Moral reform requires structural change, not promises of better future conduct

Evidence

If banks are too big to fail, indict, convict, and jail, they require structural changes, not modest fines with promissory pacts of future good behavior. Otherwise, the same bank structure with weak or industry-friendly oversight provides a fertile breeding ground for civil and criminal wrongdoings that will bring on the next financial crisis. The most protective structural reform, which was provided by the repealed Glass-Steagall Act of the 1930s, separates commercial from investing banking. Under this structure, if banks get heavily into debt through poor investment practices, they pay with their own money rather than shifting the burden to taxpayers to bail them out. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1588

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the vault’s recurring structural-vs-individual claim about why anti-noise and anti-racism strategies that treat individuals fail. — connects to: Individual moral change alone perpetuates injustice without institutional reform — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 108; Respectability theorists prioritized inner moral reform over structural environmental change — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 926; Respectability rhetoric demanded structural state reform, not just private behavior. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1007 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1588