4 ms·

People involved in covering up health dangers should be personally responsible for their criminal actions and prosecuted the hard way.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
I really don't get that. I would think it's simple enough for the CEO to face criminal charges, unless they can clearly show which other individual(s) are responsible, or very clearly demonstrate there was some special and exceptional circumstances that necessitated the exception. Instead we call companies people and let them wash things away with money. No one faces guilt, maybe a CEO 'steps down' to spend more time with family until the anti-competitive clause finished and they pop up somewhere else.
- danaris 3y ago
  As someone on a sibling thread noted, if you limit the personal liability to the CEO, then that creates a strong incentive to make the CEO position into "highly-paid fall guy" while the other people responsible—quite probably even the people primarily responsible—laugh all the way to the bank. At a minimum, liability must be possible for the entire C-suite and the board. Depending on the nature and degree of the atrocities being committed, I can see a pretty strong argument for liability for anyone involved in any way who's being paid more than, say, national median salary + 50%—that is, anyone for whom "I was just following orders" doesn't have with it the background of "and if I disobeyed, I would risk destitution for myself and my family." The horrible effects of some of these decisions, and the number of people who have to suffer them, mean I have no compunction about comparing acts like these to war crimes, and we don't allow "I was just following orders" as a defense to those, either.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    I was thinking that if the CEO needs to show who is responsible, they would make sure their auditing and retention/archiving practices are in good order and tested and accountability would improve all-round. But yeah, there's always complexities that make things difficult... Still, you're paid tens or hundreds of millions, it should come with some risk.
autoexec 3y ago
It will never happen. There's a long long list of companies who are guilty of trying to cover up harms they know exist in their products and the result is basically mass poisonings committed by serial killers, but they never face any meaningful justice. At most they'll have to surrender a tiny amount of the vast fortune they made off of death and human suffering, and almost none of that will ever reach an actual victim. If we had any means whatsoever to change that situation it would have been done ages ago because it isn't as if the piles of dead bodies and deformed infants weren't enough to enrage people. Recently the Sacklers got away with it too and people are rightly pissed about it, but they're also totally powerless which is why it will happen again and again and again.
- closewith 3y ago
  > It will never happen. We can make it happen. It's just a legislative change away.
  - zx8080 3y ago
    Legislation is a function of money via lobbying. So law is not gonna change, unless someone wants to spend enough money to make troubles for others. And enough money means "more than others". Making money is "expensive", by the way, if doing so responsible. Like, paying for nature and health damage. This brings in an interesting dilemma. Lobbying for such a legislation change would most probably damage the initiator.
    - Taywee 3y ago
      There has been legislation that wasn't bought. There has been legislation that just had huge public support without major industry lobbying. Lobbying is effective, but it's reductive and dishonest to pretend that it's the only way to make legislative change.
      - autoexec 3y ago
        So what's prevented us from passing the laws we'd need to fix this? Yes, in the past the people have managed to make some changes, but none of that prevented this. We managed to get regulatory agencies which should have, but they are either toothless or run by the same industries they are supposed to oversee. What was the last time legislation was voted on that caused the collapse of one of the largest corporations in the world? When was the last time a corporation that poisoned a massive number of people was held truly accountable and the victims were actually made whole? Maybe you still think we have the power to make those kinds of changes, but what's your evidence for that?
Loquebantur 3y ago
"This research is important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical regulation." This is the central point. Reacting to such stuff after everything is poisoned already is a stupid way to go about things. What is needed is robust precautionary regulation.
- cryptonym 3y ago
  Coming with regulation ensuring a good level of safety would be a good thing but it will never ensure that everything is harmless. It can be tricky to define and demonstrate a specific level of precaution. Precaution is always limited, at some point you have to stop testing and start producing something at reasonable cost. Precautionary regulation is orthogonal to responsibility of individuals putting public health, safety or environment at risk and knowingly hiding the risks. Even if we could argue that strong responsibility encourage precaution with no further regulation: something too risky would be cancelled quickly or C-levels would risk serious jail time and bankruptcy.
rasz 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film)

agentgumshoe 3y ago

I really don't get that. I would think it's simple enough for the CEO to face criminal charges, unless they can clearly show which other individual(s) are responsible, or very clearly demonstrate there was some special and exceptional circumstances that necessitated the exception. Instead we call companies people and let them wash things away with money. No one faces guilt, maybe a CEO 'steps down' to spend more time with family until the anti-competitive clause finished and they pop up somewhere else.

danaris 3y ago
As someone on a sibling thread noted, if you limit the personal liability to the CEO, then that creates a strong incentive to make the CEO position into "highly-paid fall guy" while the other people responsible—quite probably even the people primarily responsible—laugh all the way to the bank. At a minimum, liability must be possible for the entire C-suite and the board. Depending on the nature and degree of the atrocities being committed, I can see a pretty strong argument for liability for anyone involved in any way who's being paid more than, say, national median salary + 50%—that is, anyone for whom "I was just following orders" doesn't have with it the background of "and if I disobeyed, I would risk destitution for myself and my family." The horrible effects of some of these decisions, and the number of people who have to suffer them, mean I have no compunction about comparing acts like these to war crimes, and we don't allow "I was just following orders" as a defense to those, either.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  I was thinking that if the CEO needs to show who is responsible, they would make sure their auditing and retention/archiving practices are in good order and tested and accountability would improve all-round. But yeah, there's always complexities that make things difficult... Still, you're paid tens or hundreds of millions, it should come with some risk.

autoexec 3y ago

It will never happen. There's a long long list of companies who are guilty of trying to cover up harms they know exist in their products and the result is basically mass poisonings committed by serial killers, but they never face any meaningful justice. At most they'll have to surrender a tiny amount of the vast fortune they made off of death and human suffering, and almost none of that will ever reach an actual victim. If we had any means whatsoever to change that situation it would have been done ages ago because it isn't as if the piles of dead bodies and deformed infants weren't enough to enrage people. Recently the Sacklers got away with it too and people are rightly pissed about it, but they're also totally powerless which is why it will happen again and again and again.

closewith 3y ago
> It will never happen. We can make it happen. It's just a legislative change away.
- zx8080 3y ago
  Legislation is a function of money via lobbying. So law is not gonna change, unless someone wants to spend enough money to make troubles for others. And enough money means "more than others". Making money is "expensive", by the way, if doing so responsible. Like, paying for nature and health damage. This brings in an interesting dilemma. Lobbying for such a legislation change would most probably damage the initiator.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    There has been legislation that wasn't bought. There has been legislation that just had huge public support without major industry lobbying. Lobbying is effective, but it's reductive and dishonest to pretend that it's the only way to make legislative change.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      So what's prevented us from passing the laws we'd need to fix this? Yes, in the past the people have managed to make some changes, but none of that prevented this. We managed to get regulatory agencies which should have, but they are either toothless or run by the same industries they are supposed to oversee. What was the last time legislation was voted on that caused the collapse of one of the largest corporations in the world? When was the last time a corporation that poisoned a massive number of people was held truly accountable and the victims were actually made whole? Maybe you still think we have the power to make those kinds of changes, but what's your evidence for that?

Loquebantur 3y ago

"This research is important to inform policy and move us towards a precautionary rather than reactionary principle of chemical regulation." This is the central point. Reacting to such stuff after everything is poisoned already is a stupid way to go about things. What is needed is robust precautionary regulation.

cryptonym 3y ago
Coming with regulation ensuring a good level of safety would be a good thing but it will never ensure that everything is harmless. It can be tricky to define and demonstrate a specific level of precaution. Precaution is always limited, at some point you have to stop testing and start producing something at reasonable cost. Precautionary regulation is orthogonal to responsibility of individuals putting public health, safety or environment at risk and knowingly hiding the risks. Even if we could argue that strong responsibility encourage precaution with no further regulation: something too risky would be cancelled quickly or C-levels would risk serious jail time and bankruptcy.

rasz 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film)