5 ms·

I wonder if a general purpose legal framework of applying the same punishment to different types of entities is possible. That way most laws could be worded in

I wonder if a general purpose legal framework of applying the same punishment to different types of entities is possible. That way most laws could be worded in a way that applies to private individuals and all types of companies the same way, but then the actual punishment would be applied differently. Specifically, when a company breaks the law, the legal framework would explain the way the responsibility should be shared between the legal entity and the private individuals involved in breaking the law.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I am frustrated that we continue to have the death penalty for individuals that commit heinous crimes, but we do not have the death penalty for corporations. I feel like when you manage to harm a billion people at a time, the penalty should be that your company is dissolved, it's assets auctioned off, and the trademarks and domains blackholed. And then, since I don't support the death penalty for individuals, the C-levels investigated for their knowing involvement in any related schemes, and if proven aware, given prison time and forbidden from ever operating in a management capacity at any corporation ever again. The problem with corporations is that there is no meaningful disincentive to commit crimes. You succeed, you get rich. You fail, you take your severance, live like a king for a year, and then get hired to do the same at another company. If executive pay is going to come with outsized pay, it should come with outsize risk: Jail executives for their choices when running corporations. For the millions they make, they'll still be lining up for the job.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  I have some complicated feelings on this, because on the one hand it really makes sense to punish these people and companies and stop this behavior from continuing, and on the other it would suck to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job, and it would also suck as a customer of some non-screwy service of the company to have something you rely on forced to stop. Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? In the "a corporation is a person" analogy that's about the same as some other mind taking over the body, so that might be sufficient. You might have to have some laws that provide some bite for people that want to just jump ship immediately knowing there severance is in danger even if they stay, but it's not like what I'm proposing could happen without new legislation anyway. As long as the payment of severance was handled by new management explicitly, and all replacements happened under explicit notice that the prior employee was being removed for compliance in an illegal activity (so they could fight against paying the severance), I think that would be a fairly good deterrence of bad behavior, since it would affect both employment of themselves and others, it has a good chance of affecting payouts when fired, and it effectively wipes the slate clean while doing what it can to preserve services and employment for as many as possible.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    > to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job Possibly, but this government action could automatically trigger unemployment benefits (paid for by all the money the government just seized from corporate coffers), the vacuum created would probably quickly be filled by expanding competitors who would hire people from the executed company, and considering the intersection of "companies that commit mass abuses" and "companies that treat their low level employees like garbage", it's likely that the low level employees would come out ahead. If say, Amazon disappeared today, people's desire for stuff would not disappear, and other companies would have to hire to fill that void. (After probably buying the warehouses and trucks at auction.) Most of those companies don't have employees peeing in bottles. > Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? But a huge part of the issue is also regarding public companies, shares, and stock value: A big issue I have is with founders. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, are all de facto still in control of their companies, even in the cases where they've "stepped back", because of their shareholder power (and dual-class shares, which I am still shocked is legal). And they're still wildly rich because of it. The C-level folks we're talking about, generally all hold a ton of company stock. If we accept that a given company has committed mass harm, and that the founders and C-level folks were complicit and knowing, their stock values need to be literally zeroed out. The effect of this issue applies to stockholders too: They'll happily keep investing in bad companies because those bad companies make money and don't see any meaningful penalties. We have to destroy bad companies, make their stock worthless, so that the risk of that is factored properly into stock values.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      > Possibly, but this government action could automatically trigger unemployment benefits... I like this in a perfect world, but I think in reality it causes too much disruption, and not a type that's beneficial for consumers in the short run. Normally that doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. If AT&T is wiped out tomorrow, that's a lot of people losing their phone and/or internet service all of a sudden, and for many of those people their primary contact for ordering goods and services, or how they get emergency service access (911), etc. What about Walmart? Walmart has eaten up the normal vendor market in large chunks of America. If Walmart was closed tomorrow, it would take a while for people to set up something to serve all the rural people that go there as their primary location for groceries, supplies, clothes, tools, etc. I imagine in a lot of places groceries would be sparse. Once you get into things that are even more like utilities, it gets even more problematic. Private companies that act as utilities, like natural gas truck delivery? I think there are lots of reasons and possible unforeseen problems with just wiping out a company. I think beheading the company and grafting some other head into place might alleviate those problems. At best, it's ensuring the problematic decision makers are gone and the the company can try to survive with the resources it has (whatever wasn't fined away) and the employees have time to plan and jump ship if it's still bad or benefit from better management, and at worst is a slower death which allows for the market to take over more naturally. > A big issue I have is with founders. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, are all de facto still in control of their companies Yeah, and that's why I think it might also require special provisions on boards and or managers that have stock. Maybe an inability to sell or exercise voting rights for a period (those would be some interesting votes, where the majority shareholders can't participate). > We have to destroy bad companies, make their stock worthless, so that the risk of that is factored properly into stock values. That's one of the reasons I think we shouldn't go that far. What employee is going to blow the whistle when it's not just hard times for their company, but when they know they may be responsible for putting 30k people out of a job? At certain points, punishing too hard can have perverse incentives. We want people to come forward. We want people to think that this might be hard, but it's possible to weather it and eat the bitter medicine and come out the other side either better or at least still alive. And for regular stock holders, this is way more complicated. Do we want to punish regular people that happened to have some of that stock but didn't have any inkling of what was going on? What about all the people that get advance notice and sell so they reaped the benefits of the high stock but avoid the drop on bad news, and the possible immediate loss (which the buyer unfortunately would get both of). Going back in time to revert sales just doesn't seem feasible to me, both because of how that may cascade for other stock bought with the profit, and because how do you tell when the cutoff is? I think there's too many possible unforeseen problems with just stopping the company. I mean, there's also a lot with lopping off the head and replacing it, but by it's nature less, I think.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  MoviePass is already dead.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

I am frustrated that we continue to have the death penalty for individuals that commit heinous crimes, but we do not have the death penalty for corporations. I feel like when you manage to harm a billion people at a time, the penalty should be that your company is dissolved, it's assets auctioned off, and the trademarks and domains blackholed. And then, since I don't support the death penalty for individuals, the C-levels investigated for their knowing involvement in any related schemes, and if proven aware, given prison time and forbidden from ever operating in a management capacity at any corporation ever again. The problem with corporations is that there is no meaningful disincentive to commit crimes. You succeed, you get rich. You fail, you take your severance, live like a king for a year, and then get hired to do the same at another company. If executive pay is going to come with outsized pay, it should come with outsize risk: Jail executives for their choices when running corporations. For the millions they make, they'll still be lining up for the job.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kbenson 5y ago
I have some complicated feelings on this, because on the one hand it really makes sense to punish these people and companies and stop this behavior from continuing, and on the other it would suck to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job, and it would also suck as a customer of some non-screwy service of the company to have something you rely on forced to stop. Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? In the "a corporation is a person" analogy that's about the same as some other mind taking over the body, so that might be sufficient. You might have to have some laws that provide some bite for people that want to just jump ship immediately knowing there severance is in danger even if they stay, but it's not like what I'm proposing could happen without new legislation anyway. As long as the payment of severance was handled by new management explicitly, and all replacements happened under explicit notice that the prior employee was being removed for compliance in an illegal activity (so they could fight against paying the severance), I think that would be a fairly good deterrence of bad behavior, since it would affect both employment of themselves and others, it has a good chance of affecting payouts when fired, and it effectively wipes the slate clean while doing what it can to preserve services and employment for as many as possible.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  > to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job Possibly, but this government action could automatically trigger unemployment benefits (paid for by all the money the government just seized from corporate coffers), the vacuum created would probably quickly be filled by expanding competitors who would hire people from the executed company, and considering the intersection of "companies that commit mass abuses" and "companies that treat their low level employees like garbage", it's likely that the low level employees would come out ahead. If say, Amazon disappeared today, people's desire for stuff would not disappear, and other companies would have to hire to fill that void. (After probably buying the warehouses and trucks at auction.) Most of those companies don't have employees peeing in bottles. > Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? But a huge part of the issue is also regarding public companies, shares, and stock value: A big issue I have is with founders. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, are all de facto still in control of their companies, even in the cases where they've "stepped back", because of their shareholder power (and dual-class shares, which I am still shocked is legal). And they're still wildly rich because of it. The C-level folks we're talking about, generally all hold a ton of company stock. If we accept that a given company has committed mass harm, and that the founders and C-level folks were complicit and knowing, their stock values need to be literally zeroed out. The effect of this issue applies to stockholders too: They'll happily keep investing in bad companies because those bad companies make money and don't see any meaningful penalties. We have to destroy bad companies, make their stock worthless, so that the risk of that is factored properly into stock values.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    > Possibly, but this government action could automatically trigger unemployment benefits... I like this in a perfect world, but I think in reality it causes too much disruption, and not a type that's beneficial for consumers in the short run. Normally that doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. If AT&T is wiped out tomorrow, that's a lot of people losing their phone and/or internet service all of a sudden, and for many of those people their primary contact for ordering goods and services, or how they get emergency service access (911), etc. What about Walmart? Walmart has eaten up the normal vendor market in large chunks of America. If Walmart was closed tomorrow, it would take a while for people to set up something to serve all the rural people that go there as their primary location for groceries, supplies, clothes, tools, etc. I imagine in a lot of places groceries would be sparse. Once you get into things that are even more like utilities, it gets even more problematic. Private companies that act as utilities, like natural gas truck delivery? I think there are lots of reasons and possible unforeseen problems with just wiping out a company. I think beheading the company and grafting some other head into place might alleviate those problems. At best, it's ensuring the problematic decision makers are gone and the the company can try to survive with the resources it has (whatever wasn't fined away) and the employees have time to plan and jump ship if it's still bad or benefit from better management, and at worst is a slower death which allows for the market to take over more naturally. > A big issue I have is with founders. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, are all de facto still in control of their companies Yeah, and that's why I think it might also require special provisions on boards and or managers that have stock. Maybe an inability to sell or exercise voting rights for a period (those would be some interesting votes, where the majority shareholders can't participate). > We have to destroy bad companies, make their stock worthless, so that the risk of that is factored properly into stock values. That's one of the reasons I think we shouldn't go that far. What employee is going to blow the whistle when it's not just hard times for their company, but when they know they may be responsible for putting 30k people out of a job? At certain points, punishing too hard can have perverse incentives. We want people to come forward. We want people to think that this might be hard, but it's possible to weather it and eat the bitter medicine and come out the other side either better or at least still alive. And for regular stock holders, this is way more complicated. Do we want to punish regular people that happened to have some of that stock but didn't have any inkling of what was going on? What about all the people that get advance notice and sell so they reaped the benefits of the high stock but avoid the drop on bad news, and the possible immediate loss (which the buyer unfortunately would get both of). Going back in time to revert sales just doesn't seem feasible to me, both because of how that may cascade for other stock bought with the profit, and because how do you tell when the cutoff is? I think there's too many possible unforeseen problems with just stopping the company. I mean, there's also a lot with lopping off the head and replacing it, but by it's nature less, I think.
stickfigure 5y ago
MoviePass is already dead.