On 13 January 2015 at 10:42, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/12/2015 1:38 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 1:49 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > > he's not sitting in jail because his reputation was trashed. In fact >> his reputation was good with most of his investors when he was arrested. >> He's in jail because we have laws against fraud. >> > > No, laws are irrelevant if nobody knows the law was broken. Bernie > Madoff is in jail because eventually his crimes were discovered. If you can > cheat your customers with nobody, not even your cheated customers, knowing > about it as Bernie did for many years then you will not be punished in any > system. > > > And if there were no laws against fraud or no government to enforce them, > then when his cheating became known the only consequence would have been > that he couldn't keep cheating people. But he'd keep all his ill gotten > gains and lived a high life. So where would be the deterence against fraud? >
Well with no laws or governments, someone would most likely have taken it upon themselves to punish him, probably far more violently than the government did. Come to think of it that's one reason we have laws and governments. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
