How is this comment on hacker news? Do we not understand basic principles of scale?

40 billion of corruption is way more corrupt than 400k.

And what’s more is penalizing the 400k without penalizing the 400b means the people getting the 400b look better.

We can't penalize the 400B corruption. If we could, I would completely agree with OP's point. It's just that it's not a matter of choice.

It's not that we "don't choose to"... We obviously want to, but we can't, because there is an inherent principal-agent problem that exists with high-level corruption.

Again, it's like saying "let's not take the time to charge someone with manslaughter, because there are people out there who have committed war crimes that have killed tens of thousands of people." We all want to bring the war-criminals to justices, but we can't, so it's moot.

We should spend our resources on law enforcement where we can. Otherwise it's a race to the bottom, because with justice, perfect quickly becomes the enemy of good.