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Without getting into banal arguments about corporate personhood, there should be a "death sentence" for companies. Fines and regulations aren't always enough to

by pdog 9y ago

Without getting into banal arguments about corporate personhood, there should be a "death sentence" for companies. Fines and regulations aren't always enough to punish the most egregious corporate abuses.

PhantomGremlin 9y ago
A corporate death sentence is a bit too abstract. It also punishes the shareholders much more than the actual transgressors. The CEO and the Board of Directors have often been paying themselves exorbitant salaries and benefits. After they resign or get fired they still have generous pensions. So what if the company doesn't exist, they're still personally quite well off. No, what's really needed is to take the CEO and the Board and send them to prison. Put them in a chain gang. Have them go out to the prison yard every morning, pick axes in hand. Have them start with big boulders. Have them make tiny little pebbles out of them. Have them do this six days a week (Sundays off of course) for about 10 years. Put the whole thing on "reality TV". Such public humiliation would have a salutary effect on all the other CEOs and boards out there. Yeah, some might say "cruel and unusual punishment", but chain gangs were quite popular not too long ago. They passed constitutional muster then.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  > A corporate death sentence is a bit too abstract. Let's say the company has to be forfeited to the state effectively making it a public company. CEO and board of directors are fired, every dollar over the minimum pension of their pensions are seized and going to a fund to fix the wrong they did and prevention from such a thing to happen again. Shareholders are part of the problem and to be punished, they've been profiting from the transgressions (looking the other way or not caring enough to look into is not an excuse). They could be made to pay back any profit they got from the shares while, their shares are either willingly sold to state at a low price or seized/invalidated. The message would be clear: don't invest in companies that are not clean or you risk losing it all. These may seem drastic propositions but they are effective. They do not require sending people to prison which is something I do not wish upon anyone, not even my worst enemy.

by pdog 9y ago

PhantomGremlin 9y ago

A corporate death sentence is a bit too abstract. It also punishes the shareholders much more than the actual transgressors. The CEO and the Board of Directors have often been paying themselves exorbitant salaries and benefits. After they resign or get fired they still have generous pensions. So what if the company doesn't exist, they're still personally quite well off. No, what's really needed is to take the CEO and the Board and send them to prison. Put them in a chain gang. Have them go out to the prison yard every morning, pick axes in hand. Have them start with big boulders. Have them make tiny little pebbles out of them. Have them do this six days a week (Sundays off of course) for about 10 years. Put the whole thing on "reality TV". Such public humiliation would have a salutary effect on all the other CEOs and boards out there. Yeah, some might say "cruel and unusual punishment", but chain gangs were quite popular not too long ago. They passed constitutional muster then.

bigbugbag 9y ago
> A corporate death sentence is a bit too abstract. Let's say the company has to be forfeited to the state effectively making it a public company. CEO and board of directors are fired, every dollar over the minimum pension of their pensions are seized and going to a fund to fix the wrong they did and prevention from such a thing to happen again. Shareholders are part of the problem and to be punished, they've been profiting from the transgressions (looking the other way or not caring enough to look into is not an excuse). They could be made to pay back any profit they got from the shares while, their shares are either willingly sold to state at a low price or seized/invalidated. The message would be clear: don't invest in companies that are not clean or you risk losing it all. These may seem drastic propositions but they are effective. They do not require sending people to prison which is something I do not wish upon anyone, not even my worst enemy.