The reason why is because small crimes need to be punished in order to keep the plebs and peasants in line. Large crimes cannot be committed by little people. The most that you and I can do in terms of crime is maybe murderer someone, but someone in a massive position of power like Elon Musk and the (thankfully late) Brian Thompson can kill thousands of people with a stroke of a pen. But because there is some disconnect between their deaths and that pen stroke society doesn’t call that murder. So they can go free while you and I would be executed or have to spend life in a small dank cell with nothing grey walls and pain.
It’s also why many war criminals in Nuremberg had fairly light punishments and were often allowed to continue in positions of military and political significance after. The reason why people like Goering and Gobbells and Himmler would have been executed is less to do with their war crimes and more to do with the threat they posed politicially. They would never have followed what the Allied installed government would have wanted or changed their policies but would be undermining everything at every turn if allowed back into office. So they are done away with while the lower level chumps just got 4 or 10 years for killing who knows how many and then living their lives as normal.
The reason why is because small crimes need to be punished in order to keep the plebs and peasants in line. Large crimes cannot be committed by little people. The most that you and I can do in terms of crime is maybe murderer someone, but someone in a massive position of power like Elon Musk and the (thankfully late) Brian Thompson can kill thousands of people with a stroke of a pen. But because there is some disconnect between their deaths and that pen stroke society doesn’t call that murder. So they can go free while you and I would be executed or have to spend life in a small dank cell with nothing grey walls and pain.
It’s also why many war criminals in Nuremberg had fairly light punishments and were often allowed to continue in positions of military and political significance after. The reason why people like Goering and Gobbells and Himmler would have been executed is less to do with their war crimes and more to do with the threat they posed politicially. They would never have followed what the Allied installed government would have wanted or changed their policies but would be undermining everything at every turn if allowed back into office. So they are done away with while the lower level chumps just got 4 or 10 years for killing who knows how many and then living their lives as normal.