Hello I’m brand spankin new here and I have a general two part question.
If banks fail completely as some did during the Great Depression in the 20s & 30s, who does the money belong to? (Obviously this would mean that banks are no longer insured, backed up by the federal government. Worst case scenario)
If banks fail and economic times are to the point of depression, does robbery of institutions like banks become ethically ambigous or does it still remain morally wrong dependent on individual codes of ethics/ socio-religious values?
If money does not belong to the people who put it there to begin with but instead becomes “stuck” because the bank failed (presuming a run on the bank has not occurred cleaning out the reserves) then does it become fair game or would robbing a bank be akin to robbing a bunch of poor folks or simply a new way of getting ahead in economically difficult times?
Question 1 makes no sense. What money are your talking about? If a bank fails, there is not enough assets to cover the liabilities. This is like asking if you lend your brother-in-law $1000 and he spends it on hookers and blow, who does the money belong to? There is no money. That is the problem.
Question 2 is simple. Yes, theft is morally wrong. Taking something that does not belong to you is wrong.
I guess I should preface by saying that I was trying in my head to see if I could justify the actions of Bonnie and Clyde during the 20s and 30s on the the criterion of times being tough and they saw themselves as taking from powerful but corrupt institutions. For example when they would rob a bank they would let the poor farmers keep the money in their wallets and wouldn’t rob from them.
I suppose in some ways its a very Robin Hood esque mentality, taking from those percieved to be at the top in society on the basis that there simply isn’t any other way to be successful.
Which ultimately leads away from the main question and into a deeper philosophical debate about mans potential when the ability to rise above a situation is taken away by external factors in this case economic collapse. If a person does not have the ability to achieve success within the law then a person might be inclined to achieve a version of success outside of the law.
Hope that makes sense somewhat, that is my train of thought overall.
If there is truly no money left, then there is no money to talk about, and I do not understand your question.
If there is some money left, and the bank failed, that means that the bank owes more than the amount of money that they have available. Whatever money they have, does belong to whoever it is that they owe the money to.
Excellent point @Keeve: There would always be some form of money perhaps not within a local bank but within a Federal Reserve Bank certainly there would be money left over. I guess this is should have been posed more as the philosophical question I posed in response to @Excavating earlier.
Well, let’s get straight that Bonnie and Clyde is fictionalized. The real Bonnie and Clyde started by robbing stores before they moved on to banks, something the movie left out, and Clyde was a heartless killer who would shoot anyone who got in his way.
So the Robin Hood metaphor was created for the movie.
Or a person might figure that he can make more money robbing banks, Depression or not.
In a broad sense, you’re right – many criminals can’t succeed by following laws – but it’s a trivial point. The vast majority of criminals fit your description.
This is way simplified, but imagine that ten people gave me $100, so I’m responsible for $1,000 total. I blow a huge chunk of it and I’m left with only $100 total. Is it moral for one person to rob me and take his $100 back, so that the other nine get nothing? Or is it best under the circumstances for all ten people to get $10 back?
Also, why would it be considered mora to use violence to take the money as opposed to seeking redress from our legal system?
A bank failure is like any other bankruptcy, I imagine. Creditors, secured or not, line up. A trustee resolves the assets vs. liabilities and pays off the creditors so many cents on the dollar. Presumably the bank has little in the way of assets except maybe mortgages and other loans; which some other lending institutions would buy. However, many of those assets are likely non-performing, which explains the failure.
As for bank robberies - depends on the bank, but if it’s not too solvent, you are destroying people’s savings. The only “justification” is that the owners and executives tended to live high off the hog, something we don’t see today, right? Therefore, taking money from them seemed like a Robin Hood activity, and the little guy might take joy in their misfortune. However, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, presumably the banks raised rates to make up for the loss - also hitting the little guy.
No. Theft is destructive and non-productive. Thieves reduce the quality of life of others to enrich their own material well-being. Theft doesn’t expand the wealth of society but merely redistributes it to those with power, and ultimately reduces the incentive people have to work and thus makes everyone except the thief poorer. Even Nietzsche or some other “will to power” philosopher wouldn’t believe that man should build himself up by tearing others down. Theft is always wrong ipso facto and is almost always wrong on utilitarian grounds as well.
** Ravenman**'s question illustrates a basic difference between objects and money. The remaining $100 does not belong to any specific person of the ten. One could even say that it doesn’t belong to ANY of the ten, and that it really does belong to the other guy (notwithstanding his ten separate debts to each of his victims) which is another argument against stealing it back.
Banks during the Great Depression were not especially powerful (most were small and local, which was part of the problem), and most were not corrupt. They failed because too many depositors became frightened and withdrew their money.
Potestas, welcome to the Straight Dope. General Questions is for questions with factual answers. Questions on ethics are better suited to our Great Debates forum, where I am moving this.
A failed bank is a bank that does not have any money and so it can not be robbed. A bank that has been robbed is more likely to go under and have its depositors lose some or all of the money. Also a bank that has been robbed has less money to be loaned out and this hurts the local economy.
It is possible that the money robbed would come out of the bank’s profits and this would not affect the depositors. However during a time like the great depression many banks were failing and many that did not were close to failing. Bonnie and Clyde would have no way of knowing whether the robbery would be a death blow to the bank and costs its depositors money.
If one had a vision of morality where it is okay to hurt the rich and not the poor then robbing banks would be more ethical during boom times when there is more profit and less during hard times when banks were more likely to fail.
Let’s examine the idea that in hard times when you have no other way to get ahead it might be moral to take what you need from others, either by violence, threat of violence, or by stealth.
Don’t you see that this is the moral code of every aristocrat who ever lived? How do you think they got wealthy? By literally robbing people at swordpoint. If you don’t pay your taxes to the Baron, his swordsmen will come to your house and take what you “owe”. How else is the Baron supposed to make a living? By working with his hands? That’s for suckers.
Bonnie and Clyde are no different than the first guy who picked up a sharp stick and told the guy in the next hut to hand over his wheat, because the first guy was tired of farming. It is literally parasitism.
The remaining money in a bank failure belongs to the depositors. Absent the FDIC they will lose most or all of their money, but they are entitled to whatever is left.
No, it’s still wrong to steal. If I loan my brother-in-law Bill $20 and he blows all but $2 on liquor, it is still wrong to steal the $2, from him or from me.
Some of the gangsters of the 20s, Pretty Boy Floyd in particular, made a show of destroying bank records on mortgages in order to present themselves as Robin Hood figures. But inhibiting a farmer from paying his mortgage isn’t stealing from the rich - it is stealing from other farmers who deposited their money in that bank.
If I make a bad investment, and you steal what is left over, that’s still theft.
No, it’s not moral - you are stealing $10 from nine other people.
The person who robs you is entitled to $100 from you, but nothing from the other nine people, all of whom have just as good a claim to the $100 as he did.
That is not true, either in the sense of “the bank has no assets” or “the bank has no cash on hand”. A failed bank is one whose capital ratio has gotten low enough that the regulating agencies declare an emergency and step in. It still has assets and cash on hand. If said agencies had let it get to the point where the bank had literally nothing, then they’ve failed spectacularly.
Granted, a failed bank does not have enough cash on hand to pay back all of its debts at once, but that’s true of literally every bank in the world. It’s only a matter of degree that separates normal business operations from failure.
Many branches of failed banks like Washington Mutual never actually closed their doors to customers. They kept right on serving them even as they were broken up and acquired by other entities. So, yes, they had cash on hand and could most certainly be robbed at any point.