Potentially, yes. Something with real-world catastrophic consequences should require you to prove you weren’t being negligent. In this case, it feels like the equivalent of running for a while knowing that your QA team was empty and ignoring failing tests for a year.
For criminal charges, yes, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other consequences. For example, a professional engineer can lose their license if they are found to be negligent or deceitful even if it doesn’t rise to the level of criminal charges. This is one of the reasons why most other fields using the term “engineer” don’t think software meets the same level, and having known a couple of people who completed PE qualifications I can understand why.
I don’t think that would make sense for all software development but it certainly doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that, say, the FSD team at Tesla or the accounting team at a bank should be held to a higher level of expectations (and presumably pay) than the ad click optimization team at some retailer.
Whether or not he committed fraud, I think most people are tired of seeing bank (and tech) executives cause real-world harm and make out like bandits. Civil forfeiture is used against poor people all the time for far, far less obvious issues than this one.
As someone who has been on the other side of many of these controversies, I know from experience that the popular narrative is generally wrong and fueled by anger and vengeance rather than sense or justice. I don't have any insider knowledge in this case but the discourse reminds me a lot of times I've seen well intentioned people make good decisions that anyone else would have made in the same position, then the mob viciously demands blood when something goes wrong.
Civil forfeiture isn't a means to punish people for wrongdoing, and neither should we try to retroactively change the rules to try to punish people who you believe wronged you.
> Civil forfeiture isn't a means to punish people for wrongdoing
Could have fooled me.
Thing is, when you are the CEO and you make the big paycheck, being a target for the mob is part of the job. 1,000 years ago if the crops failed, and the peasants started going hungry, either the priest or the lord was blamed. They can't control the weather, but it was someone's responsibility to make sure there was enough food stored.
The common sentiment is that the people who caused the failure should not be allowed to keep the money they made driving the ship ashore. Nobody is forced to be a CEO with million-dollar comp. It isn't some travesty of justice when they are held accountable.
Well I'm hopeful we can move beyond medieval practice and that the presumption of innocence will prevail. Fortunately things seem to be going well for team rule-of-law.
Again, what presumption of innocence? The bank failed, they should have to give up the bonuses and stock gains. It should be statutory to prevent a moral hazard.
> medieval practice
Calm down, no one said we should hang, draw and quarter them, exile them, or do anything untoward. It's a capitalist system, and this is a capitalist penalty.
You said "1,000 years ago if the crops failed, and the peasants started going hungry, either the priest or the lord was blamed."
I'm saying we should not look to the distant past for guidance on how to handle situations like this.
The presumption of innocence applies here because we shouldn't punish individual bank employees unless we demonstrate to a jury of their peers that they broke a law that existed at the time they broke the law. The default should be they keep their bonus and if they broke the law, they pay a fine. Fortunately they are protected by the constitution, there is no possible way the government can take their money without a trial.
It's an analogy about leadership? I didn't suggest a medieval punishment and I obviously recognize we don't do bills of attainder in America. I'm speaking for what the average person is feeling. Literally started off with saying "the average person is sick of seeing rich people get away with it".
But again, what presumption of innocence? I'm saying that if you are a bank CEO and your bank fails, it doesn't actually matter whether a reasonable choice was made or not. Bank failures affect all Americans, so there should be a penalty for causing that disruption. Most people would call that fair.
