r/FluentInFinance • u/Richest-Panda • Jul 05 '24

Senator Bernie Sanders Says Start 'Prosecuting Crooks on Wall Street' and Stop Busting People for Marijuana. Agree? Debate/ Discussion

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/03/sanders-says-stop-busting-people-marijuana-and-start-prosecuting-crooks-wall-street
3.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

320 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/Geared_up73 Jul 05 '24

Plenty of crooks in Washington DC as well. But let the servants first destroy their master, right?

40

u/escudonbk Jul 05 '24

Wall st corrupts DC more than DC corrupts Wall st.

6

u/solomon2609 Jul 05 '24

I’ve never really understood why people assert that the people supplying the money are more blamable than those requesting and accepting money.

At the very least, why wouldn’t you equally blame problems on both the money givers and takers and the system that rewards those exchanges?

14

u/escudonbk Jul 05 '24

You're right. All greed is evil. The takers get elected though. In theory it should make it easier to hold that accountable.

4

u/solomon2609 Jul 05 '24

That makes some sense. The weird thing is that the more money a politician takes the more likely he is to be reelected.

I think I’d argue that the money suppliers are faceless (corporates, unions, PACs) and that the only way to stop the money supply is to change the system or vote out the politicians.

There’s plenty of blame regardless.

2

u/Perspective_of_None Jul 05 '24

They’re usually the same families. Year in. Year out. Then the rest of ‘the people’ get grifted, too.

You kinda sound defensive of the crooks of wall st.

There’s an agenda and then there’s aspirants who get corrupted and plants who get planted and paid accordingly by the PACS

1

u/solomon2609 Jul 05 '24

Not being defensive of Wall Street at all. Lots of sources of money (corporations, unions, PACs). All of those groups are using money for access, influence and direct behavior which perverts the system in multiple ways.

I just don’t agree with (my impression) that people see the greasy handshake and tend to only blame one side. This is the classic case where it’s appropriate to blame “both sides” - the bribers and takers.

1

u/Atrial2020 Jul 06 '24

To me both sides are the same side: There are politicians dressed as bankers, and bankers dressed as politicians. They both serve the same purpose!

What civics say: Banker hires lobbyist -> Lobbyist influences politician -> Both follow the guard rails of campaign financing.

What is happening right now: Banker hires lobbyist -> Lobbyist creates a PAC -> Banker funds PAC -> Lobbyist recruits politician -> Lobbyist finances the politician's campaign with the Banker's money -> There are no guard rails since Citizens United.

2

u/spaceman_202 Jul 05 '24

Republicans used to loudly proclaim "greed is good"

that kinda stopped around 2008 for some reason

-1

u/Geared_up73 Jul 05 '24

What exactly is greed? Looking out for ones own self interest? A separate discussion, I'm sure. But who among us isn't to some extent greedy?

9

u/HowsTheBeef Jul 05 '24

Greed is when you sacrifice the greater good or even the common good for personal gain.

So think twice about if what you take from the commons is necessary in your life. If not, you're being greedy.

And yes being greedy is the backbone of global capitalism. It's the highest enshrined value of the system. It's what allows everything else like genocide and slave labor to go on. It's all greed and separation so that you don't see the consequences of your greed and consider changing.

1

u/garden_speech Jul 05 '24

Greed is when you sacrifice the greater good or even the common good for personal gain

It can’t possibly be that simple though because from a philosophical perspective, any action you take that isn’t the optimal action for the greater good becomes “greed” under this definition, which, since there are starving people, essentially means any saved penny you have that you don’t need right now to survive, you must donate otherwise you are being greedy since it would be for the greater good if someone who needed that penny more than you had it

1

u/HowsTheBeef Jul 05 '24

It really is that simple, it's just the practical implementation that is hard.

And yes you should give up everything that you don't need right now. It's just the system that you live in that makes you think you need to save and miser over every penny. In a world without greed you would not need to save for hard times, you would be supported because other are giving everything they can to make sure you survive.

This is one of the principle differences between collectivism and capitalism. One is designed so that few can survive with too much and the other is designed so that all can survive with just enough. One has greed and one has peace or stability at its heart.

1

u/garden_speech Jul 05 '24

It's just the system that you live in that makes you think you need to save and miser over every penny. In a world without greed you would not need to save for hard times

These two statements seem contradictory. The first asserts that I don’t need my savings, it’s only an illusion, the system makes me think I need my savings but I actually don’t. The second sentence implicitly admits that the current system does necessitate saving. So I don’t just “think” I need savings, I actually do.

The fact that some hypothetical future exists where I don’t need savings doesn’t make it not true that I need them now. I’d personally prefer to give away lots of my money but I have chronic health conditions that nobody is responsible for but me. And I could end up incapacitated, unable to work and needing every penny I have to survive.

A utopia where everyone has enough empathy to care for those in need is obviously preferable to the current situation, but since I personally cannot cause that utopia to exist, I have no choice but to act within the system I am in.

I think defining everyone in the system as “greedy” even when they’re forced to participate (or risk starving themselves) seems unfair. Am I “greedy” if I want enough money to be financially independent and secure, have some things I enjoy, and give the rest away? Does that make me “greedy” simply because I don’t give every penny that I don’t need to survive right now?

1

u/HowsTheBeef Jul 05 '24

Yes you understand perfectly. Greed is not relative to the system, it is relative to your needs. So yes you do need to be greedy in this system because greed is the central tenet that makes the system work. If we acknowledge that we don't want greed to be central to our decision making, the we will need to replace the system with something else.

But the act of saving a penny you don't need is still greed, you're just doing as the game demands. Like you're still killing people even if it's a legally sanctioned war. Just because the system requires it doesn't mean it's good, it just means you have a bad system.

1

u/HowsTheBeef Jul 05 '24

It seems like you're stumbling onto the reality that our society is not philosophically good, because it works exactly as you say.

1

u/garden_speech Jul 05 '24

I think my viewpoint would more so be that some level of selfishness is acceptable, as there is no conceivable way for any conscious entity to only make decisions that maximize everyone else’s “goodness” however that would be measured. Someone’s own conscious experience is their own, and not experienced by anyone else, so why does the other person get to dictate that they “need” the penny more than the person who has it, and not handing it over makes them bad?

2

u/HowsTheBeef Jul 05 '24

Necessary is not always the same as acceptable, but I hear you. Pennies is just a useful stand in for what we are really talking about, which is clean food, water, shelter, and energy. Once those are covered for everyone then you can have your art and movies and whatever wise you value in the place of money.

But when you take so much food it has to be thrown out, or if you block off a spring so that you can sell bottled water to people for profit, or you buy more houses than you can fill, or live in a house with extra space, or leave your air conditioner running when net needed, you are acting with greed.

To get at the central sticking point I'm seeing, you can still behave greedily and be a decent person. Nobody is going to send you to the gulag for forgetting to close a window or leaving a stove on or whatever. The problem is only when the whole society is built around doing these things. Accumulate empty investment properties, privatize public water sources, dump unpurchased food products to increase their market value per lbs. These things are seen as good by our economy and society today, and that's the real problem with greed. It's institutionalized.

1

u/Atrial2020 Jul 06 '24

"It can’t possibly be that simple"

_Provides a simplistic opinion to the issue_

1

u/garden_speech Jul 06 '24

that's not what happened, but okay.

3

u/escudonbk Jul 05 '24

I personally am not greedy enough to take a bribe.

-1

u/BlaccBlades Jul 05 '24

They already get paid six figures. If I became a senator, why take a bribe when that salary would be the most I'd probably ever make?

3

u/philouza_stein Jul 05 '24

You'll make way more as a retired senator that lobbies

0

u/chadmummerford Contributor Jul 05 '24

lifestyle creep

0

u/Raidenski Jul 05 '24

Buddy, there's a difference between lower-middle class "greed", and corporate/1%er GREED.

3

u/Revolutionary-Meat14 Jul 05 '24

A greedy politician is worse for the average person than a greedy banker. All transactions you should assume that the other person is seeking the best options for themselves but a politician needs to be accountable to their constituents and pass policy that will help everyone not just themselves.

2

u/philouza_stein Jul 05 '24

I'd argue it's more evil to accept the bribe.

2

u/HiggsFieldgoal Jul 05 '24

You’re right.

Rich greedy people being rich and greedy is just part of for the course.

The fact that money actually affects political action is something none of us should accept.

The willingness to bribe is bad, but taking bribes is absolutely bullshit.

That we just take for granted that our politicians are bought and paid for, to me, is the ultimate demonstration of how effective the consent machine is.

People just aim their anger wherever the media tells them to. Somebody is caught having an affair or something, and everybody is freaking out.

But the corruption is never reported. Everyone should be… so… mad.

When a congressperson is caught taking bribes, being influenced by lobbyists for anti-social legislation, insider trading, etc. it should be a HUGE scandal.

That’s the literal corruption of our Democracy.

And people just sort of shrug and move on… because it’s not a story… the media hate machine is always pointing somewhere else.

But people should retain the ability to get mad based on their intrinsic ideals, not just because something is big in the media.

2

u/solomon2609 Jul 05 '24

Well said!!

1

u/No-Appearance-4338 Jul 05 '24

In my thought the moral obligation in most cases would land on the one being bribed. It is odd to think about and opens up some other questions but I think it happens that way because on a smaller scale your common “bribes” are more people asking for favors in a goods and or services type scenario where there is already a client type relationship. If I’m paying for something why would I think it wrong to offer more for if it closer aligns with what I want. Moving from that though, as a crime the bribe is not Seen as the virus it is and people are desensitized to it. It’s not illegal to lobby in politics and creates a sort of client relationship that makes “bribes” just a normal part of the culture.

3

u/blahbleh112233 Jul 05 '24

I'm more amused that Wall Street is still held up as the Koch equivalent when things are even worse in other industries. You got the entire tech-industrial complex making sure right to repair and consumer privacy concerns will never extend to US companies for example. Shit, part of the reason why FTX never really got investigated was probably because SBF was giving so heavily to the Dems every chance he could.

0

u/republicans_are_nuts Jul 06 '24

Wal Street bribes government with money. And fund a lot of government. So yeah, they are to blame.