To be fair, the punishment for shoplifting is often a slap on the wrist. I say this as someone who had a troubled youth and was caught shoplifting as a teenager. I got banned from the premises and no criminal charges even though the police did get involved.

If I had been an adult it undoubtedly would have been a tad harsher but unless the theft amounts to many thousands of dollars I don't think prison time is ever on the table. Even then I'd be surprised. We're not talking about grand theft auto, we're talking about shoplifting. So it's usually misdemeanour. If the merchandise is retrieved then it is returned to the store and the store can sue the guilty party recover to damages if it's worth it.

So I'm not really sure what kind of point you're trying to make. I think it's about inequality. I'm just not really sure how you get there by using shoplifting as your example.

Hey I think we both agree children should not be thrown in jail for shoplifting, or for insider trading.

If you shoplift anything of significance you might be looking at least a night in jail, but more importantly a criminal record. If you shoplift over the threshold of grand larceny you will absolutely be spending a bit of time in jail and will have a criminal record. These are virtually non-existent outcomes for insider trading, even though people "guilty" of insider trading are also thieves. Guilty in quotes because WTF knows, they are rarely criminally prosecuted.

So yeah, my point is generally about equality, but I was responding specifically to the casual "yeah that seems right" attitude about it.

I suspect that much of the time it's pretty ambiguous. It's widely known that a company is ripe for sale and you hear from someone you know "confidentially" that they're in pretty serious talks with $X. Maybe they're a lawyer or a banker or...

And, in general, non-execs are not prohibited from unscheduled trading in their own company's stock (though company rules may prohibit trading in options) but lots of people have a pretty good sense of how the quarter is going.

Shoplifting wasn’t a great choice since some cities are now pretty famously not enforcing the laws against it.

Shoplifting laws are occasionally not enforced. Financial crimes are only occasionally enforced. These things are asymmetric, and that is the whole gist of the argument.

When people get a parking ticket they don’t face criminal charges.

The SEC is a civil authority discouraging behavior. A fine much larger than the upside is a perfectly fine way to handle that.

If the penalty for a crime is a fine, it's only illegal for poor people.

I think it's pretty clear that the law works differently for a man with 16 billion dollars. I don't mean that in a positive way.

I like Finland's approach to this problem: traffic fines are proportional to income.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-busine...

The SEC files civil cases; they have no authority to imprison. Only the DOJ can do that.

ah, no. that's a working-class crime.