Deterrence works on corporations. How much time is spent complying with HIPPA, GDPR, and other regulations that have huge penalties? A lot. How much time is s

Deterrence works on corporations. How much time is spent complying with HIPPA, GDPR, and other regulations that have huge penalties? A lot. How much time is spent on piddling little fines for laws you've never heard of, but are vitally important? They came up with the term "cost of doing business" specifically to cover how little corporations care about these. Financial penalties are incredibly effective when consistently applied via regulation. Money is the blood of a corporation, losing it can lead to radical therapies from the shareholders including replacement of the leadership. Leadership fears this outcome. When settlements like these go forward that minimize the culpability of a corporation, they are being told that there is a cost to using harmful chemicals, but it will be a fraction of the gain and exacted a long time after the money is made. What possible reason would they have to think twice in the future about hiding chemical spills and hoping the bill just doesn't come due if the consequences aren't at least enough to clean up the problem? The issue of piercing the corporate veil is a secondary one, really. People who act with malice against society should have criminal penalties assessed against them regardless of how exalted their position is. The problem is, proving that they personally did X or Y and what that contributed to the overall problem, etc. Our legal system is not set up to deal with this by design and no one in the position to make the changes required is interested in signing the laws that would put their donors in prison. There's only one viable means of disincentivizing bad behavior for corporations in our current system, which is the one we are stuck with. The threat of large financial penalties are making tech companies come to heel in the EU, whether we like that outcome or not. We could pass laws like that in the US to deal with real physical harms if there was a will as well.