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I'd like to hear your plan for a better system.
One that doesn't bankrupt itself chasing its tail over trivial issues in the big picture of things. Like someone else mentioned they had ignored it in the past without any consequences on the economy.
From small towns up to the top of the food chain in Washington decisions are made every day about what matters and what doesn't from an enforcement side. That money could have been far better used on WWII, the cold war, preventing the rise of the mob/bringing them down ect.
Our habit of throwing massive amounts of resources (mainly money) at everything will eventually be our down fall. Its just not a sustainable practice when the slightest thing can trigger multimillion dollar responses
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It would also make the Mint/govt a laughing stock and open the door to legitimization of future thefts.
The legitimization of future thefts is an interesting argument to make. For the sake of the argument we will say they were stolen without a doubt. If someone had broken in and stolen them, or robbed a mint employee of them, or ripped off a shipment I would agree that would be enough to justify it to discourage it from happening again.
I do see a couple problems with that in this case though. The biggest problem to me is that the circumstances even making this possible are so incredibly unique its not likely to be something where the opportunity is even present very often. The 64
Peace dollar comes to mind as the next chance one would have really had to do the same thing. So youre already taking about something that happens 2 maybe 3 times a century where indecision from the government creates the circumstance in the first place.
The other problem though is that its something that can easily be corrected from within the mint. Dont allow someone to access coins by themselves, if a bag has been opened from when it was sealed check the contents before melting, check peoples pockets when they leave ect. Obviously they didnt have a crystal ball at the time, but now with video surveillance its even more of a non issue.
I could even buy this argument for the initial response to it, but to continue it 40, 50, 60+ years later when who ever took them is certainly dead seems like a waste of money. Theres certainly certain actions that are worthy of that type of attention and expenditure, I just dont see how this is one of them with how easy it is to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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If the government decided to enforce laws on a cost-benefit basis, the rich would never be prosecuted, and the mere threat of outspending the authorities would be enough to assure it.
Thats certainly true. Its not that I believe every action should be a net positive, but at the same time we shouldnt ignore whats being spent versus what is really being gained. In the case of say tax fraud, you spend the money to discourage others from doing it which is the same case with a bombing or murder. However, in this case you already have full control over whether or not someone even has the opportunity/ability to do it.
Like I mentioned above a perfect storm of a very unique circumstance and lax policies at the mint had to come together to even present the chance which is something that was highly unlikely to repeat itself. With technology today a fraction of the money spent on the investigation can make it essentially impossible to repeat it which is an expense they would have invested in regardless of whether this ever happened.
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Was it cost-effective for three agents to spend the time on small time crook Albert? Not if you consider the case by itself, but as a lesson to other potential counterfeiters, that is exactly the message that needs to be sent, that no crook is too small to be tracked down.
I completely agree with this in the case of someone making fakes or making their own money. Theres a larger issue at stake there and thats something not under their direct control to begin with. Something like that you need to put on a show to scare people from doing it. But again an important distinction between the two is that with removing items from the mint you can simply secure the mint more and youve solved the problem. Its not something that anyone anywhere could do were you can argue the need for a deterrent, its a very small number of people who the government directly controls what type of access they have. In this case the number of people who could have done it could have probably been counted on one hand. It wasnt extremely hard to narrow it down and you could fire them and strip them of their benefits and call it a day.
Posted 02/14/2014 06:24 am
