Justice system unbalanced in dealing with white-collar crime
By Dale Woodard - Lethbridge Herald on January 15, 2022.
Raining money down on just a few causes so many to drown.
Larry Elford, the author of Farming Humans, his second book, was the guest speaker at the weekly Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs online session Thursday.
Elford reflected on his two-decade financial career as well as the tricks and tactics used by those who profit from harming others, suggesting some of the unique features of white-collar crime are worth looking at, as they shed light into some key problems faced in today’s world.Â
Elford also spoke of the causes and effects, which largely have been left out of the public discourse, problems which include inequality in systems of finance, justice, politics and resulting side effects, not only globally, but also here through a vast increase in drug dependency, homelessness and people dying on the streets.Â
“We cannot arrest our way out of this problem in my view because we don’t arrest anybody at the top that causes the problem,” said Elford, a former financial industry insider with two decades of experience in some of the larger firms in the industry. “We can’t arrest the things that are the result of the problem because we absolutely refuse to look upwards.”
Elford likened the situation to a dollar store flashlight that only shines downward.
“I turn it upward and it quits working and the justice system is somewhat like that,” he said. “Some of the interest in catching people kind of wanes when you have to catch people who are much more powerful than you and much more influential than the people doing the policing. So justice does not go up as quickly and easily as it goes down.”
Elford laid out the steps in gaining the financial upper hand.
“First, capture the ability in whatever economic game we’re playing, give me the ability to create the money.”
Elford said step two is capturing the power and step three is tilting the playing field to purchase whichever rules and laws and the elected representatives of the public, those connected to the public money and power.Â
“Those are the first to get the ability to create the money, then create the rules and then rig those rules for the next 100 years for the benefit of private parties and at trillions of dollars of cumulative harm to society,” he said. “So we wonder why there’s a guy sleeping on the sidewalk in the cold today in a Canadian winter and in fact that person cannot even picture having the ability to afford the cost of living when some people are raining trillions of dollars down upon themselves.
“Our streets consist of a different world, a world of economic refugees, people who are, in no way, shape or form connected to the system of money or power creation. They’re completely left out. We label those people and we give them all kinds of terms, some deserved, some undeserved.”
Elford said our wealth circuit has been plugged into our political circuit, so there is little to no interest in prosecuting the crimes of the rich and powerful.Â
“The crimes of the rich and the powerful, crimes that are never seen in the media, or very rarely, are a wonderful profit centre for those at the top and the millions of handmade professionals who serve those at the top. There is a class structure there that prevents justice from operating in an upward direction. Not in all cases, but like a law of gravity or something akin to a law of poverty, the light of justice does not shine upward with anywhere near the ease with which it shines down upon people who are weak and defenseless.”
As such raining money on just the few causes so many to drown, said Elford.
“When we create a game which encourages the destruction of the exchange of much of the world’s resources for little green pieces of paper, there are a lot of people who are not in the business of creating little pieces of paper or can’t do it easily. They end up drowning in a higher cost of living in such a world.”
Elford said we put water wings on children before tossing them in a swimming pool.
“But we don’t say it’s going to make them weak and we should let them drown,” he said. “We actually try to keep their heads above water and we’re not doing that in today’s society.
“The game works because first we capture the money, then we capture the political power and the people who are public servants and then they can rig the rules in the favour of the richest people and you repeat or cheat that game until someone is a trillionaire.”
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“The game works because first we capture the money, then we capture the political power and the people who are public servants and then they can rig the rules in the favour of the richest people and you repeat or cheat that game until someone is a trillionaire.” – Larry Elford
Doesn’t this sound like what’s happening in Alberta currently?
bravo! what is equally as striking as is this illuminating take is the utter silence of the online feedback.
Another book from another perspective, this one from someone in finance.
You do have so good points! I would agree there is not just issues in white collar crime, but from almost top to bottom, whether it is lawyers getting people off that were guilty for speeding, or ones that have stolen tens of millions of seniors funds through scheme investments.
Criminals, especially organized crime have their own lawyers! The kid that gets drunk and kills a family one night and parents are well off get a battery of lawyers and ‘expert’ witnesses to get them off, while the family gets no justice., while the one who makes the same mistake and has no money for lawyers, spends most of life in jail.
I get it, but I don’t see the corelation between that and addition related homelessness and crime or why many are addicts, the cause whether it be ACE’s or Combat Stress Inury or those that are haunted by mental health issues and drugs fog their thoughts.
What I do get is that we see BC blowing billions over the years on failed harm reduction programs, Vancouver DTES alone over $360 million per year for a population of under 20,000 and each year fatal overdoses, crime, homelessness and the number of addicts rise.
All roads lead the cause of the addiction, yet very little is invested in effective treatment facitities, while many who have short internet courses in dealing with the issues are on the streets enabling the addicts by supplying all the food, clothing and durg paraphernalia they need, much of which if funded by government programs there and donations.
Arrests to work where there is a justice system that works, backed up with correctional facilities that actually rehabilitate, instead of ones that have drug issues of their own with inmate overdoses, drugs being smuggled into to a ‘secure’ facility causing some that were not addicted to leave as an addict.
There must be deterents to criminal activity! Drug courts have been successful in many areas where they are now operating, but there has to be a deterent.
If police were given the right tools, correctional facilities rehabilitated and society woke up, we could arrest our way out of it, but instead we have allowed criminals freedoms on our streets that were never seen in the last several decades!
People can only blame themselves for allowing it to get as bad as it has!
I know capitalism needs to be revamped, but I will take it over socialism that always turned to even more loss of power to the working people! Socialism has proven to fail historical. But, capitalism needs to be changed as does the judicial and penal systems, but that needs Ottawa to stop trying to find dirt on other parties and focus on putting through legislation to resolve the issues, just so they can stay in power! Ottawa is broken! The system is broken!