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I think if we actually did more of the latter portion of your statements things could actually change for the better. Hold companies fiscally responsible for c

I think if we actually did more of the latter portion of your statements things could actually change for the better. Hold companies fiscally responsible for cleanup and actually criminally charge the decision makers for cases of negligence. Similar for the railway disasters like East Palestine. The protections provided to corporations are intended to shield hands-off investors, not executives and board members that drive profit above safety and common sense. I'm not in favor of a lot of heavy handed regulation, but I'm all for corporate liability.

zucked 3y ago
History has shown that it is difficult to hold parties liable because they find creative ways to eschew the obligations via spin-offs, bankruptcy, or both.
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  We manage to do it for poor people and students. I wish we could do it for officier of corporations. Now that they enjoy free speeches privileges.
  - zucked 3y ago
    Laws are only as defensible as the lawyers we sic on them. Turns out, we have some really creative lawyers in our ranks.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Statist and capitalist society is built on rules for thee but not for me. Good luck voting and waiting to solve this.
  - rolandog 3y ago
    I always like to come up with human analogies for the mental gymnastics that Big Business tries to pull off: "Wait a minute your honor, here's my newborn child; he's the legal owner of that truck, and therefore he's the one that should be locked up for running over the old lady."
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      It's basically the sovereign citizen movement, but judges and politicians take it seriously because it enriches them and their cohort and friends and family and economic class. If you gently poisoned millions of people, entirely on accident, as a private citizen, you would never see the outside of a prison. If you incorporate and claim it's a standard part of your business, you won't even lose your private mansion. Judges have significant leeway in piercing the corporate veil and depriving bad actors of their ill gotten gains, but they don't. The US DOJ has significant leeway to go after companies aggressively and really push for seizing assets of criminals, a cop literally doesn't even need a real justification to do it, but they haven't since Enron. We've had forty years of the only "punishment" for doing anything wrong as a company being a 1% of ill gotten gains fine, even though none of the actual underlying laws have changed to cause this reduction in punishment. This has been an entirely internal choice. Of course this results in companies largely not giving a fuck about anything that isn't profit.
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        US feds steal more than burglars do, by dollar value. State and local police do too, but we don't have accurate oversight numbers for these departments.
      - dopidopHN 3y ago
        Tangential but related : Imagine a bunch of college kids running around water sources with unclear intentions. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine. Look at the saint Soline movement in France. Those people try to keep rain water accessible for all. ( as oppose to massive rentension basin for corn only ) Result : they are eco terrorist and should be meet with large deployment of hostile police force. ( thousand of flash ball and tear gaz grenade fired in one single night )
- filoeleven 3y ago
  See for example Chemours, who was spun off from DuPont essentially so that when the lawsuits start to hit, they can go bankrupt and DuPont can keep marching on.
softfalcon 3y ago
I’m all for corporate liability. Unfortunately, even what happened in East Palestine was just a slap on the wrist compared to the damage it caused to the affected communities. Corporate liability needs to be ratcheted up several orders of magnitude before we’ll see any actual change. As it stands, most governments have no teeth against corporate greed and exploitation.
- tracker1 3y ago
  A lot of that comes from prosecutors being a largely political office, beholden to contributors for getting elected. It's almost the worst of every angle in terms of how a justice system should work. As an aside, I sometimes think public defenders and prosecutors should come from the same pool of attorneys, held to account for striking balance instead of just W's to one side or the other.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Another issue is even when companies are held liable they're able to nickel and dime the people they've harmed and just drag their feet through the process because the company can survive but the people they've hurt have usually lost some significant portion of their livelihood and can't fight the company for half a decade. So people are forced by necessity to take a lower payout than they actually should get because they just can't afford to fight any more. For a small infuriating sample post-Valdez Exxon argued against many tour and fishing businesses' claims saying there's no indication that those industries wouldn't have collapsed on their own in the absence of the spill so the court shouldn't take into account previous seasons' revenues for the calculation of damages. It's arguments like that where I wish judges and the court system as a whole could do something like finding that an argument was in complete bad faith and fine the companies and lawyers just for having the gall to make it. ( I know it's a pretty bad idea in reality but that and some of the lies told to get mergers through are just infuriating)
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    It is worse than that. The conservative legal movement made corporate torts a big target in the 90s/00s and won a lot of victories limiting the size of judgements and the ability of affected people to sue. Even legislatures followed along based on the idea that torts were getting out of hand. Even if you have dedicated prosecutors who are able to oppose moneyed interests, the law gives corporations huge tools to wriggle out of suits.
tomxor 3y ago
> Hold companies fiscally responsible for cleanup 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and even then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work, the damage is already done, and the profits have been pocketed. What's worse with PFAS for environmental pollution is that no mechanism for clean up currently exists. > criminally charge the decision makers for cases of negligence. Might work as a weak extrinsic motivator, but there's plenty of "hot potato" going in this kind of work. It's also hard to prove negligence when the "decision makers" are ignoring the environmental costs through either wilful ignorance, burring their own research, or through optimistic interpretations which give them plausible deniability - combine that with shared responsibility and it gets hard to point the finger at individuals unless you were in the room. It's hard to pin down a "decision" of inaction. We either need some kind of intrinsic motivators, i.e make it in the interest of corporations to protect the environment. Or really heavy legislation that requires extensive proof of ecological safety for every new chemical dumped into the environment rather than the current "we'll figure it out later" model. [0] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/3m-heads-to-trial-in-existential-143-billion-pfas-litigation https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/3m-head...
- MildRant 3y ago
  > 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and even then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work, the damage is already done, and the profits have been pocketed. What's worse with PFAS for environmental pollution is that no mechanism for clean up currently exists. Are you suggesting that 3M should continue to operate as if they didn't poison the world? I'm fine with them being bankrupted by the lawsuits. Let it be a warning for the next company.
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    No, he is suggesting that the executives in charge during the production and sale of PFAS products already pocketed their salaries, bonuses, and wealth. It won't be clawed back.
    - 3y ago
Aunche 3y ago
Substantial fines to domestic businesses create resentment from voters who lose their jobs due to such fines. That's why governments does this to foreign companies (e.g. US fining VW and EU fining big tech). I wonder if there is a way to structure these penalties such that doesn't cripple the domestic economy such a forcing companies to issue new shares that immediately get acquired by the government.
- shigawire 3y ago
  Capital punishment for executives would do it.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  Our society has been totally captured by corporations. Employees need corporations to generate profits, otherwise there are layoffs or closures and people lose their jobs. This is bad for the people because we have limited social safety nets and joblessness can devastate people. People who hope to ever retire need corporations to generate profits, otherwise their 401ks can never grow. This is bad for the people because without investment growth it is unreasonable for a most people to generate the sums needed to retire with dignity. We've generated a system where the people will complain when corporations are held to any account. We've tied ourselves to the success of big business and can't get off the ride.

zucked 3y ago

History has shown that it is difficult to hold parties liable because they find creative ways to eschew the obligations via spin-offs, bankruptcy, or both.

dopidopHN 3y ago
We manage to do it for poor people and students. I wish we could do it for officier of corporations. Now that they enjoy free speeches privileges.
- zucked 3y ago
  Laws are only as defensible as the lawyers we sic on them. Turns out, we have some really creative lawyers in our ranks.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Statist and capitalist society is built on rules for thee but not for me. Good luck voting and waiting to solve this.
- rolandog 3y ago
  I always like to come up with human analogies for the mental gymnastics that Big Business tries to pull off: "Wait a minute your honor, here's my newborn child; he's the legal owner of that truck, and therefore he's the one that should be locked up for running over the old lady."
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    It's basically the sovereign citizen movement, but judges and politicians take it seriously because it enriches them and their cohort and friends and family and economic class. If you gently poisoned millions of people, entirely on accident, as a private citizen, you would never see the outside of a prison. If you incorporate and claim it's a standard part of your business, you won't even lose your private mansion. Judges have significant leeway in piercing the corporate veil and depriving bad actors of their ill gotten gains, but they don't. The US DOJ has significant leeway to go after companies aggressively and really push for seizing assets of criminals, a cop literally doesn't even need a real justification to do it, but they haven't since Enron. We've had forty years of the only "punishment" for doing anything wrong as a company being a 1% of ill gotten gains fine, even though none of the actual underlying laws have changed to cause this reduction in punishment. This has been an entirely internal choice. Of course this results in companies largely not giving a fuck about anything that isn't profit.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      US feds steal more than burglars do, by dollar value. State and local police do too, but we don't have accurate oversight numbers for these departments.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      Tangential but related : Imagine a bunch of college kids running around water sources with unclear intentions. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine. Look at the saint Soline movement in France. Those people try to keep rain water accessible for all. ( as oppose to massive rentension basin for corn only ) Result : they are eco terrorist and should be meet with large deployment of hostile police force. ( thousand of flash ball and tear gaz grenade fired in one single night )
filoeleven 3y ago
See for example Chemours, who was spun off from DuPont essentially so that when the lawsuits start to hit, they can go bankrupt and DuPont can keep marching on.

softfalcon 3y ago

I’m all for corporate liability. Unfortunately, even what happened in East Palestine was just a slap on the wrist compared to the damage it caused to the affected communities. Corporate liability needs to be ratcheted up several orders of magnitude before we’ll see any actual change. As it stands, most governments have no teeth against corporate greed and exploitation.

tracker1 3y ago
A lot of that comes from prosecutors being a largely political office, beholden to contributors for getting elected. It's almost the worst of every angle in terms of how a justice system should work. As an aside, I sometimes think public defenders and prosecutors should come from the same pool of attorneys, held to account for striking balance instead of just W's to one side or the other.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Another issue is even when companies are held liable they're able to nickel and dime the people they've harmed and just drag their feet through the process because the company can survive but the people they've hurt have usually lost some significant portion of their livelihood and can't fight the company for half a decade. So people are forced by necessity to take a lower payout than they actually should get because they just can't afford to fight any more. For a small infuriating sample post-Valdez Exxon argued against many tour and fishing businesses' claims saying there's no indication that those industries wouldn't have collapsed on their own in the absence of the spill so the court shouldn't take into account previous seasons' revenues for the calculation of damages. It's arguments like that where I wish judges and the court system as a whole could do something like finding that an argument was in complete bad faith and fine the companies and lawyers just for having the gall to make it. ( I know it's a pretty bad idea in reality but that and some of the lies told to get mergers through are just infuriating)
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  It is worse than that. The conservative legal movement made corporate torts a big target in the 90s/00s and won a lot of victories limiting the size of judgements and the ability of affected people to sue. Even legislatures followed along based on the idea that torts were getting out of hand. Even if you have dedicated prosecutors who are able to oppose moneyed interests, the law gives corporations huge tools to wriggle out of suits.

tomxor 3y ago

> Hold companies fiscally responsible for cleanup 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and even then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work, the damage is already done, and the profits have been pocketed. What's worse with PFAS for environmental pollution is that no mechanism for clean up currently exists. > criminally charge the decision makers for cases of negligence. Might work as a weak extrinsic motivator, but there's plenty of "hot potato" going in this kind of work. It's also hard to prove negligence when the "decision makers" are ignoring the environmental costs through either wilful ignorance, burring their own research, or through optimistic interpretations which give them plausible deniability - combine that with shared responsibility and it gets hard to point the finger at individuals unless you were in the room. It's hard to pin down a "decision" of inaction. We either need some kind of intrinsic motivators, i.e make it in the interest of corporations to protect the environment. Or really heavy legislation that requires extensive proof of ecological safety for every new chemical dumped into the environment rather than the current "we'll figure it out later" model. [0] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/3m-heads-to-trial-in-existential-143-billion-pfas-litigation https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/3m-head...

MildRant 3y ago
> 3M is filing for bankruptcy due to PFAS litigation, and even then they can't cover the costs [0] This doesn't work, the damage is already done, and the profits have been pocketed. What's worse with PFAS for environmental pollution is that no mechanism for clean up currently exists. Are you suggesting that 3M should continue to operate as if they didn't poison the world? I'm fine with them being bankrupted by the lawsuits. Let it be a warning for the next company.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  No, he is suggesting that the executives in charge during the production and sale of PFAS products already pocketed their salaries, bonuses, and wealth. It won't be clawed back.
  - 3y ago

Aunche 3y ago

Substantial fines to domestic businesses create resentment from voters who lose their jobs due to such fines. That's why governments does this to foreign companies (e.g. US fining VW and EU fining big tech). I wonder if there is a way to structure these penalties such that doesn't cripple the domestic economy such a forcing companies to issue new shares that immediately get acquired by the government.

shigawire 3y ago
Capital punishment for executives would do it.
UncleMeat 3y ago
Our society has been totally captured by corporations. Employees need corporations to generate profits, otherwise there are layoffs or closures and people lose their jobs. This is bad for the people because we have limited social safety nets and joblessness can devastate people. People who hope to ever retire need corporations to generate profits, otherwise their 401ks can never grow. This is bad for the people because without investment growth it is unreasonable for a most people to generate the sums needed to retire with dignity. We've generated a system where the people will complain when corporations are held to any account. We've tied ourselves to the success of big business and can't get off the ride.