Falling home prices, foreclosures, financial company failures, 9-11. Current events have me thinking about the idea of punishment.

In our culture we tend to go for the fire and brimstone stuff. That guy who stole VCR tapes from a 7-11 and got life in prison for it because of the 3 strikes law. Or the many people that smoke pot and end up doing serious prison time because of our drug laws.

When it comes to punishment, we often think more of vengeance. It is a simple reaction and it goes along with a lot of assumptions that maintain a black & white view. We tend to assume only the guilty get arrested (or put in Guantanamo). We tend to assume the worst of people of color.

This line of thought is pretty shallow and inconsistent. We focus on the vengeance aspect but ignore the total costs to us and the system as a whole. We forget about the tax dollars we spend on prison. We dont ask what we should do with people when they get out of prison or what they should be doing while they are there.

Like many of our problems we just want them to go away. Throw them in jail and we are done. Case closed.

But what about the guys who run their company into bankruptcy and ruin the retirement saving of thousands of employees? How do we punish those guys? The ones that are on the cover of business week one month as heroes and on the cover the next month as their company implodes due to fraud and corruption? What about the people we idolize until we find out what slime bags they really were?

Beyond the people that commit fraud, how do we punish the people that are just doing risky things? Driving a car without a seatbelt, taking drugs, or making purchases they cannot afford? There are a handful of Enron's but there are millions of people making risky decisions every day.

The idea of punishment is closely tied to the idea of responsibility. How should we punish adults who are irresponsible? How do we teach children to be responsible? If people are all telling us to do something that turns out to be risky, how do we treat those that go with the flow and those that choose a different path?

I wish I had an answer but I only have questions. It is not an easy thing although it is a very topical one. The problems that face us (financial and environmental) are problems of our own making. We have only each other to blame but I have yet to see any wisdom of crowds or any leadership with a significant following. Instead we tend to ignore the problem until there is a panic and then the mob rules.

Global warming is the biggest issue but the housing bubble and its painful deflation is the immediate one. There were so many people that helped create that problem that there is no single party to scapegoat. Instead it is going to divide us as different groups try to blame each other and protect themselves.

At the end of the day I am left wondering what happened to the ideas of personal responsibility and I wonder who if anyone will get punished and how.