probably much more so. And it gets worse the higher up you go. The government operates essentially like the mafia, only it's legal when they do it.

It’s not really for reforming criminals into a normal person, that would require a rehabilitative system purposefully optimizing for lower recidivism rates.

What we have is a vengeful, punishment oriented prison system that is designed to bludgeon people for not fitting in, and also incidentally using them for slave labor.

I don't understand the point of prison. Vengeance only makes sense if you have committed a crime so great that you could never undo it and the only way to balance the situation is to take an equal amount of damage as the victim.

That's an even stronger argument in favor of prison time for white collar crime because you cannot rehabilitate the perpetrator, you can only punish him.

Meanwhile for someone who is prone to violent behavior it is the opposite. That person still has the potential to do less damage in the future.

That’s because reducing crime is really a secondary benefit of prison as practiced in America.

The primary reason for its current form is to appease the “fire and brimstone” folks who think that crime must be a result of inherent moral failings that can never be stamped out, so it’s simply what those folks deserve. It’s the flip side of the so-called Protestant work ethic. Go to literally any news article regarding a crime, and there are still plenty of eligible voters who want even more tough-on-crime, as if that has ever solved anything.

For reasons of a systemic nature, people seem to not call for this so passionately for white collar crime or the type of criminals who tend to perform it. There are very rare exceptions like Bernie Madoff but that is the exception and not the rule.

The big difference is threat of violence, and invasion of personal space.

I would rather lose $1000 in the stock market because a company cooked the books than $50 by mugging or home burglary.

Well, somebody claiming it has more wide reaching consequences doesn't make it true. I mean why is white collar crime worse than getting knifed in a backallay?

Because you can't single-handedly knife a hundred people in a backalley (or at least, not easily...)

But you can single handedly sign off on some environmental fraud that kills/maims a hundred people and their unborn children

I think violent crime has more of a direct impact on individuals emotionally, and so there's a larger reaction to it

When the banks crashed the economy in 2008 and millions lost their jobs and homes, people were directly emotionally impacted. Nobody went to jail or admitted fault.

Because you (the people) don't vote for people who actually want to prosecute white-collar criminals. That probably comes from it not being so relatable. Most people understand physical theft and probably think it's easier to catch those thieves.

Sure, a big part of the problem is white-collar crooks working in industries that possess a lot of power to manipulate the world we live in, but we can't just absolve ourselves of responsibility. If you think it's a problem, find the most impactful ways you can help resolve it. Simply talking about it and convincing yourself that "you made more people aware of it" is not very impactful if that's all you're doing.

They are too busy chasing bad guys. /s

The policing system needs an overhaul

> Now why would that be?

Who donates money to fund the studies?

Some of the other replies are missing the fact that we can look at the history of why police departments were created: to break strikes and chase slaves. The historic record is clear that police were generally created to protect capital.

This is a very American-centric view of policing.

"We compiled data on 250+ US public companies involved in corporate securities frauds identified in 1,000+ Securities and Exchange Commission filings over 2005–2013; we randomly selected a comparable control group of 500+ US public companies from Compustat."

I am curious about downvotes. This stuff is historical fact.

I know someone else commented that my view is American, but the original article is about the (American) SEC... so... I will double down and show evidence from my home state: Pennsylvania.

https://www.psp.pa.gov/About-PSP/Documents/Pennsylvania%20St...

The whole idea of the PSP was to create a less violent force to control labor (compared to the companies' private security solutions).

The (downvoting) reader is encouraged to repeat this exercise for their own locality.