From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 16 2002 - 20:30:44 MDT
The economics that drive the problems is interesting,
although it probably hasn't changed that much since
Bastiat did his analyses. "The law is just. It
forbids both the rich and the poor man from sleeping
under the bridges at night." Proudhon or Voltair, I
forget....
A wealthy person can be a hard target, legally. He
has the capital resources to fight back, probably win,
and even collect damages. Thus, the law typically
goes after the targets of opportunity, the poor or
middle class, especially of color. A thousand dollars
is a thousand dollars, right? And a million is a
million...
But we all know that if a corporate executive schemes
to scam a million or two or fifty by means of phony
partnerships and crooked accounting and insider
trading based on planning all the aforementioned, then
when he's finally caught when it all hits the fan, he
might possibly spend a year or two at a federal honor
farm, while if a low income person steals a hundred
bucks worth of merchandise, then he may be gone for a
while, especially if hes done it before (as though
this is the first time for the executive).
Similarly, in the ongoing case I mentioned before, I
have discovered some interesting things about
ownership in People's Republic of California. It
turns out that, according to the DMV information
people with whom I talked yesterday, if an insurance
company sends in a report to them that your car has
been "totalled," then no power on earth will convince
the DMV that this report was in error. At that point,
you have just lost your vehicle. Interesting that a
ficticious "person," a corporation, is taken at its
word, and no denial by a real person has any weight.
Consider now two very similar vehicles, of the same
size, power, carrying capacity, etc., but one of them
is a bare bones Toyota or Chevrolet, while the other
is a luxury car. Both of them receive body damage
that will cost $2501 estimate to repair. But the one
car is worth $2500, by Blue Book, even though it is
far above average in terms of maintenance, while the
other is worth $25,000. Guess who loses their vehicle?
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