The Ethics of Punishment

The Ethics of Punishment

Punishment for crime I fully support with a few caveats. First, the punishment should be directed at the person committing the crime, never innocent bystanders. I say never, but maybe there might be unique exceptions. Second, compensation for a crime should go to the victim only. Thirdly, there should be no crime if there is no victim. 

Somewhere along the line all sorts of other factors wedge their way in, the consequence being the punishment for crime now costs a lot of innocent bystanders an astronomical amount of money. A corporation implements actions which damages the environment or people and who pays? Seldom do the corporate executives who ordered the damaging actions but the corporation (which the Supreme Court now has declared a person) pays. That simply means the public has to pay the fine through higher prices on some goods or services. How else can a corporation pay? In fact some corporate crimes are committed precisely because the fine is less expensive than the cost of doing something the safe way.

Punishment for a particular crime is not all that often fairly imposed. Some types of fines need to be adjusted based on current income. For example, some of the rich park wherever they want because $100 or $200 dollar fines are chump change to them.  Some professional athletes can afford to break a law because what is a $10,000 fine to them? And so forth. If a punishment doesn't hurt, it is hardly punishment. An inconvenience does not equate with punishment.

If someone smokes pot where is the victim? No one with any medical scientific competence would ever claim marijuana is as toxic to the body as alcohol or nicotine. So why are some recreational drugs legal and others illegal? Simply for political, cultural, or religious reasons, not because there are victims. Why would the NFL, when it doesn't have to, make testing for marijuana use part of it's drug testing program? Is it really a performance enhancing drug? Of course not. Well, maybe it is a performance impairing drug? Really? Compared to what, binge drinking? So again, to my mind, when there is no victim, there is no crime. Does that mean no one should drink and everyone should smoke pot? Of course not.

Some people can handle drinking as a recreational way to give them a pleasant high, and others cannot. Some people, including some athletes, need the mellowing effects of marijuana to cope with the stress involved in their lives (like Ricky Williams). Others have no need for marijuana whatsoever. People don't need laws to control their use of recreational drugs, they need sound medical help if they abuse the use of any drug, food, sex, gambling, etc. Making some things like this illegal helps no one and imposes a huge tax on everyone else to support the criminal costs of making things like this illegal. Punishment instead of help is often nothing more than an imposed tax on everyone else to support all this punishment. 

A doctor makes an egregious mistake and a child dies. Punish the doctor to the extent needed, but that doesn't justify taxing everyone else so the family can get millions of dollars in a settlement. What about parents who lose their child via some horrible accident or disease, is their grieving less? Where is their millions of dollars? If people deserve monetary awards for pain and suffering, why then should it be only for people close to a victim? Again, punish the person who committed the crime, not the public in general.  Of course, any costs to the victim treated for a medical condition as a consequence of crime, including being treated for any suffering, physical or mental, should be compensated.  

Various people at Penn State failed to stop a crime being committed by one of their employees. Of course punish them to whatever extent is appropriate, but where is the rational for punishing a football team or fining the University as an institution? Where is the money for the fine going to come from? Of course the general public. Who pays for the potential decline in the academic or athletic programs at the University from all of this? Again, the public, a football team, students at the University, etc. Only certain people at the University were involved in any cover-up. They logically should be the only ones to face punishment. 

Emotionally disturbed students who end up engaging in a killing spree at a University or high school----most of them (not all) were known by every teacher or administrator who dealt with them (in or out of class) to be emotionally disturbed individuals. They were treated the same way as Sandusky (sp) was,---the problem passed on or ignored because they wanted to avoid hurting the reputation of the school or out of fear of the individual. To be consistent, why aren't these schools hit with massive fines, and penalties to various programs at the schools? Why aren't all the teachers and administrators who knew the student was a walking time bomb punished? The answer here is clear, there is no effective way to remove the student or get them help without endangering their own lives. Let's be real here---we are taught in a lot of ways by many people not to get involved, to mind our own business. If we mind out own business when we shouldn't, and are punished, why should everyone who works for the same company or whatever be punished? A teacher who reports unacceptable behavior to their superior with a bigger title and salary and the means to act is guilty down the road of a crime? Maybe so, would have to think about this further.

What kind of society do we live in where school buses need adult school bus monitors to control the behavior of kids on a school bus? That used to be the responsibility of the school bus driver. And if that failed, there would always be some students, especially females, who would report bad behavior and the offenders punished by losing the privilege to ride the school bus. Finally, if an adult school bus monitor is needed, what kind of supervision or evaluation exists when a school bus monitor is him/her self the victim of abuse? Don't they ever poll students to see how effective the adult monitor is? Of course the way the kids treated that women is abominable and disgusting, but the fact that she was a monitor for many years seems perplexing. So the public pays for setting up a victim? Perhaps she knew if she reported anyone nothing would happen. Didn't those who hired her or supervised her know she didn't have a personality to control kids of that age? I am delighted she got enough money to retire, bless her soul, but how come no other kids on the bus reported this? These kids were only caught because the dumb asses put in on U tube. Kids will endlessly harass a crabby grouch but a helpless woman like that? Something never made sense with the whole thing. Maybe all the kids should have been kicked off the bus for a while. 

As we keep finding ways to punish not only offenders, but an increasing number of others via compensations and fines, we all find ourselves increasingly taxed to pay for all these compensations and fines, courts, police, lawyers, and prisons. Just the cost of treating pot use as criminal instead of treating abuse of any substance (or addicted habit) as a medical problem, has created a Drug War costing billions of dollars and is the primary basis for the existence of all these gangs and the decline of our urban cities, portions of our suburban communities, and some rural areas too. Take out marijuana and what does this do to the profitability of drug trafficking? 

Crime should be kept simple. If their is no victim, there is no crime. If a crime is committed, punish only those who committed the crime. If there is financial or medical compensation give it only to the victims.  And yes, ethics should play an important part of all educational programs---it is called the Golden Rule. Everything else is inherited rituals, dogmas, and self serving bells and whistles. No religion that I am aware of claims the Golden Rule is unethical. There is your justice system,  your peace plan, your economic plan, your sexual behavior plan, etc. 

Finally, we may not know how to solve this, but I think we all know the more publicity we give these mass killings by disgruntled emotionally unstable solo individuals the more likely we are to have more and more of such solo mass killings. To be somebody important is basic to all of us, but we should not hold out this sort of behavior as a way for some to become really important and known. The attention should always be on the victims, never the shooter. The people who do this are not interested in making others important or well known, but themselves important or well known. The most effective punishment for these individuals is to ensure they will not become personally famous or important. What they need is help, and even if they know this, it is not clear we have any effective program in place to give them the help they need. We don't need any War on Drugs as much as we need a War on Helplessness. 

Addendum to G.B Public Ownership

Addendum to G.B, public ownership

A friend in Milwaukee was kind enough to send me the by-laws of the Green Bay Packers. I knew he would which is why I didn't search for any of it earlier. Ok, it seems the situation was created back when money was a problem to keep the team going. So public shares were sold, anyone could buy a share and the original share holders elected a Board of Directors. Those individuals who arranged for all this also put up the first slate of 'elected' Board of Directors. From this point on the process of electing the Board of Directors seems exactly like it is done in any other corporation. If any of you own stock you know you get a ballot and the corporation lists those eligible to be voted on and  the company recommends which ones you vote for. Usually if there are 4 vacancies there are 4 candidates. I used to send these 'ballots' back but haven't done so for years. Once a Board exists it  'arranges' future Board candidates forever. The extensive stock holders are catered to by the Board and the rest of the stockholders may as well not exist for any practical purposes. 

Board members are usually influential person's of one sort or another; often these wealthy influential individuals serve on many corporate boards as the pay is substantial. I suspect most of them just show up for meetings and rubber stamp whatever material is before them. They are really well paid rubberstampers---another of the perks for being wealthy. A stock holder rarely is aware of any important differences of opinion regarding the operation of the corporation unless some major stock holder tries to gain majority interest in the company. 

At any rate a normal private 'public' company can only manage to sell stock if the stockholders gain some advantage from buying stock----either via dividends or an increasing value of the stock. The rest of the public gets nothing from all this.

Now here is the clunker----just how disingenuous the NFL is about this whole thing: the NFL calls it a publicly owned franchise. But in this case, neither the shareholders or the public gain anything monetarily from the operation. In this sense it is even less public than a private publicly owned company. LIke in other corporations, the Board itself controls who gets on the Board and if any individual stockholder, outside those holding a considerable percentage of the stock, think they in any way influence anything about the corporation, they are delusional. The NFL, and it constantly gets away with this kind of rip-off, has a publicly owned franchise which doesn't even have to share profits with any shareholders. They, as they always do, prey on the enthusiasm of fans for their team to stiff them, not just these shareholders, but the rest of the public, the cities, and most of the players. If there was ever a clear example of unrestricted corporate greed, professional sport teams owned by wealthy owners is the ultimate example. In larger cities, the owners don't have to peddle useless stocks, they make more money than imaginable, and there is no limit in sight. Just the advertising alone makes them wealthy. The players union and the owners can give themselves as much money as they want; the argument between them is only about just how they divvy it up. Professional football has a fairly honest salary cap, but if the players and owners decide they want to make 20% more money they just increase the costs of tickets and advertising and raise the salary cap 20%. 

With all this money in hand, the owners could, if they were forced to, make a fair salary scale for all the players, share profit with the cities they play in, and build their own stadiums with money from the profits instead of blackmailing cities about moving. None of this happens because they don't have to. It is a monopoly, there is no competition, and they are essentially an unregulated monopoly with no limits. Fans love to talk about 'team' chemistry and don't want people on the team who are disruptive. The major team chemistry 'poison pills' on professional football teams are the owners. It wouldn't take rocket science to create performance level contracts which were reasonably accurate. Maybe those with the best stats at their position would be in the excellent category, then have a good category, then have a poor category or whatever other separation would work. Then each player is simply paid this year whatever the level of their stats for the previous year. What could be fairer than to be paid for your current level of performance? Isn't that what all employees want?  But no, the NFL has to make it a legal shell game with crucial aspects of the contracts only binding to the player. The top salary for the top players should not be unlimited. Once you get salary levels which pay top players handsomely for their performance, these levels should rise only with inflation just like those on social security. The pay of top athletes has probably risen faster and higher than those of corporate CEO's., and that takes a whole heap of outrageousness. If there was some fairness and consistency with salaries, the need for players to demand trades would lessen and fans could be a bit more assured the team each year might remotely resemble the team last year. 

Be all this as it may, the Packer model is successful precisely because it is not controlled by a single wealthy owner. But, for the most part, it's operational mode is determined by the cabal of other owners. They set the rules. It is the owner's plantation to run as they wish. Whatever the nature of ownership, and I personally think I prefer the cities to own the franchises (with the people or at least the fans able to vote (like every three or five years) on whether a General Manager stays. Whatever the nature of the ownership the following need to be put in place:

A bargaining unit that consists of the cities (if they owned the teams), the players, and the fans. 

A fair and consistent salary system with contracts binding to both sides. There is no need for all the endless shenanigans currently employed, as both management and players try to trap the other. 

A Commissioner that is not the appointee of owners. The Commissioner should be selected by the bargaining unit of cities, players, and fans. 

The government, as it does (and should do more) with other corporations, should put in place reasonable regulations and limits, especially since the NFL is a monopoly. 

Because the NFL is a monopoly---once lucrative, but reasonable salaries are in place, they move only with the cost of living. Greed should never be given an unlimited green light. 

Ticket prices should never be set so high that ordinary fans cannot afford to go to a game. Most tickets to every game should be available by lottery to all those who sign up for a chance to get a ticket. Obviously these tickets would have to come in sets so the winner can bring family or friends. Some probably should be reserved for teenagers to come with a friend or parent. 

Nothing above is claimed to be without flaw. But the general thrust of my remarks are meant to be accurate considering the big picture. Implementation of changes are best made by the detail orientated crowd. The big picture, right now, is wrong and needs to be changed big time so we can all focus on the game of football, not all the soap opera quality stuff that permeates the current media coverage. 

Green Bay, Profits, and NFL Organization

Green Bay, Profits, and NFL organization

I like to watch football but have little use for professional football being a play toy for wealthy owners---a monopoly with little or no regulation, no limits, commissioners picked by the owners, and essentially total power to self police themselves. 

Everything with professional football is played out with stacked cards---stacked cards especially against fans, cities, and fairness. Everything is greed, disingenuous and controlled images, etc. 

Green Bay is proudly showcased as a publicly owned team. Really? What the hell does that mean? You can buy shares in the team but the shares have no value, shareholders have no votes on anything and just like professional football contracts are a sham, so it seems this insistence that Green Bay is a publicly owned team is just another disingenuous statement.  

Last year Green Bay earned $42.7 million dollars. Who gets that money? The public or the shareholders certainly don't. Who determines who runs this team at the top, certainly not the shareholders or the public. Who is it that determines who the President of the Packers is? If a board picks the President, then who picks the Board? In what way do the citizens of Wisconsin or Green Bay have any say whatsoever in the running of the team? What does the word public mean in this case?  I guess some sort of Board can fire the President which is different from other teams in the sense an owner cannot be made to fire him/herself. Ok, so I guess we have a board in ultimate control instead of an owner. After this Board mysteriously exists, this Board essentially performs the same way any other team does.  In the end, for all practical purposes, Green Bay, in terms of being a public company, is only an image promoted by the League. It certainly is no public owned company in the sense any other public owned company exists. It certainly would seem, that if the public owned the team (wonderful idea) then the public would get some of the profit in ways which benefit the public, the shareholders who bought stock would get some of the profits, and the chance to attend an actual game would not be closed to all the public except those select few with forever season tickets. Imagine a publicly owned library open only to a select few who pay an exorbitant amount of money for season library cards. Of course everyone can't fit into the stadium for one game, but everyone could have chance to attend a game, even if it required a lottery process for those interested in attending. 

Whatever the Packer ownership is, let's not be silly enough to call it a publicly owned franchise.  Perhaps what this mysterious operation does show, over the years, is that a team not existing solely for the profit of a wealthy owner can compete quite well even if it is located out in the middle of some icy tundra. This debunks the popular notion that the only way to structure national professional sport teams is via wealthy individual owners.