9 ms·

> It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. People li

> It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. It's amazing to me that you can kill, injure, or put at risk hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of profit, but so long as you do it while working for a large enough business you get to continue to live in the luxury those profits afford you no matter how much innocent blood you spilled to gain them. I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers. I expect there to be people in this world who will do anything to satisfy their greed, I just don't understand why we continue to let it happen again and again in industry after industry without holding anyone meaningfully accountable for their part in it.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
> People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. Assuming the allegations are substantial and true, Danaher should be very grateful that he's protected by the law. I can't imagine the urge for vengeance that would be felt by a parent of someone who died from this.
- corndoge 7y ago
  FTA: "A nationwide lung injury outbreak, now standing at 1,604 cases and 34 deaths, is being investigated by public health agencies, which have primarily linked the illnesses to vaping black-market THC." The CDC findings were that black market THC pods are causing the deaths. It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    Mainly, but not all. The first known death was unrelated to THC carts and was at first considered death by pneumonia...
  - chipgap98 7y ago
    The Daily (the Times podcast) did an episode[1] this week on vaping and the death discussed in that story does not sound like it was related to black market THC. The majority of cases do seem to be THC related, but I don't think its clear yet that they all are. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping-dangers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping...
  - wmeredith 7y ago
    > It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all. It's called grandstanding
- autoexec 7y ago
  The last thing I want to see is mobs of people, angry over the deaths of their loved ones, tracking down executives and dealing with the problem themselves, but I'll admit I'm very surprised it doesn't happen more often. I imagine most people are just struggling to keep their lives together through their grief and satisfying a vendetta takes a lot of time and effort. Also many people aren't as comfortable with hurting others as the executives of Juul are. Still, I am surprised.
  - conductr 7y ago
    Because it’s not financially motivated
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      If I had to have an opinion on the matter, it would be strongly aligned with this one. If we could work out a way to financially incentivise taking care of each other many of our problems would change swiftly and dramatically.
      - londons_explore 7y ago
        This is easy. Rather than paying $16 for a pack of vape pods, I should pay 0.0001% of my earnings over the rest of my life. Then the vape company has a direct incentive to help me be successful. Such a payment system should be assisted by government (ie. Government should give out forms which prove your earnings), and banks (who would remember who is due what percentage of your earnings and distribute appropriately). The basics of such a system already exists in the UK, where students commit to paying 9% of their future income to pay for university (with a time limit and money limit).
        autoexec 7y ago
        While the UK system (which does not last the rest of a person's life) is a better means of paying down student debt compared to the US (where most students will pay a higher percentage of income each month at significantly higher interest rates) that's not my ideal for handling educational costs and it's certainly not going to solve the problem with corporate greed. Companies like Juul would take your earnings and still poison/kill you if it would put more money into their pockets somehow. They've made a deliberate choice to cross the line from amoral to immoral.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- FDSGSG 7y ago
  > parent of someone who died from this. So uh, do such people actually exist? The article doesn't suggest that anyone died.
  - FDSGSG 7y ago
    Why is this so controversial? The contaminant does not seem to be described anywhere, nor any consequences of this contamination. For all we know Juul shipped 1M mint pods contaminated with strawberry flavour. The fact that the story completely avoids this is a bit suspicious.
    - autoexec 7y ago
      The lawsuit says: "Mr. Breja brings this action after he was terminated in retaliation for whistleblowing and objecting to the contaminated pod shipment and other illegal and unsafe conduct that has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens." I think it's safe to say this isn't about strawberry flavoured mint
- CriticalCathed 7y ago
  it is unsurprising to me that someone defacto advocating for vigilante justice is also lacking in substantive justification.
  - DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
    I was not advocating vigilante justice. I was simply reflecting on the factors at play in situations like this.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    Observing that vigilante justice exists is not the same thing as advocating for it.
dmix 7y ago
Much like the founding father's rational behind impeachment, if this was ever to come about, this type of thing should be strictly limited to "high crimes" and only when it clearly benefits the individual. Otherwise it opens up any executive to tons of personal risk by taking a leadership role in any major public company with any sort of consumer liability. Or worse getting punished for subordinates behaviour with some idealistic perspective on what the executives show be in control of. That type of arrangement would likely result in worse executives who are more risk-friendly. While the ones who are careful and averse to risk would stay in a non-executive position with very low risk that kicks upstairs or only take the safe executive jobs (even if the cases are likely to fail in court). This will create a booming workplace legal insurance industry that will cover downside risks of lawyer costs and loss of income going into prison. Which helps minimize the disincentives this sort of thing would need to create to be effective. I'm open to these ideas but there really has to be some serious conditions thought out.
- ArtDev 7y ago
  Numerous industries go about "business as usual" with zero considerations for human life. The Opioid Pharma trials are the closest thing to justice I have seen in my lifetime. I do hope this is a positive step towards corporate accountability. God knows we severely need it in the US.
  - blunte 7y ago
    This might dissuade some bad actors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/23/content_7422983.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/23/content_742298...
    - autoexec 7y ago
      The effect of the death penalty as a deterrent has been studied and found lacking. It seems once you hit a certain threshold of "bad for me" worse punishments like capital punishment don't perform any better. Still, it's not often that I get to say that the Chinese government has the right idea even if in this case they take it too far which is more what I'd expect from them.
zasz 7y ago
> I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers. I mean, that's how America's been since the very beginning. First we had slavery, then we had corporations getting away with killing workers through heinous workplace negligence, e.g. the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I'm not saying it's good that this has always been so, or that citizens should be apathetic in the face of repeated sociopathy, merely that realizing that the country's always been like this is a necessary step for understanding why the serial killers in suits seem to have so much power.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  It's amazing because in all of these examples the general public has not given a crap about these incidents. Protesting slavery was extremely difficult. Protesting the workplace got you labeled a communist or socialist. And now when we protest against climate change or ask for more workers rights or BLM people are generally against it.
  - input_sh 7y ago
    Almost as if there's a group of people giving a huge amount of money to the pundits to criticize any progress that's a) not directly driven by profits or b) might negatively affect on their own profits.
  - magashna 7y ago
    Well, we did have a civil war over that first example.
    - aaomidi 7y ago
      The civil war was about slavery, but it wasn't because the general public hated slavery.
- dunnevens 7y ago
  I understand the pessimism. I feel it deeply myself these days. But people do care. Labor fought like hell in the second half of the 19th century & early 20th century. Sometimes literally fought with workers being beaten or gunned down or falsely imprisoned. But in the end, they won much of what they wanted. Ended child labor, got 8 hour days, two day weekends, workplace safety, fairer pay. Other causes have had similar successes. The cause of abolition (or at least unease about slavery) was enough to elect Lincoln in 1860 despite Lincoln not appearing on the ballots of the entire South. Which, of course, started the process & war which ended slavery. Abolition won, albeit in a very bloody way. I think it's not a case of people not caring. It's a case of people care enormously but they feel powerless and they feel alone in their caring. This goes on until that day when they realize they're not alone.
undefined3840 7y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned this gem: > The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”
- loceng 7y ago
  Reminded me of Mark Zuckerberg's infamous "dumb fucks" quote. Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    I mean, Zuck wasn't wrong though. People freely share everything with any app or website with zero thought whatsoever. He didn't say anything that anyone who takes three seconds to think "wait, how is this free, what are they doing with this data" wasn't/isn't thinking. That's way different than saying who cares if we poison people, they're alcoholic hipsters
    - kace91 7y ago
      There's a difference between "fools, they don't know giving that information to third parties is dangerous" and "fools, they gave that information to me, if you want me to exploit them just ask buddy". And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        >And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data. It's not damming at all. With no knowledge of where or when the quote is from, just looking at it I immediately go "likely a college student, with no business experience whatsoever, made a casual statement in conversation with a friend long before his product grew to the size it is today and now random people on the internet are vilifying for something he said in casual conversation probably a decade and and a half ago even though the comment shows no malice and is more a statement of disbelief in how little people think about their privacy"
mlang23 7y ago
Welcome to the american way of life.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- greedo 7y ago
  Why yes, this type of behavior is strictly limited to the US and US companies. No other business organizations or countries have ever made a decision like this.
blunte 7y ago
When the current mantra of American capitalism is "shareholder value is our priority", then the only consideration is financial bottom line. You see this time and time again, whether with tobacco, industrial pollution, oil and gas pollution, or this new vaping stuff. Oh and war; you see this perpetually with war and the military industrial complex. For whatever reason, there are enough people willing to set aside concern for each other and humanity in general in order to make some cash for themselves. It almost doesn't matter what industry you look at - they all have moments or periods where finances trump (oh do pardon the unfortunate expression) humanity.
- draugadrotten 7y ago
  Oh, please stop turning HN into a political left quagmire. With red tinted glasses, it is "industry" and "corporations" that set humanity aside. Take the glasses off, and remember how Stalin treated his people, how much humanity the Berlin Wall represented, how caring Pol Pot was to the people of Cambodia. Yeah, Cuba and Venezuela seems to fit in there too. Can't find much industry going on with Daesh, ISIS, Al Quaeda, Taliban and the lot. Yet they treat people bad. People are sometimes bad to each other, right. The means are not the cause. Correlation vs causation, remember?
- microcolonel 7y ago
  I don't remember people being treated all that well when the state is powerful either (see: the CCP, USSR and sadly its successor). The best times have not been the anti-capitalist ones, but the ones where people take care of themselves and hold people who get in the way of that to account within the law. If society is unable to prosecute criminal negligence, that's another matter; it's not about a mantra or ethos or something, we just have to do our jobs, and things will get better like they have been.
  - blunte 7y ago
    I'm not suggesting that the alternative to unregulated capitalism is a powerful state, unless by powerful you mean a state that regulates businesses for the good of the people. I'm also not suggesting that capitalism should be entirely replaced. It just needs to be managed with proper boundaries and rules, else it devolves entirely into a financial-only scenario. Take for example the recent deregulation that is undoing clean water and air protections to the benefit of a few industries. That obviously takes something (health) away from the people and gives it to a few companies as financial profits. Of course, those deregulations came because the companies had lobbyists and other agents who were providing financial benefit to a few politicians, and those politicians greedily placed themselves above the people. When the government bodies that should be prosecuting criminal negligence (such as the 2007/8 banking crisis), the pharma-created opiod crisis, etc. have been gradually staffed by people from the industries doing the bad acting, that leaves society armless and unable to do anything other than protest (which they do, at times). But unless those protests become really violent (which I don't want), nothing can happen. Remember Occupy Wall Street? That was beginning to be an effective protest campaign, but eventually the cities began employing illegal tactics to break it up and shut it down. Since the people didn't turn violent, it was successfully put down. I don't see a solution to the current situation other than waiting it out until the old corrupt people in power die off naturally. Younger generations are enough pissed that they might change some things once there are fewer kings of the political hills.
lr4444lr 7y ago
The differences in the causal chain that leads to death carried out by between serial killers vs. these guys is significant. We have criminal negligence laws to deal with them.
tomp 7y ago
He shouldn't be behind bars. Freedom of speech; he was simply putting forward an idea, nothing illegal about that. He was the CFO, he wasn't ultimately responsible for the behavior and crimes of the company. The CEO should be behind bars!
calmworm 7y ago
Behind bars? There will surely be a settlement in which everyone harmed will receive a 10% coupon for Juul products. Isn't that enough?!
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  The shareholders will pay dearly to avoid jail time for its executives that they don’t care about.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Shareholders will pay dearly to continue incentivizing executives to keep pushing the standards of conduct to maximize return on investment. If they want them to go to jail, then other CEOs might not be willing to take such risks.
- mrnobody_67 7y ago
  10% coupon for those affected, $50m cash payday for the lawyers...
jgalt212 7y ago
> People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. And the VCs who enable and amplify such behaviors. These are the real power players who give the Tim Danaher's the confidence to continue with their terrible actions.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

> People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. Assuming the allegations are substantial and true, Danaher should be very grateful that he's protected by the law. I can't imagine the urge for vengeance that would be felt by a parent of someone who died from this.

corndoge 7y ago
FTA: "A nationwide lung injury outbreak, now standing at 1,604 cases and 34 deaths, is being investigated by public health agencies, which have primarily linked the illnesses to vaping black-market THC." The CDC findings were that black market THC pods are causing the deaths. It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Mainly, but not all. The first known death was unrelated to THC carts and was at first considered death by pneumonia...
- chipgap98 7y ago
  The Daily (the Times podcast) did an episode[1] this week on vaping and the death discussed in that story does not sound like it was related to black market THC. The majority of cases do seem to be THC related, but I don't think its clear yet that they all are. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping-dangers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/podcasts/the-daily/vaping...
- wmeredith 7y ago
  > It seems most of the current moral outrage and reactionary, emergency regulations on (nicotine) vaping have been because people have not been doing their research at all. It's called grandstanding
autoexec 7y ago
The last thing I want to see is mobs of people, angry over the deaths of their loved ones, tracking down executives and dealing with the problem themselves, but I'll admit I'm very surprised it doesn't happen more often. I imagine most people are just struggling to keep their lives together through their grief and satisfying a vendetta takes a lot of time and effort. Also many people aren't as comfortable with hurting others as the executives of Juul are. Still, I am surprised.
- conductr 7y ago
  Because it’s not financially motivated
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    If I had to have an opinion on the matter, it would be strongly aligned with this one. If we could work out a way to financially incentivise taking care of each other many of our problems would change swiftly and dramatically.
    - londons_explore 7y ago
      This is easy. Rather than paying $16 for a pack of vape pods, I should pay 0.0001% of my earnings over the rest of my life. Then the vape company has a direct incentive to help me be successful. Such a payment system should be assisted by government (ie. Government should give out forms which prove your earnings), and banks (who would remember who is due what percentage of your earnings and distribute appropriately). The basics of such a system already exists in the UK, where students commit to paying 9% of their future income to pay for university (with a time limit and money limit).
      - autoexec 7y ago
        While the UK system (which does not last the rest of a person's life) is a better means of paying down student debt compared to the US (where most students will pay a higher percentage of income each month at significantly higher interest rates) that's not my ideal for handling educational costs and it's certainly not going to solve the problem with corporate greed. Companies like Juul would take your earnings and still poison/kill you if it would put more money into their pockets somehow. They've made a deliberate choice to cross the line from amoral to immoral.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
FDSGSG 7y ago
> parent of someone who died from this. So uh, do such people actually exist? The article doesn't suggest that anyone died.
- FDSGSG 7y ago
  Why is this so controversial? The contaminant does not seem to be described anywhere, nor any consequences of this contamination. For all we know Juul shipped 1M mint pods contaminated with strawberry flavour. The fact that the story completely avoids this is a bit suspicious.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    The lawsuit says: "Mr. Breja brings this action after he was terminated in retaliation for whistleblowing and objecting to the contaminated pod shipment and other illegal and unsafe conduct that has jeopardized and continues to jeopardize public health and safety and the lives of millions of consumers, many of them children and teens." I think it's safe to say this isn't about strawberry flavoured mint
CriticalCathed 7y ago
it is unsurprising to me that someone defacto advocating for vigilante justice is also lacking in substantive justification.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I was not advocating vigilante justice. I was simply reflecting on the factors at play in situations like this.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  Observing that vigilante justice exists is not the same thing as advocating for it.

dmix 7y ago

Much like the founding father's rational behind impeachment, if this was ever to come about, this type of thing should be strictly limited to "high crimes" and only when it clearly benefits the individual. Otherwise it opens up any executive to tons of personal risk by taking a leadership role in any major public company with any sort of consumer liability. Or worse getting punished for subordinates behaviour with some idealistic perspective on what the executives show be in control of. That type of arrangement would likely result in worse executives who are more risk-friendly. While the ones who are careful and averse to risk would stay in a non-executive position with very low risk that kicks upstairs or only take the safe executive jobs (even if the cases are likely to fail in court). This will create a booming workplace legal insurance industry that will cover downside risks of lawyer costs and loss of income going into prison. Which helps minimize the disincentives this sort of thing would need to create to be effective. I'm open to these ideas but there really has to be some serious conditions thought out.

ArtDev 7y ago
Numerous industries go about "business as usual" with zero considerations for human life. The Opioid Pharma trials are the closest thing to justice I have seen in my lifetime. I do hope this is a positive step towards corporate accountability. God knows we severely need it in the US.
- blunte 7y ago
  This might dissuade some bad actors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_Xiaoyu http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/23/content_7422983.htm http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/23/content_742298...
  - autoexec 7y ago
    The effect of the death penalty as a deterrent has been studied and found lacking. It seems once you hit a certain threshold of "bad for me" worse punishments like capital punishment don't perform any better. Still, it's not often that I get to say that the Chinese government has the right idea even if in this case they take it too far which is more what I'd expect from them.

zasz 7y ago

> I don't know exactly when we decided that serial killers in suits are perfectly acceptable to us, but even the companies themselves who allow this sort thing to happen are rarely punished enough to offset the gains they made exploiting their customers. I mean, that's how America's been since the very beginning. First we had slavery, then we had corporations getting away with killing workers through heinous workplace negligence, e.g. the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. I'm not saying it's good that this has always been so, or that citizens should be apathetic in the face of repeated sociopathy, merely that realizing that the country's always been like this is a necessary step for understanding why the serial killers in suits seem to have so much power.

aaomidi 7y ago
It's amazing because in all of these examples the general public has not given a crap about these incidents. Protesting slavery was extremely difficult. Protesting the workplace got you labeled a communist or socialist. And now when we protest against climate change or ask for more workers rights or BLM people are generally against it.
- input_sh 7y ago
  Almost as if there's a group of people giving a huge amount of money to the pundits to criticize any progress that's a) not directly driven by profits or b) might negatively affect on their own profits.
- magashna 7y ago
  Well, we did have a civil war over that first example.
  - aaomidi 7y ago
    The civil war was about slavery, but it wasn't because the general public hated slavery.
dunnevens 7y ago
I understand the pessimism. I feel it deeply myself these days. But people do care. Labor fought like hell in the second half of the 19th century & early 20th century. Sometimes literally fought with workers being beaten or gunned down or falsely imprisoned. But in the end, they won much of what they wanted. Ended child labor, got 8 hour days, two day weekends, workplace safety, fairer pay. Other causes have had similar successes. The cause of abolition (or at least unease about slavery) was enough to elect Lincoln in 1860 despite Lincoln not appearing on the ballots of the entire South. Which, of course, started the process & war which ended slavery. Abolition won, albeit in a very bloody way. I think it's not a case of people not caring. It's a case of people care enormously but they feel powerless and they feel alone in their caring. This goes on until that day when they realize they're not alone.

undefined3840 7y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned this gem: > The lawsuit claims that then-CEO Kevin Burns shot down that idea, saying, “Half our customers are drunk and vaping like mo-fos, who the fuck is going to notice the quality of our pods.”

loceng 7y ago
Reminded me of Mark Zuckerberg's infamous "dumb fucks" quote. Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  I mean, Zuck wasn't wrong though. People freely share everything with any app or website with zero thought whatsoever. He didn't say anything that anyone who takes three seconds to think "wait, how is this free, what are they doing with this data" wasn't/isn't thinking. That's way different than saying who cares if we poison people, they're alcoholic hipsters
  - kace91 7y ago
    There's a difference between "fools, they don't know giving that information to third parties is dangerous" and "fools, they gave that information to me, if you want me to exploit them just ask buddy". And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      >And it's specially damning if that's a quote by a person that's now in charge of so much sensitive data. It's not damming at all. With no knowledge of where or when the quote is from, just looking at it I immediately go "likely a college student, with no business experience whatsoever, made a casual statement in conversation with a friend long before his product grew to the size it is today and now random people on the internet are vilifying for something he said in casual conversation probably a decade and and a half ago even though the comment shows no malice and is more a statement of disbelief in how little people think about their privacy"

mlang23 7y ago

Welcome to the american way of life.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
greedo 7y ago
Why yes, this type of behavior is strictly limited to the US and US companies. No other business organizations or countries have ever made a decision like this.

blunte 7y ago

When the current mantra of American capitalism is "shareholder value is our priority", then the only consideration is financial bottom line. You see this time and time again, whether with tobacco, industrial pollution, oil and gas pollution, or this new vaping stuff. Oh and war; you see this perpetually with war and the military industrial complex. For whatever reason, there are enough people willing to set aside concern for each other and humanity in general in order to make some cash for themselves. It almost doesn't matter what industry you look at - they all have moments or periods where finances trump (oh do pardon the unfortunate expression) humanity.

draugadrotten 7y ago
Oh, please stop turning HN into a political left quagmire. With red tinted glasses, it is "industry" and "corporations" that set humanity aside. Take the glasses off, and remember how Stalin treated his people, how much humanity the Berlin Wall represented, how caring Pol Pot was to the people of Cambodia. Yeah, Cuba and Venezuela seems to fit in there too. Can't find much industry going on with Daesh, ISIS, Al Quaeda, Taliban and the lot. Yet they treat people bad. People are sometimes bad to each other, right. The means are not the cause. Correlation vs causation, remember?
microcolonel 7y ago
I don't remember people being treated all that well when the state is powerful either (see: the CCP, USSR and sadly its successor). The best times have not been the anti-capitalist ones, but the ones where people take care of themselves and hold people who get in the way of that to account within the law. If society is unable to prosecute criminal negligence, that's another matter; it's not about a mantra or ethos or something, we just have to do our jobs, and things will get better like they have been.
- blunte 7y ago
  I'm not suggesting that the alternative to unregulated capitalism is a powerful state, unless by powerful you mean a state that regulates businesses for the good of the people. I'm also not suggesting that capitalism should be entirely replaced. It just needs to be managed with proper boundaries and rules, else it devolves entirely into a financial-only scenario. Take for example the recent deregulation that is undoing clean water and air protections to the benefit of a few industries. That obviously takes something (health) away from the people and gives it to a few companies as financial profits. Of course, those deregulations came because the companies had lobbyists and other agents who were providing financial benefit to a few politicians, and those politicians greedily placed themselves above the people. When the government bodies that should be prosecuting criminal negligence (such as the 2007/8 banking crisis), the pharma-created opiod crisis, etc. have been gradually staffed by people from the industries doing the bad acting, that leaves society armless and unable to do anything other than protest (which they do, at times). But unless those protests become really violent (which I don't want), nothing can happen. Remember Occupy Wall Street? That was beginning to be an effective protest campaign, but eventually the cities began employing illegal tactics to break it up and shut it down. Since the people didn't turn violent, it was successfully put down. I don't see a solution to the current situation other than waiting it out until the old corrupt people in power die off naturally. Younger generations are enough pissed that they might change some things once there are fewer kings of the political hills.

lr4444lr 7y ago

The differences in the causal chain that leads to death carried out by between serial killers vs. these guys is significant. We have criminal negligence laws to deal with them.

tomp 7y ago

He shouldn't be behind bars. Freedom of speech; he was simply putting forward an idea, nothing illegal about that. He was the CFO, he wasn't ultimately responsible for the behavior and crimes of the company. The CEO should be behind bars!

calmworm 7y ago

Behind bars? There will surely be a settlement in which everyone harmed will receive a 10% coupon for Juul products. Isn't that enough?!

Scoundreller 7y ago
The shareholders will pay dearly to avoid jail time for its executives that they don’t care about.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Shareholders will pay dearly to continue incentivizing executives to keep pushing the standards of conduct to maximize return on investment. If they want them to go to jail, then other CEOs might not be willing to take such risks.
mrnobody_67 7y ago
10% coupon for those affected, $50m cash payday for the lawyers...

jgalt212 7y ago

> People like Tim Danaher should be behind bars. And the VCs who enable and amplify such behaviors. These are the real power players who give the Tim Danaher's the confidence to continue with their terrible actions.