Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate.
fakelogic--
I'm sure you understand this, so this isn't really addressed to you, but: as marketplace regulars have often rightly emphasized, it's important to distinguish between people who steal and make it right later and those who steal and don't make it right later. Whatever we might think of people who steal even once, making this sort of distinction puts helpful incentives in place--there will be people who steal, and it's good that they know that (relatively) good things will happen to them if they make it right.
So, in that sense, noting that Ben could some day get some sort of second chance, or at least could walk into the Rio and participate in things (even if he will have a hard time selling action), actually strengthens overall security.
Of course it's tricky to balance the need not to forgive too easily and the need to incentivize scammers to make amends, and errors can be made in either direction.
Sorry that you had to deal with this firsthand, and good luck dealing with the situation (if there's more for you to deal with).
All my best,
--Nate
While I can see this logic to some degree, where I still slightly differ is how this position weighs and values the motivations involved and in what context they are presented in.
In my view, most people who are capable of committing these acts inherently believe they will get second chances or have a twisted, optimistic outlook (or addiction if choose to call it that) regarding their future, as opposed to them thinking this is truly their "last resort". As we should all be very familiar with in the poker world, it takes a dose of cognitive dissonance and shifting rationalization to do this in the first place, and I don't see how that easily goes away simply because they were discovered or even made reparations.
And on the flipside (though to a lesser degree), individual investors (gamblers, some may say) also naturally carry some level of misguided/overconfident optimism that would make them lean toward jumping back in despite the added risks.
So basically, while I agree that we are unfortunately very limited in our options to motivating poker scammers to "make whole", and this tactic of "forgiveness" is definitely one of them (albeit on a case-by-case basis), I argue that it doesn't help for the overall marketplace security to downplay the act in the PUBLIC forum, since both sides are already predisposed to do that on their own privately.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, to put it another way, IMHO I don't think that most morally compromised people in society outside of poker are motivated to not commit further crimes or make reparations to their victims because of the chance at redemption. They're motivated by the fear of external and well-known threats of punishment, not praise or forgiveness. Even if you equate a reduction of a punishment to forgiveness as their motivator, that's still something they are given the benefit of, not entitled to, and should be presented as such.