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I’m not advocating for a “slap on the wrist”. Between “slap on the wrist” and “take every cent and nationalize the company” is a very large range of ways to han
by lumb63 3y ago
I’m not advocating for a “slap on the wrist”. Between “slap on the wrist” and “take every cent and nationalize the company” is a very large range of ways to handle the matter.
What confuses me is why you seemingly do not believe companies’ fines should correlate with the damage they’ve done. Your stance seems to be a boolean “company did bad”, which invalidates their right to any profit they ever made. That doesn’t seem very fair.
An example: I went to a full-service gas station once, and asked the attendant for a full tank of 87 octane. I watched him select 93 octane (for an additional 70 cents per gallon), so my full tank came out $10 more expensive than it would have otherwise been. Clearly he was operating his business in bad faith. My remediation was to dispute the charge with my credit card company, and I paid the price of the 87 octane fuel after all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the remediation you’re proposing seems to be that all profit that gas station made from that point on was invalid and ought to be taken from them, since they were operating in bad faith. You are of course entitled to your own opinion, but that seems a huge overreaction to me.
There is a whole world of shady and fraudulent businesses between “pumped the wrong octane gas” and “multi-generation coverup of externalities that will irreparably damage our health or ecosystem”. I believe the worst offenders should be punished, and harshly, because the damage they’ve done is so great (and often understated in these types of cases, IMO), but I don’t think we should indiscriminately nullify entire businesses over more mild issues.
- horsawlarway 3y ago> What confuses me is why you seemingly do not believe companies’ fines should correlate with the damage they’ve done. Because a LARGE part of the damage they've done IS the bad behavior. It's the lying, hiding of evidence that things are harmful, manipulation of the public and regulators. Those are ALL damage. They damage our social construct. That's in addition to the actual damage the product they're selling is doing to our environment and bodies. I understand that it is basically impossible to bring a product to market without causing some sort of harm. At a minimum you are likely burning oil/coal product and consuming resources. You might also be creating products that we know and understand are dangerous - and we apply rules to those companies to limit and offset those costs. THAT'S ALL FINE! If we can have a discussion about the harms and decide "we the people" are ok with it... It's absolutely fucking unnacceptable when one greedy party KNOWS they are doing harm, and is hiding it from the public, because they know having to deal with additional taxes/regulation/monitoring will hurt their bottom line. The literal harm here is the lying. If the company published the documents as soon as they knew... or were transparent from the start... then sure, lets have a small fine to help clean it up and address it moving forward. If the company instead goes "Fuck that - I'm going to hide this to make as much money as possible and bank on being fined like I didn't know and was playing ball"... then fuck em, nationalize that fucker.