Megan McArdle calls it ‘the economic death penalty’, the social punishment given to people who have violated social norms. Consider an accountant caught in the Enron scandal. This hypothetical accountant prepared fake accounts for Kenneth Lay. During the Enron prosecution he pled guilty to some minor charges, and received probation. But that’s not the whole punishment. This accountant we are imagining won’t get a job in accounting or finance anymore. His many years of study and work experience will not count for anything. His earnings, for the rest of his life, are going to be dramatically lower.
I think we are dishing out the economic death penalty too easily. I speak about the current social movement against sexually entitled powerful men. Some of the men caught in the ‘me too’ scandal, such as Harvey Weinstein and Russell Simmons, probably deserve to live the rest of their life behind bars. If the accusations levied against them are true, those men are monsters, serial rapists, criminals of the worst kind.
But that’s not the only kind of man that has been caught in the ‘me too’ scandal. The offences of other men are not nearly as serious. Louis C.K. is a liberal douchebag whom I hate with every fiber of my being, but he’s not a Weinstein or a Simmons. What concerns me here is that all men caught in the firestorm are receiving the same punishment—the economic death penalty.
This is no way to run a country. Some of the men caught in the scandal belong in jail. Others deserve unemployment. Yet others deserve to be laughed at in a cruel manner. What we are doing now, essentially dishing out the same punishment for vastly different transgressions, is wrong. Violent rapists and awkward insecure man do not belong in the same class.
