Just the civilians are punished.

Ahmadinejad - a clever and dangerous enemyThere is a fascinating interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Der Spiegel.Key excerpts:ON HOLOCAUSTSPIEGEL: Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Germany.

THEY get money back that they never even paid in...Why are those of us who work our rumps off getting punished because THEY don't aspire themselves to DO better?

And our direct involvement might punish the accused when they are not in fact guilty.

I realize this opens the door for predatory slum lords, but I have never been a fan of placing more regulations and laws on law abiding citizens in an effort to punish the few predators. 

If so, that sounds like the EXACT definition of revenge to me:verb (used with object), revenged, revenging.1. to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, especially in a resentful or vindictive spirit:

Some Karen in the neighborhood complained that they were too many cars on their property, and the house hacker had to remove all his tenants or face serious punishments. 

If a person gets caught committing mortgage fraud / bank fraud, the punishment is a million dollar fine and 30 years in the pen.

Account Closed - I think losing your earnest money would be the least of your worries, especially if it is a FHA loan - this is what the penalties areMortgage fraud is a serious crime, and one punished by significant penalties.

I would stipulate that anybody wishing to place a negative rating on a post will be required to provide a written explanation in the form of a post appended to the thread.As jawsette said in her post, if you do use the negative rating to impact somebody's influence score, then there should be some threshhold of negative votes that must be reached before that occurs.But my take is this: I'm not out to "punish" some person; I'm more inclined to not see some innocent viewer of a post (that should have a bad rating) get punished by following something that they could have been warned to avoid by the negative rating.Hope that clarifies and makes sense.PS.