I’m not sure about that. Well, technically yes but having a suicide tag attached to your dad isn’t worse than criminal tag…
If he was convicted but yet not sentenced, he’s not an innocent man. Itera’s post made me think he was convicted but not sentenced, but maybe I’m wrong here.
Plus, I beleive there are ways to attach an estate if it is proven that proceeds were aquired illegally during the life of the deceased. However, that would involve a different legal trial, I think.
I don’t think coward is the right word here. We call him a coward because by committing suicide, we feel cheated out of the process of convicting him and sentencing him for having traded on inside information and amassing a fortune by cheating millions of people out of a few cents or perhaps dollars. Although I feel cheated too, I don’t think it’s necessarily any braver to do time in prison than to slit your own throat with a knife. He made a calculation of his own self interest, and that was his conclusion. We would prefer him to do something else, so we call him a coward.
As for his family, if he’s in prison for any significant time, they’re not going to have the benefit of his presence anyway. And to the extent that his death makes it harder to prosecute his estate and take away their money, it’s not at all clear that this leaves his family worse off. And from a respect standpoint, they can claim that the charges were never fully substantiated (assuming no conviction yet, I’m not clear on what stage in the process they are at). So I’m not sure what “responsibilities” he abrogated if he is going to prison; it seems like most of them would be nearly impossible to do from there.
The only “responsibility” that is truly being abrogated is the responsibility to give satisfaction to a society that considers insider trading to be cheating. But if his fortune was amassed on a lifetime of cheating, why should we be surprised that he cheats the hangman, so to speak. Most people in that line of work feel they have no real responsibilities to society anyway, other than to respect other people’s property.
Finally consider what it would take to kill yourself by slitting your own throat (and with enough conviction to succeed). If that’s what you’ve decided is your best course of action, it takes quite a bit of courage to go through with it, I think.
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I happened to agree with Bill Maher after 9/11. The terrorists of 9/11 weren’t cowardly. Yes, they were *evil* in my eyes, but they weren’t cowardly. We just call them cowardly because not to do so feels like it gives them too much respect. They have to be evil and cowardly because the idea that it took any bravery or brazenness to do something like that feels wrong. But if we are being honest here, both of these things required a determination to do something that daily experience says we never want to do in order to achieve that goal.
No way that works. At the very least they can just use civil forfeiture to get the cash/houses whatever they want if need be.
bchad: The difference between 9/11 terrorists and this guy is that the terrorists plan all along was to do as much damage as possible and knew they were taking their lives. Most people would consider killing civilians is still a pretty cowardly act as well.
I still maintain he is a coward. He committed a crime, he couldnt take a trial/conviction/punishment and ended it. Its unfair to his family & friends. He wanted to benefit from a crime and not face any externalities of his behavior. If you cant afford to do the time, dont do the crime.
Coward, while not perfect, is a fair description I would think. cow·ard ˈkou(ə)rd/ noun noun: coward; plural noun: cowards 1. a person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things. synonyms: weakling, milksop, namby-pamby, mouse; informalchicken, scaredy-cat, yellow-belly, sissy, baby, candy-ass, milquetoast “the cowards were the first to give up” antonyms: hero
Attacking civilians is why I think the 9/11 attackers were evil. But cowardly suggests that they didn’t have the courage to go through with it, which is why I think “evil but not cowardly” is the best description for 9/11. You could say “but they were cowardly because they didn’t have the courage to attack the US military head on,” but assymetric warfare is always like this… the weaker side uses guerrilla tactics and the stronger side calls them cowards in an attempt to force them into a confrontation on the stronger side’s terms.
As for this case, I said that the reason we feel like calling him a coward is because we were denied the satisfaction of convicting him (assuming he is guilty, which I’m so far ok with assuming). But his whole buisness was founded on the idea of trying to get something while giving as little as possible in return (as is much of finance), so if he’d rather kill himself than do time, that is consistent with everything he stood for.
Plus, most people would consider the death penalty to be worse than any sentence carried out, so in some sense society got even more of a bargain.
As for his family, what benefits were they going to get from having him alive and locked up somewhere? Weekend visits, perhaps? That’s about it. Maybe a hope that he’ll one day be out? Perhaps that’s a benefit, but it’s not a huge one. Certainly there aren’t going to be material benefits flowing from prison. How exactly is this unfair to his family and friends? Maybe they’re releived not to have to deal with him any more.
Anyway, this is just a pet peeve of mine. People often call each other cowards to shaming them into doing what others want them to do, rather than for behavior that is truly cowardly.
I suppose it’s our modern day “Damnatio ad memoriam.” We dislike certain actions so much that we just call people cowards because we feel that people’s brazenness might be mistaken for something admirable. If dictionaries would recognize this application, it would be easier for me to get behind it.
I understand your point bchad, and i think its obviously not a black & white issue as with most things in life its varying shades.
I still disagree with the 9/11 hijackers part, as attacking civilians is generally frowned on and considered cowardly in many societies. Obviously terrorists would not attack the US military head on that would be stupid, I understand the need for surprise attacks ala Vietnam on military targets and dont consider those to be cowardly. There is an interesting debate on that because back during the revolution the colonies were considered cowards for not fighting the way civilized contries did. Military targets = fair game while civilians are not. It would be like a group on jocks beating the crap out of a disabled kid, pathetic.
If we are voting, one vote for hedgey being coward. One vote for 9/11 punks not being cowards.
Taking this way off-topic - by your rationale, the U.S. was very cowardly in WWII. Fire bombing and nuking Japanese cities and all.
This is something people can disagree on. Or rather, understand the context of what’s being said and reframe it.
Maybe it’s just because I had a stepmother that would constantly call my stepbrothers and me cowards for not doing something that she wanted us to do. As an adult, I realized that most of the time, there wasn’t anything truly cowardly about what we were doing - indeed, standing up to her required courage. She just liked to use the word to try to guilt us into doing what she wanted and feel crappy about ourselves afterwards. As an adult I decided I was not going to pay that any heed. Then I started realizing she wasn’t the only one doing it.
The only real issue I have with the contexts earlier in this thread is that by calling someone a coward, it suggests that their acts didn’t require any bravery or determination to accomplish, when clearly they did. That’s why I think 9/11 is evil (for attacking defenseless civilians), but not cowardly. We frown on 9/11 (or worse, I’d think), but it’s because it’s evil. And I can accept calling them cowards if we realize that what it really means is “bravery and determination in the service of evil does not deserve praise.”
I’d happily be called a coward if it meant ending a bloody world War, no more lives being lost, and a very fast victory for my country.
Ill concede this one guys I suppose my usage of the term may not have been the greatest. But I will not give up before I make sure this threat has its typical calling of someone a nazi. bchad why you such a terrorist sympathizing nazi jesus
How come almst all the insider trading folks that got “caught” are brown?
I think the better question is why all the Indians are the ones going to jail. What happened to Steve Cohen? Clearly securities judge is racist.
Because if you are white your dad probably went to prep school with someone powerful enough so that you dont get charged. Or you are cohen and somehow nothing sticks no matter how bad they want you
I think everybody can agree the Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom guys were of northern European descent… Madoff, Stuart, any others… 2 of 5 are brown here: http://www.wsj.com/briefly/BL-263B-1864
Most of those were rather serious allegations of fraud though, which is a heck of a lot worse than insider trading. I do sympathize with the view that insider trading shouldnt be punished harshly (as all non-violent crime in general should) but im not entirely sure what a good punishment for it would be. It already seems to happen a lot and if the punishments were lax it would run rampant.
Edit: just saw the link you added which is quite relevant. Makes a solid point
2 of the 5 are bald. Tyco guy is bald. Possible judicial discrimination…are bald people a protected class? So many better ways to categorize people. Using race is just lazy.
Is that link saying there are a lot of Indians, or not a lot of Indians? Because I am pretty sure fewer than 40% of finance people in the US are Indian.