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Corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, and the USA insists on keeping the barbaric death penalty, at least they should use it on companies. Exxon

Corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, and the USA insists on keeping the barbaric death penalty, at least they should use it on companies. Exxon would be another nice target.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Corporate death penalty Corporations are legal fictions. If you're wiping out shareholders and creditors, who do the assets go to? If you aren't wiping them out, what are you doing? Corporate death penalties are ultimately meaningless without an expropriation component. Better: massive fines and/or pulling critical licenses. Arthur Andersen and Enron were felled through these mechanisms. They are legal. They are proven. They are precedented and they work. If you wantonly break the law, you should not be a going concern. But "nationalization" and "corporate death penalty" are political hot potatoes. (I'm entirely sidestepping the argument as to whether that's reasonable.) If you want these companies shut down, or fearful of being shut down, credibly threatening to break them up, fine them into bankruptcy or suspend their licenses (e.g. for Intuit, their tax preparation license) is more effective.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > > Corporate death penalty > Corporations are legal fictions. Then they shouldn't have the same rights as real people. If they're just fictions, then it stands to reason that at least when they behave so egregiously that their fictional life has to be ended, their worth and value also turns out to be fictional. > If you're wiping out shareholders and creditors, who do the assets go to? If you aren't wiping them out, what are you doing? Corporate death penalties are ultimately meaningless without an expropriation component. Exactly. And since the whole point of a limited-liability stock company is that a single entrepreneur shan't be liable with all he owns, but each shareholder only with the value of his investment, then it is precisely that investment that will turn out to have no value: After creditors are paid off, any remaining value goes to the state, which is the entity that hitherto, through the contract and other laws it maintains, has upheld the fiction that this kitty of money is a separate thing capable of exerting a legal will and intent; for this particular kitty, that fiction has now come to an end. As for "wiping out" shareholders (not creditors, as per the above)... Yes and no, and above all: So what? As mentioned, their investment is exactly what they are willing to risk; that's the whole idea. Three points on this: 1) They could just as well lose it all if the company goes bankrupt some other way, so pretending that this is some new and unique possible outcome is disingenuous. 2) If they're "wiped out" because they've put all their life savings into any one company, the poor bastards should have looked up "diversifying". Again, not unique to this. 3) Wow, great -- finally some incentive for shareholder activism, to try and rein in old / appoint better new boards and CXOs and curb some of the evil shit corporations do, eh? > Better: massive fines and/or pulling critical licenses. Arthur Andersen and Enron were felled through these mechanisms. They are legal. They are proven. They are precedented and they work. Bullpucky. Two corporations, out of the myriad that had deserved it, that's ridiculously ineffective. > If you wantonly break the law, you should not be a going concern. Exactly. Then the fiction should end. > But "nationalization" and "corporate death penalty" are political hot potatoes. (I'm entirely sidestepping the argument as to whether that's reasonable.) Maybe they're such hot potatoes precisely because people, like you here now, keep sidestepping the argument. > If you want these companies shut down, or fearful of being shut down, credibly threatening to break them up, fine them into bankruptcy or suspend their licenses (e.g. for Intuit, their tax preparation license) is more effective. Sure, that too... But it seems imbalanced to limit yourself to only that, as long as you still have the death penalty for real people. (And, hey, if you're fine with "fin[ing] them into bankruptcy" -- what happened, all of a sudden, to those poor shareholders and creditors; is wiping them out suddenly OK now?)
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    We’re talking past each other. I’m in favor of ending companies that wantonly break the law. Corporate death penalties reinvent the wheel for zero benefit. It gets, at best, to the same place as fines or revocation. It adds the needless step of creating an unprecedented and politically-charged term with major constitutional flaws in respect of the taking of private property. If I’m a lobbyist trying to gut antitrust and the threat of those stronger measures I just mentioned, corporate death penalties are an almost all-too-perfect red herring. It severs the left from the centre-left so cleanly that I’m about 10% sure it came out of the right. If you like the idea of ending companies for bad things, skip fabricated steps and push for specific crimes being punishable with fines equal to a substantial fraction of enterprise value and/or license revocations. You would have to do that anyway with any corporate death penalty rules. Go straight for the kill. Unless, of course, the aim is rabble rousing. In that case, fight for corporate death penalties. It’s effective at turning out certain voting blocks. > [corporations] shouldn't have the same rights as real people Corporations don’t have the same rights as natural persons. They have many of them, but those are mostly severable through legislation. Incorporation does have broad support. Taking the evil lobbyist from the previous example, if she sees a list of ten corporate reforms she doesn’t like, adding ending corporate personhood to the list guarantees opposition from small business to multinationals, NGOs and unions to trade associations.

Corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, and the USA insists on keeping the barbaric death penalty, at least they should use it on companies. Exxon would be another nice target.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Corporate death penalty Corporations are legal fictions. If you're wiping out shareholders and creditors, who do the assets go to? If you aren't wiping them out, what are you doing? Corporate death penalties are ultimately meaningless without an expropriation component. Better: massive fines and/or pulling critical licenses. Arthur Andersen and Enron were felled through these mechanisms. They are legal. They are proven. They are precedented and they work. If you wantonly break the law, you should not be a going concern. But "nationalization" and "corporate death penalty" are political hot potatoes. (I'm entirely sidestepping the argument as to whether that's reasonable.) If you want these companies shut down, or fearful of being shut down, credibly threatening to break them up, fine them into bankruptcy or suspend their licenses (e.g. for Intuit, their tax preparation license) is more effective.

CRConrad 5y ago
> > Corporate death penalty > Corporations are legal fictions. Then they shouldn't have the same rights as real people. If they're just fictions, then it stands to reason that at least when they behave so egregiously that their fictional life has to be ended, their worth and value also turns out to be fictional. > If you're wiping out shareholders and creditors, who do the assets go to? If you aren't wiping them out, what are you doing? Corporate death penalties are ultimately meaningless without an expropriation component. Exactly. And since the whole point of a limited-liability stock company is that a single entrepreneur shan't be liable with all he owns, but each shareholder only with the value of his investment, then it is precisely that investment that will turn out to have no value: After creditors are paid off, any remaining value goes to the state, which is the entity that hitherto, through the contract and other laws it maintains, has upheld the fiction that this kitty of money is a separate thing capable of exerting a legal will and intent; for this particular kitty, that fiction has now come to an end. As for "wiping out" shareholders (not creditors, as per the above)... Yes and no, and above all: So what? As mentioned, their investment is exactly what they are willing to risk; that's the whole idea. Three points on this: 1) They could just as well lose it all if the company goes bankrupt some other way, so pretending that this is some new and unique possible outcome is disingenuous. 2) If they're "wiped out" because they've put all their life savings into any one company, the poor bastards should have looked up "diversifying". Again, not unique to this. 3) Wow, great -- finally some incentive for shareholder activism, to try and rein in old / appoint better new boards and CXOs and curb some of the evil shit corporations do, eh? > Better: massive fines and/or pulling critical licenses. Arthur Andersen and Enron were felled through these mechanisms. They are legal. They are proven. They are precedented and they work. Bullpucky. Two corporations, out of the myriad that had deserved it, that's ridiculously ineffective. > If you wantonly break the law, you should not be a going concern. Exactly. Then the fiction should end. > But "nationalization" and "corporate death penalty" are political hot potatoes. (I'm entirely sidestepping the argument as to whether that's reasonable.) Maybe they're such hot potatoes precisely because people, like you here now, keep sidestepping the argument. > If you want these companies shut down, or fearful of being shut down, credibly threatening to break them up, fine them into bankruptcy or suspend their licenses (e.g. for Intuit, their tax preparation license) is more effective. Sure, that too... But it seems imbalanced to limit yourself to only that, as long as you still have the death penalty for real people. (And, hey, if you're fine with "fin[ing] them into bankruptcy" -- what happened, all of a sudden, to those poor shareholders and creditors; is wiping them out suddenly OK now?)
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  We’re talking past each other. I’m in favor of ending companies that wantonly break the law. Corporate death penalties reinvent the wheel for zero benefit. It gets, at best, to the same place as fines or revocation. It adds the needless step of creating an unprecedented and politically-charged term with major constitutional flaws in respect of the taking of private property. If I’m a lobbyist trying to gut antitrust and the threat of those stronger measures I just mentioned, corporate death penalties are an almost all-too-perfect red herring. It severs the left from the centre-left so cleanly that I’m about 10% sure it came out of the right. If you like the idea of ending companies for bad things, skip fabricated steps and push for specific crimes being punishable with fines equal to a substantial fraction of enterprise value and/or license revocations. You would have to do that anyway with any corporate death penalty rules. Go straight for the kill. Unless, of course, the aim is rabble rousing. In that case, fight for corporate death penalties. It’s effective at turning out certain voting blocks. > [corporations] shouldn't have the same rights as real people Corporations don’t have the same rights as natural persons. They have many of them, but those are mostly severable through legislation. Incorporation does have broad support. Taking the evil lobbyist from the previous example, if she sees a list of ten corporate reforms she doesn’t like, adding ending corporate personhood to the list guarantees opposition from small business to multinationals, NGOs and unions to trade associations.