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Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

Why is white collar crime punished with such light sentences? I could have got that sentence for house breaking, or shoplifting to the value of $5k. I could get a lot more for dealing drugs to a few friends. Steal $100m and get 18 months, starting when the world is a nicer place. The world really is set up for rich people.

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Someone made this point elsewhere. It's a 'trade secret' and 'stealing' is not as accurate as 'leaking' or 'copying' as it doesn't prevent the original owners from using it.

Usually civil lawsuits are fines. Should your (ex) employeer be able to put you in prison? Because I can see how that can be misused if a few figured out how to be convincing enough

A thug stealing $1k from me would hurt me much more than someone stealing $100m from Google would hurt them.

For any non-violent crimes we should not send people to prison. I don't even know why it became a criminal matter. Civil courts can do that job really well.

If we prosecute everyone who took information from the previous job, then there will no sales people left. I don't know any SaaS sales person who doesn't take their sales funnel with them.

That would mean that rich people could just do non-violent crime without any real consequences. The risk to be caught is way too small to outweigh the rewards of those crimes. It would still be a benefit for them in the long term.

The rich already can do a lot without any real consequences. Fines are for poor people.

Fines for minor matters should be % based somehow. (I don't know how!)

My $150 parking ticket should be their $15,000 parking ticket.

Some fines in a few countries are based on income, most notably Finland, which has issued fines in the tens of thousands for minor infractions like speeding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

What's your definition of non-violent? I think the following bad behavior deserves jail time:

Signal man distracted on TikTok causes train crash

Fraudster electronically steals retirement savings

Pedophile gets child to do stuff over the internet

Driver repeatedly drives drunk, though never hits anyone

Corrupt politicians should work without pay for 5-10 years and all wealth confiscated.

I would argue that rules should pay attention to "motivation". When you say the politician should "work", I hope you mean "breaking rocks" or "brick laying" rather than continuing as a politician...

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