I agree with disincentivizing white collar crime with more severe punitive measures, but if you throw capital punishment into the mix you’re just trading one ethical dilemma for another.
Capital punishment is capital punishment, but let's be real here: if there is a group of people who should fear it, it's the people making decisions that affect people in the thousands, millions or billions.
Hypothetical: how many people should get cancer or other serious illnesses and defects from chemicals a company produces, until the company management who knew about it were in the "war criminal" crime bracket?
I still love this "hoax" the Yes Men managed to pull off [1] in it they appear as representatives for Dow Chemical on BBC and claim that the company will now after 20 years take full responsibility for the largest chemical accident in history that killed ~18k people and impacted many more, making the victims right. Only for the real company to back peddle and say "no no no, that's a hoax we will not do that.".
However most justice systems have a severe anti-poor bias. People that rob a store out of pure devastation for 100 bucks serve longer and harsher punishments than a CEO who embezels a million leading to safety violations that cost the life of 20 workers purely for greed.
Sure, the former is much more straigthforward in terms of the crime (= less wiggle room for excuses), but the latter is an entirely different magnitude of value and impact on human life.
We need to hold these people accountable to the same standards. If stealing 1000 bucks lands you in jail for years, stealing milions should actually result in a longer conviction.
And fines as a percentage of income or with a point system, e.g. when they catch you speeding. The goal is to make it equally painful to break the law to a poor and a rich person as is only just.
Otherwise what is painful punishment for a poor person is just a laughable fee for rich people.
