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I once interviewed with a company that wrote medical imaging software. He explained that if anything ever went wrong with their product, their CEO would end up

I once interviewed with a company that wrote medical imaging software. He explained that if anything ever went wrong with their product, their CEO would end up in jail (his words), and I'd be fired. This is for a product that didn't drive any medical equipment, but is regulated by the FDA anyway. Needless to say, I didn't take the job! Your proposal would kill the last ounce of innovation that hasn't been already crushed by the vast number of regulations already in place. When someone is injured or their property is damaged, that's what civil courts are for. When someone is killed intentionally, or by many instances of negligence, we have criminal courts to see that justice is done. All we need is to eliminate the regulations that people (and groups of people) hide behind and let the appropriate court do its job. And in some instances, bad precedent has to be overturned. At any rate, this is a much better idea than legislating and regulating more (which is like trying to dig your way out of a hole.)

khafra 16y ago
I'm confused as to why holding, say, Bayer responsible in criminal court instead of merely civil court for knowingly infecting thousands of people with HIV[1] would stop all medical innovation. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/03/health/main556653.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/03/health/main556653....
- maxharris 16y ago
  If this happened today, you wouldn't need to go after Bayer in this case, just the individuals at Bayer that are responsible. If John, Mike and Jane all belong to the same club, and Mike murders someone while in the bathroom at the club, do you collectively punish the whole club, or do you go after Mike? A corporation is not essentially different in this context. In this case, it's up to a court to decide if people knew enough about HIV in 1984 and 1985 to make the right call. HIV had only been discovered in 1983, and that very little was known about it at the time. It's easy to look at this in hindsight and think badly of them, with everything we've since learned about it, but that's not the standard by which they must be judged because omniscience cannot be the standard of knowledge by which we judge anyone. Putting people in jail outside of this context (e.g., when there isn't any evidence that they've done anything wrong) kills innovation because it severely punishes any risk-taking (which is another word for innovation).
  - Sisyphus_of_IT 16y ago
    But - a corporation is held to be a person. If your left finger pulls the trigger, the whole body is guilty.
    - maxharris 16y ago
      No. A corporation is only a group of individuals. The individuals that constitute a coroporation have rights, and the corporation is simply a legally optimized recognition of those rights. Remember, rights are negative, in that proper rights can only prohibit one from initiating political force (violence and fraud) against another. Proper rights do not impose obligations on anyone to create anything for anyone else, because that would be a form of slavery. No sensible person has ever claimed that a corporation is the same thing as a person.
      - khafra 16y ago
        > A corporation is only a group of individuals. The wikipedia article on corporate personhood might make some illuminating reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate Unless you already know about it, and are minimizing it for rhetorical reasons. When natural persons break criminal law and go to jail, they are deprived of the product of their labor for a period of time. When a corporation breaks the law, whether you want to attribute that to "evil employees" or to an internal incentive structure which encourages profits above legality, some analogue of jailtime makes sense.

khafra 16y ago

I'm confused as to why holding, say, Bayer responsible in criminal court instead of merely civil court for knowingly infecting thousands of people with HIV[1] would stop all medical innovation. [1] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/03/health/main556653.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/03/health/main556653....

maxharris 16y ago
If this happened today, you wouldn't need to go after Bayer in this case, just the individuals at Bayer that are responsible. If John, Mike and Jane all belong to the same club, and Mike murders someone while in the bathroom at the club, do you collectively punish the whole club, or do you go after Mike? A corporation is not essentially different in this context. In this case, it's up to a court to decide if people knew enough about HIV in 1984 and 1985 to make the right call. HIV had only been discovered in 1983, and that very little was known about it at the time. It's easy to look at this in hindsight and think badly of them, with everything we've since learned about it, but that's not the standard by which they must be judged because omniscience cannot be the standard of knowledge by which we judge anyone. Putting people in jail outside of this context (e.g., when there isn't any evidence that they've done anything wrong) kills innovation because it severely punishes any risk-taking (which is another word for innovation).
- Sisyphus_of_IT 16y ago
  But - a corporation is held to be a person. If your left finger pulls the trigger, the whole body is guilty.
  - maxharris 16y ago
    No. A corporation is only a group of individuals. The individuals that constitute a coroporation have rights, and the corporation is simply a legally optimized recognition of those rights. Remember, rights are negative, in that proper rights can only prohibit one from initiating political force (violence and fraud) against another. Proper rights do not impose obligations on anyone to create anything for anyone else, because that would be a form of slavery. No sensible person has ever claimed that a corporation is the same thing as a person.
    - khafra 16y ago
      > A corporation is only a group of individuals. The wikipedia article on corporate personhood might make some illuminating reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate Unless you already know about it, and are minimizing it for rhetorical reasons. When natural persons break criminal law and go to jail, they are deprived of the product of their labor for a period of time. When a corporation breaks the law, whether you want to attribute that to "evil employees" or to an internal incentive structure which encourages profits above legality, some analogue of jailtime makes sense.