Bernard Madoff, the perpetrator of what has to be the biggest Ponzi-scheme fraud ever, is planning to plead guilty tomorrow to all criminal charges that have brought against him. Well, I’m no legal expert, so I have no idea what should be done to him from a legal standpoint. But I do feel competent to address some moral points that relate to Madoff’s guilty plea.<\/p>\n
First, the scope of Madoff’s crime is so vast, with so many victims, extending over such a long time that I am not convinced that Madoff can be morally rehabilitated. Much of morality is a matter of habit, and the longer someone like Madoff indulges in the habit of immorality, the longer it will take to break that habit. Then too, perniciously evil habits like Madoff’s, which are grounded in simple greed (not desperation), and which are made in full knowledge that they are wrong, are habits that will be much harder to break. Because Madoff has become habituated to crime and habituated to enjoying the fruits of his crime, because he has engaged in his crimes for so long now, I doubt he can ever be trusted to live a moral life on his own.<\/p>\n
Second, because Madoff can never be trusted to live on his own again, outside of prison, then he will be unable to make restitution to anyone whose money he stole. Madoff’s crime is one where restitution would make a difference in the lives of the victims (at least, in the lives of the majority of his victims who did not commit suicide). But we can’t ever trust him with any money-making scheme ever again — at least, we can’t trust him to earn another 65 billion dollars to pay his victims back.<\/p>\n
The most we could hope for is an apology, but the chances of Madoff making any meaningful apology approach zero. Some people will take comfort in believing that Madoff will suffer some kind of torment and torture after death, but even if I believed in such punishment after death, I would not call that a satisfactory resolution to Madoff’s moral violations. Thus, I hold no hope for rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment after death.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this is one of those moral situations for which there is no satisfactory resolution. Fortunately, my religious faith does not expect nice neat satisfactory resolution of every moral violation. From my religious frame of reference the best moral response to Madoff’s evil actions is — not to dwell on rehabilitation, restitution, apology, or punishment — but to strengthen the social moral systems that help prevent such actions: — speak out against greed; refuse to let anyone believe that we deserve something for nothing; tell your children why Madoff is evil. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bernard Madoff, the perpetrator of what has to be the biggest Ponzi-scheme fraud ever, is planning to plead guilty tomorrow to all criminal charges that have brought against him. Well, I’m no legal expert, so I have no idea what should be done to him from a legal standpoint. But I do feel competent to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice-peace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2723,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2722\/revisions\/2723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}