Josef Fritzl vs Bernie Madoff

Who deserves more punishment. Both pled guilty.

You can’t compare the two. And many will be offended that you could even ask such a question.

Hmm. Murder, rape and incest vs fraud and theft. Tricky one. If you’re a sociopath.

Every thing seems sickening nowadays. Madoff wanted to satisfy the high expectations of his clients in times of recession. They harassed Josef when he was young, hence he kept his daughter in a cellar for 24 years. The dogs ate the derivatives at AIG, but they ended up being paid millions in bonuses.

How the hell could you ask something like that?

ok sorry. i didnt realize it would be in such bad taste.

I think Madoff is worse. Murder, rape & incest, while obviously no picnic, sound worse than they are, while stealing precious capital is truly heinous… think of all the scholarships that won’t be funded, all the medical research that won’t happen, all the changed lives, the cascading effects of the changed lives, etc. As analysts we should mourn when capital is misallocated and we should genuinely cry when capital is obscuunded outright. Murder, rape & incest… part of life. Animals do it.

KJH Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think Madoff is worse. Murder, rape & incest, > while obviously no picnic, sound worse than they > are, while stealing precious capital is truly > heinous… think of all the scholarships that > won’t be funded, all the medical research that > won’t happen, all the changed lives, the cascading > effects of the changed lives, etc. As analysts > we should mourn when capital is misallocated and > we should genuinely cry when capital is obscuunded > outright. Murder, rape & incest… part of life. > Animals do it. You can’t be serious. Holding his own daughter against her will for 24 years in the basement and raping her over 3000 times, burning one of his sons in his backyard because he got sick. If this is not the devil himself, then I don’t know what else he could have done to get the title. Madoff’s scam is fairly common, the SEC busted over 18 ponzi schemes since the Madoff case. It’s just the sheer size of it that is crazy. Where the money came from did not matter to him. Actually the guy is to be respected for protecting his wife and kids and sacrificing himself for them ( by pleading guilty without disclosing any details).

Murder is quick and painless. Without my money what am I going to wipe my butt with after I take a dump? Edge to: Madoff

In my opinion you have to separate the actions themselves from the impact in the analysis. They are two different things. Josef Actions extremely heinous. Impact to society was minimal Bernie Actions very dishonest, I would not call heinous. Impact to society was enormous. End of story.

maybe the impact to high society was enormous - the impact to the rest of society was minimal.

Personally I’d go with Bernie as being the worst crime. I am sure a few people in the Maddoff case commit suicide as a result of loosing all the money or all the money of others. While his crimes were a lot softer than Josef’s the effect was much larger. Another overly simplified, tastless way to put it would be. Would you pay $65 Billion to prevent what happened to Fritz’s kin?

chrismaths Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > maybe the impact to high society was enormous - > the impact to the rest of society was minimal. I don’t think this is right a lot of those that lost were charities and endowments, it wasn’t just the ‘rich’

Blamey Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > > Another overly simplified, tastless way to put it > would be. Would you pay $65 Billion to prevent > what happened to Fritz’s kin? You can’t put a price on human suffering. The guy who commits suicide because he lost his money chose to do so, she did not chose to stay in the basement for 24 years. Money comes and goes. But everyday she spent in the basement with her 3 kids will never come back. In any case, in a society where everything is measured by dollar impact, I guess Bernie wins hands down. I’m actually surprised that no one posted yet on how “valuable tax dollars will be spent on taking care of the 3 sick kids and their mom”

“Would you pay $65 Billion to prevent what happened to Fritz’s kin” Er… I don’t have it. But I still wouldn’t pay the money if I did. Would I pay $65bn of other people’s money who were too fucking stupid to do due diligence? absolutely.

Ok, we have a truly heinous crime purpetrated against a relatively small number of people, and a less heinous crime done on a large scale with a large number of victims. There is some debate over whether the victims in the Madoff case are partially culpable for lack of due diligence on Madoff. Tough call, is it worse to be down 50% on 10% of your portfolio or down 10% on 50% of your portfolio?

Don’t get me going on some bullshit utilitarian hedonic calculus nonsense. In addition to the obvious culpability of Madoff and his associates, the victims were culpable under the caveat emptor principle, and if they paid someone else to do their dd then the supposed pro is culpable and the victim is culpable for hiring the supposed pro.

Ok, I was being abstract and trying to point out how the calculations are different. From my viewpoint, as bad as Madoff was, Fritzl is definitely worse. So much so, that I question whether Fritzl is even sane, whereas Madoff was clearly just greedy and unethical.

the answer is not that complicated if you asnwer teh following: what would be a worse punishment? Fritzl repeating his crime with madoff as victim or Madoff repeating his crime and swindling Fritzl.

this is an interesting discussion anyways, I would say Madoff is worse by far look at all the people in all the charities (now and in the future) that are negatively affected (either through delayed relief of suffering, lack of research breakthroughs that aren’t coming on time due to lack of funding - Picower Foundation here (as one small example), etc.)