What is worse than committing a financial crime?
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in 13 hours
97%
Committing a really big financial crime (>$10 billion)
96%
Introducing leaded gasoline to the market (in 1924)
92%
Stealing from the poor and giving to the rich
92%
Not doubling world GDP (more so for poor countries) by means of open borders
91%
offering drugs to a minor
88%
Committing a moderately big financial crime (>$1 million)
88%
financial crimes committed while doing a really offensive accent
87%
Racism against Asian people
84%
Abusing/taking advantage of the trust of a person or people who care about you
83%
marketing sugary processed foods to people despite knowing it will kill millions of them
83%
Racism against black people
81%
Setting Bigfoot on fire and throwing him out of a plane above a gathering of cryptozoologists.
80%
Passing the Jones act to ban senator jones’ competitors
78%
Lobbying congress to ban your competitors
72%
Sexual harassment
67%
Taxing Asian immigrants to pay “slavery reparations’ to Ethiopian immigrants
67%
Discrimination based on race
66%
buying a lot of drinks for a girl to get her very drunk so she'll hook up with you
56%
Working for one of the leading AI labs to advance the capabilities of a frontier model, with the goal of speeding up the progress towards human-level AGI.
52%
2008 bank bailouts

The spirit of this market is - someone did something that is worse than committing a financial crime. What could that be?

Examples of financial crimes: Fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, bribes, tax evasion, counterfeiting, insider trading, etc.

The severity of financial crimes can vary and you should use your own judgement when voting/placing your bets.

New Resolution Criteria (copied from Bayesian + Joshua):

  • This is simultaneously a market and a poll.

  • 1 person = 1 vote (per answer), so having more shares does not make your vote count for more.

  • If you sell your shares, you are also removing your vote.

  • This market closes once per week on Friday.

  • If an answer has a clear majority of YES holders, that answer will resolve YES.

  • If an answer has a clear majority of NO holders, that answer will resolve NO.

  • If it's very close or votes are still coming in, the option will remain un-resolved.

  • Bots count

I may update these exact criteria to better match the spirit of the question or if Bayesian/Joshua update their criteria.

Old answers below will have standard polls. New answers (added after 6pm ET on June 21st) will adhere to the new guidelines above.

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@Mad underrated

so we agree that hiring illegal immigrants is ok (or at least, less bad than a financial crime)
and we agree that hiring a prostitute long term is ok (or at least, less bad than a financial crime)
so why would combining the two cross the threshold?

bought Ṁ10 Racism against black... YES

I think it's the slave part

bought Ṁ25 marketing sugary pro... NO

It's the prostitute vs slave wording. Slave implies they are there against thier own will

i thought the hiring part implied the slave part is just larping

I used to work in finance regulations, and this would highly depends on intention, the amount of the money committed, the specific type, etc. Personally, I believe it would highly depend on what actual harm it caused for people - did it steal money from the people who otherwise would die, or did it steal money from people who are rich anyways? Without clarifications, seems to me we would just need to make a guess or research for the average case.

My feed as been nothing but new ideas today

@JonathanRay Indian factory workers earn $1.80 an hour. Adjusted by purchasing power parity, that's $6.11, which is not that much less than the US federal minimum wage of $7.25.

nice! I was just basing this on double the minimum wage which is ~$2/day

@traders Polls are up. I put them on this dashboard. Going forward this will be a standard Joshua/Bayesian type of poll/market. I've updated the description to reflect this.

bought Ṁ25 Answer #c7825e26f8fd YES

Do the polls affect the resolution?

Yes for the options added before 6pm ET on June 21st

Finally something that seems really clear.

The marginal disutility of losing money is increasing; the first €100 you're scammed of hurts you less than the next €100.

So a 50% probability of losing 2X is worse than a certainty of losing X.

@BrunoParga Maybe, but I think more relevantly: If it depends on a coin toss then it is not a 'forced by circumstances' crime which makes it worse.

@ChristopherRandles I assumed all else equal.

bought Ṁ25 Answer #ef5acc9f7524 NO

The Robin Hood scenario. 😁

This is too vague. It depends on the dollar amount, and who the victims are.

I recommend "Doin' Your Mom" for anyone considering field research on this topic.

offering drugs to a minor

This one is so hard. Marijuana to a 17yr old is 🤷🏼‍♂️ while fentanyl to a toddler is clearly terrible.

Why are the 2008 bank bail outs so bad? They were just loans to banks that needed them, and kept the economy afloat

@justadude Arguable it was the only decision to make, and the US government profited in the end. It's about public perception when everyone was struggling, less about the facts of the bailout.

@Haws I don't disagree that the bailouts were necessary, just pointing out that the banks were seens as the source of the problem.

The bailouts are disliked becasue they were a failure of accountability and a symbol of the unfairness of the system. The banks had created the issue in the first place by exposing themselves to toxic securities (while at the same time fuelling the crazy mortgage environment that made the toxic securities possible). Then when it turned out it was a disaster, they got bailed out.

If the common guy makes bad investments they become homeless. If a bank makes a bad investment (or even better a lot of banks do) then they get a slap on the wrists and more money.

@Odoacre Worse: this precedence send the message that private profit and pubic risk is indeed the pattern to assume going forward and encourages future behavior like the one that caused the mess.

@Odoacre >If a bank makes a bad investment (or even better a lot of banks do) then they get a slap on the wrists and more money.

But they're not given more money. They're given a loan. On net they lost a lot of money from their bad choices.

@justadude oh it was a loan ? As in you think there was a chance they could lose that money as well ?

@Odoacre They had to pay back the loan, so they "lost" the money in that sense. If you mean there was a chance they could fail to pay back the loan, yes there was a chance of that, but the government decided it was worth the risk, and I'd agree with them.

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