The question is the cost of enforcement in total versus the prevented cost in total, including both the costs that would be caused by this guy and the costs that would be caused by others that are deterred by the credible threat of enforcement.
And therein lies the rub. Sociopaths are not deterred by any but the most credible of threats. They will always find new avenues of exploit down at the bottom. To make an extreme effort to try and wipe out all sociopaths, parasites, free riders (or whatever else you want to call them) would impose enormous, crippling costs on our society.
Yes. But at the same time there are clearly cases where the costs imposed do exceed the cost of enforcement. I don't pretend to know whether that is the case here; I weakly expect that it isn't. Again, my post was a response to a question: "[W]hat possible benefit would prison be here?" Deterrence and prevention of behaviours with harmful externalities is the possible benefit.
It's a complicated and difficult problem to solve. At the same time as we're finding and closing these loopholes, more of these people are infiltrating the highest levels of government and seeking to create more loopholes. Society ceases to function if enough people succeed at violating the social contract.
Right. Most of the interesting questions are complicated, because most of the genuinely simple things we all just agree on the right answer quickly and stop talking about it...
And therein lies the rub. Sociopaths are not deterred by any but the most credible of threats. They will always find new avenues of exploit down at the bottom. To make an extreme effort to try and wipe out all sociopaths, parasites, free riders (or whatever else you want to call them) would impose enormous, crippling costs on our society.