5 ms·

Death sentence is probably a bit much, but if management takes actions that they know will kill or maim I don't see a reason why punishment shouldn't be the sam

Death sentence is probably a bit much, but if management takes actions that they know will kill or maim I don't see a reason why punishment shouldn't be the same as if you went out and hit someone with a hammer. In this case, force 3M to pay for everything, if they refuse or can't the government sells of the company to pay for the cost. I'm not a fan of the death sentence, but I have no problem killing of evil companies. What I don't get is how people can make these decisions. You're informed that your product is dangerous, but you really like money so screw it.... What kind of person does that? That has to be a mental problem.

aaomidi 3y ago
I don’t think death sentence is actually a bit much here. Im generally against death sentences for heat of the moment situations. Think: murder. But in a situation where you’ve had legal teams working with you, where you’ve been planning this out, and where you know what the damage to this is etc., you’re basically a massive threat to society. The active planning, intent, and maliciousness is something that should be made an example out of. Death sentences for crimes where the person doing the crime likely didn’t even get a chance to think about the consequences is useless. Death sentences and removal of all assets from corporate executives that have caused a significant amount of damage would have a deterrence effect.
- nier 3y ago
  For me, the death penalty contains traces of mercy and life-long incarceration does not. You take away someone’s freedom for the rest of their life instead of putting them out of their misery.
  - mcny 3y ago
    I agree with you on death penalty but the parent also says removal of all assets. So I think life in prison with no possibility of parole plus removal of all assets is ideal. But I think this should only apply to the CEO and the board not everyone up and down the chain at least in the US where we have a “right to work”. I don’t know if the law will allow an effective removal of all assets. I’m thinking of trust fund babies and such… Edit: at least in the US, I think there is a possibility of a pardon or commutation by POTUS. I think we need to abolish that as well or at least it should be that if you pardon or commute the sentence for one person for a crime, it automatically makes the same change (pardon/commutation) for everyone convicted of that crime.
    - makapuf 3y ago
      Couple that with impossibility to be ignorant of what happens inside of a company, because if not, top level management has a big incentive to have a buffer to keep them purposedly unknowing of this kind of doings.
    - arrosenberg 3y ago
      > I don’t know if the law will allow an effective removal of all assets. I’m thinking of trust fund babies and such… Civil asset forfeiture. The money itself is complicit in the criminal act.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    The quality of that extended life is probably something that needs to be accounted for too. "Plush mansion, good company, etc" vs "left to rot in a hole" type of thing.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    TBH I'm not much interested in `Punishment`, so long incarceration does not interest me personally.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      You suggest vile acts should be permitted without consequence?
      - InvertedRhodium 3y ago
        Consequences and punishment are different concepts, I support the death penalty in the case of egregious acts primarily from the perspective of cost and efficiency of removing an unacceptable risk to society. I don’t need to see them tortured beforehand, as it serves little to no purpose (in my opinion).
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        aaomidi 3y ago
        Basically this.
  - norir 3y ago
    Then why not make the death penalty an option for the condemned? They could choose between life in prison or an execution in a form of their choosing if they wish to be put out of their misery.
    - nobodyandproud 3y ago
      “It’s your choice, but the daily beatings will continue until you consent to your own execution.”
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > life-long incarceration does not There is no such thing as life long incarceration. They always get out early
    - jdietrich 3y ago
      Maybe not in your jurisdiction... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_and_Wales#Whole_life_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_a...
- GauntletWizard 3y ago
  Murder can also be premeditated. In many cases, proof of premeditation is required for "Murder One".
ponector 3y ago
What kind of person? Regular millionaire/billionaire who know that they easily can get away with such decision using their wealth and/or power. Musk is totally ok to use materials mined by enslaved children of Madagascar. Or abuse his employees. Or fire people who try to organize a union. Or do plenty of other shady or illegal stuff. That kind of person.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Let me rephrase then: What is wrong in the brain of these people? They have to live on the planet too, they have friend and family, people they care... No? Normal people can't get away with things like this, because the decisions would haunt our dreams.
  - loganfrederick 3y ago
    I dove into the science of psychopathy a few years ago after a family incident where my father imploded his life and much of the family's through self-destructive activities and there is actually a bunch of smart people studying the neuroscience of pyschopaths. Two great books to start with: - The Science of Evil: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/dp/0465031420/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/... - The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscious: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-Conscience/dp/0770435866/ https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-...
  - IanCal 3y ago
    I'm not sure. Regular people make, logically, truly horrifying decisions constantly. I bought some wine for a friends get-together. That's pretty normal. But in doing so, I chose to have wine rather than vaccinate some children. I chose having a drink over the lives of deprived children. Am I not a monster?
  - dexterdog 3y ago
    Which is why abnormal people are drawn to this kind of power.
  - 3y ago
xvector 3y ago
Death sentence is absolutely not too much. It's an extraordinarily effective deterrent (see Singapore), and I don't know where the narrative comes from that it's not. Some people simply need to die.
- gmac 3y ago
  Feels weird to get into a high-school debate about capital punishment here, but in essence: (a) Sometimes the wrong people get convicted. In this context, irreversible punishments suck. (b) “We’re going to kill you because killing people is wrong” is a weird look.
  - xvector 3y ago
    (a) Sometimes the wrong people get put in prison or solitary confinement for life too, which is effectively decades-long torture. It is arbitrary to draw the line at the death penalty, which generally causes less suffering. (Read statements from prisoners in lifelong solitary confinement.) (b) It's not. Killing people that are evil is fine. Killing babies is wrong. You are intentionally simplifying the moral argument here to "killing people is wrong."
    - jdietrich 3y ago
      >which is effectively decades-long torture Maybe don't make prisons so awful that they constitute torture? That's very much a thing that we know how to do. >Killing people that are evil is fine. Who gets to decide what is evil? What happens when the definition of evil changes? Practically every genocide in history has been justified by that logic - they are evil, therefore we are justified in killing them. Other than vengeance, there is little benefit to state-sanctioned killing for the purposes of punishment; all state-sanctioned killing carries the risk of justifying other kinds of state-sanctioned killing, by removing the simple and clear moral foundation of what a legitimate state can or cannot do.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Killing innocent people is wrong, killing murderers is good. Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them.
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
I read once about a corporate death penalty that I think should really be made into law: where a corporate entity commits something so heinous that a fine or what have you is simply not enough. I cannot find the link but the process would go about such as: - The entire entity would be taken on ownership by the government agency at play. No existing stakeholders would be paid anything for this and operations would continue, assuming the operation is worth salvaging of course, with the corrections made needed. - The entity would then be either sold in-whole or carved up into pieces to other large businesses. Shareholders, stakeholders, or investors are not made whole: instead, the revenue from these sales is used to repay or remediate the damage caused by the company. - Top level leadership is, if it's felt is required, charged for neglecting their duties as leaders and fined, jailed, or otherwise punished. - In the end the original entity is dissolved entirely, any remaining assets are sold in a process similar to the above, and the name is added to a "dead corporation" list and cannot be used at any time in the future.
- oakwhiz 3y ago
  Sounds like a gift to short sellers.
  - pigeonhole123 3y ago
    Allowing fraud is a gift to speculators just as much. And criminals.
  - orbz 3y ago
    Wouldn’t this reduce the share price, effectively baking in the externality risk?
    - lmm 3y ago
      It would reduce the share price of companies that shareholders thought were at high risk of committing a major crime, and create an incentive for companies that care about their share price to make it very clear that they weren't going to do crime and e.g. have policies to prevent it.
14 3y ago
I have to disagree if someone knowingly poisoned my baby then if death penalty isn’t imposed I’m going to attempt to get revenge myself. The death penalty was probably effective at calming the entire country from rage.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  I think, as a general principle, justice should not be based around appeasing a potential lynch mob.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    There's lynch mob, and then there's righteous rage at acts so heinous that lack of punishment would call into question the legitimacy of the entire social structure. This may be something that doesn't resonate with people who are not parents, but: if your government is willing to tolerate intentional, casual murder of children at scale, what's the point of having it in the first place? And let's remember: a government isn't imposed by the heavens. It's just another agreement between people, at scale.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      I don't think that's restricted to parents: I've felt that way since I was ten years old. That doesn't mean we have to kill the perpetrators: just remove them. Retribution might make us feel better, but it doesn't solve anything. It's shutting the stable doors after the horse has bolted. We don't need a special judicial exception for the mass murder of children: we need that to not happen in the first place. At that scale, it's not one person: it's an institutional failing. We need those institutional failings to not happen: talk of punishment, except to the extent it has a deterrent effect (which I'm generally sceptical of), is a distraction. Aviation rarely blames pilots for plane crashes, even when it's clearly their fault (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_control_of_whole_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_...): they do things like a two-in-cockpit policy. Aeroplanes are among the safest places in the world. That attitude seems a better one to mimic. What does it truly mean, to say “never again”?
lupusreal 3y ago
At least six babies were killed; that's mass murder. It was done in cold blood, planned out ahead of time. The death penalty was the only fitting sentence.
- Hackbraten 3y ago
  The death penalty is never a fitting sentence. Prosecutors and judges can make mistakes. Executing someone is something you can never undo.
  - devilbunny 3y ago
    There are plenty of crimes that deserve death. We don’t impose it because we’re unsure about culpability. But if you did it, you do indeed deserve to die.
    - jdietrich 3y ago
      >There are plenty of crimes that deserve death. In your opinion. In the opinion of many others, there is no crime that deserves death, hence the widespread abolition of the death penalty in developed countries. We used to execute people for stealing cattle and I imagine that many people at the time though that it was an entirely right and proper punishment. A jurisdiction that uses the death penalty with any real frequency will at some point inevitably execute an innocent man. What is the appropriate punishment for those who supported the laws that caused his death?
      - devilbunny 3y ago
        I don’t support it because it’s irrevocable, but that’s the reason to oppose it. Some crimes do deserve it, even if we don’t impose it every time.
- serf 3y ago
  i'll get behind the death penalty once we get that 100% accurate justice system i've been waiting on. until then i'll just view it as a tool of the government to sate public bloodlust with regards to heinous crimes with the very thing they seek to punish : murder. the very embodiment of "well, that's the best we can do." when confronted with the idea of correcting the loss of a life -- two losses to make the original victim feel less alone. Not a great correction.
rocqua 3y ago
You can't "sell the company". Any company you sell with an immediate and complete change of management is very likely completely dead in the water. Institutional knowledge is very important.
MarkMarine 3y ago
Unfortunately the companies manage to wriggle out of all liability by saying they are bankrupt or transferring to a new company structure. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsona... https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/2-billion-verdict-in-missouri-motivates-jj-to-settle-talcum-powder-lawsuits.html https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/2-billion-verdict... $200,000 per victim for knowingly being given cancer. Obscene. I think China executing people is much closer to justice than our system.
- ordinaryradical 3y ago
  Something like a real solution is to create a way to reintroduce personal liability for executive teams in cases like this where extraordinary harm is done. Human beings need to have their own assets and personal well being at risk, otherwise the incentives for perpetrating mass pollution are too lucrative. Jail and financial annihilation are basically the only ways to try to counterbalance the massive upside you can get from sociopathic behavior like this. We need to start treating this more like fraud, but perpetrated as a form of violence.
  - MarkMarine 3y ago
    I completely agree
- atoav 3y ago
  So if I want to legally murder people I can do it if I create corporation and create a plausible deniable way of killing them? Cool. Certainly a good system. If the hardest punishment is a fine, it becomes a fee for rich people.
ekianjo 3y ago
> Death sentence is probably a bit much Why? If you knowingly decide to poison thousands of people, that makes you a mass murderer. Since when are we so lenient about those?
- ufo 3y ago
  Most countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, for good reason.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    How is that working out for you?
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Some places don't execute mass murderers either. There are plenty of arguments around this. For example, based on the crime rates in places with death sentences, I'm not sure it provides as strong a disincentive you think it does.
- atoav 3y ago
  Because undoing a death sentence if it turns out the culpit was one level higher in the corporate chain is pretty hard. I agree in principle that IF your country has the death sentence, there is no reason why it should not be applied in such cases as well. But I think death sentences are problematic. Put them in jail and bar them from ever running a company again. That should be enough.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  ... but they're in suits! (nah joking burn them in hell, they are all bunch of power hungry sociopaths, normal folks wouldn't survive a day among such C-suites due to being decent human beings). But realize that list for whatever action would be done would be... very long. Monsanto, bunch of Wall street guys (if you trace actions to real consequences), this and probably many more. I think life sentence in maximum security prison in US would be actually worse. Also, you soon hit grey area, say defense industry and its bribing of government to start wars that killed millions... where do you draw the line? One's man patriot is another's murderer
at_a_remove 3y ago
I dunno, if there's no money left, the execs can live in a cell where they are fed the various tainted products, but not told which.
akokanka 3y ago
[flagged]
paiute 3y ago
I think this is naive. Selling off a large company like this is not smart, think about it for a minute. First, who owns 3M (I own a handful of shares for example). Average shareholders will get screwed. Then think about who will buy their assets (IP and manufacturing). Will it be foreign companies? What will the contracts for medical supplies look like for like? Companies that discover they are doing harm will be incentivized to bury, lie, and hide. It’s not that simple,
- acdha 3y ago
  What J&J tried is called the Texas two-step: they fold the liability into a subsidiary, which relocates to another state and declares bankruptcy. This has failed for that specific case but that is not a given. This is especially common for industries like mining which are guaranteed to require significant cleanup: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1127520991/west-virginia-coal-mining-alpha https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1127520991/west-virginia-coal... https://www.propublica.org/article/west-virginia-coal-blackjewel-bankruptcy-pollution https://www.propublica.org/article/west-virginia-coal-blackj...
ornornor 3y ago
> In this case, force 3M to pay for everything Hasn’t that ship sailed recently? They were sued for damages and cleanup costs from PFAS and won, resulting in them not be liable?

aaomidi 3y ago

I don’t think death sentence is actually a bit much here. Im generally against death sentences for heat of the moment situations. Think: murder. But in a situation where you’ve had legal teams working with you, where you’ve been planning this out, and where you know what the damage to this is etc., you’re basically a massive threat to society. The active planning, intent, and maliciousness is something that should be made an example out of. Death sentences for crimes where the person doing the crime likely didn’t even get a chance to think about the consequences is useless. Death sentences and removal of all assets from corporate executives that have caused a significant amount of damage would have a deterrence effect.

nier 3y ago
For me, the death penalty contains traces of mercy and life-long incarceration does not. You take away someone’s freedom for the rest of their life instead of putting them out of their misery.
- mcny 3y ago
  I agree with you on death penalty but the parent also says removal of all assets. So I think life in prison with no possibility of parole plus removal of all assets is ideal. But I think this should only apply to the CEO and the board not everyone up and down the chain at least in the US where we have a “right to work”. I don’t know if the law will allow an effective removal of all assets. I’m thinking of trust fund babies and such… Edit: at least in the US, I think there is a possibility of a pardon or commutation by POTUS. I think we need to abolish that as well or at least it should be that if you pardon or commute the sentence for one person for a crime, it automatically makes the same change (pardon/commutation) for everyone convicted of that crime.
  - makapuf 3y ago
    Couple that with impossibility to be ignorant of what happens inside of a company, because if not, top level management has a big incentive to have a buffer to keep them purposedly unknowing of this kind of doings.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    > I don’t know if the law will allow an effective removal of all assets. I’m thinking of trust fund babies and such… Civil asset forfeiture. The money itself is complicit in the criminal act.
- justinclift 3y ago
  The quality of that extended life is probably something that needs to be accounted for too. "Plush mansion, good company, etc" vs "left to rot in a hole" type of thing.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  TBH I'm not much interested in `Punishment`, so long incarceration does not interest me personally.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    You suggest vile acts should be permitted without consequence?
    - InvertedRhodium 3y ago
      Consequences and punishment are different concepts, I support the death penalty in the case of egregious acts primarily from the perspective of cost and efficiency of removing an unacceptable risk to society. I don’t need to see them tortured beforehand, as it serves little to no purpose (in my opinion).
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - aaomidi 3y ago
        Basically this.
- norir 3y ago
  Then why not make the death penalty an option for the condemned? They could choose between life in prison or an execution in a form of their choosing if they wish to be put out of their misery.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    “It’s your choice, but the daily beatings will continue until you consent to your own execution.”
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > life-long incarceration does not There is no such thing as life long incarceration. They always get out early
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    Maybe not in your jurisdiction... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_and_Wales#Whole_life_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_England_a...
GauntletWizard 3y ago
Murder can also be premeditated. In many cases, proof of premeditation is required for "Murder One".

ponector 3y ago

What kind of person? Regular millionaire/billionaire who know that they easily can get away with such decision using their wealth and/or power. Musk is totally ok to use materials mined by enslaved children of Madagascar. Or abuse his employees. Or fire people who try to organize a union. Or do plenty of other shady or illegal stuff. That kind of person.

mrweasel 3y ago
Let me rephrase then: What is wrong in the brain of these people? They have to live on the planet too, they have friend and family, people they care... No? Normal people can't get away with things like this, because the decisions would haunt our dreams.
- loganfrederick 3y ago
  I dove into the science of psychopathy a few years ago after a family incident where my father imploded his life and much of the family's through self-destructive activities and there is actually a bunch of smart people studying the neuroscience of pyschopaths. Two great books to start with: - The Science of Evil: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/dp/0465031420/ https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/... - The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscious: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-Conscience/dp/0770435866/ https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Without-...
- IanCal 3y ago
  I'm not sure. Regular people make, logically, truly horrifying decisions constantly. I bought some wine for a friends get-together. That's pretty normal. But in doing so, I chose to have wine rather than vaccinate some children. I chose having a drink over the lives of deprived children. Am I not a monster?
- dexterdog 3y ago
  Which is why abnormal people are drawn to this kind of power.
- 3y ago

xvector 3y ago

Death sentence is absolutely not too much. It's an extraordinarily effective deterrent (see Singapore), and I don't know where the narrative comes from that it's not. Some people simply need to die.

gmac 3y ago
Feels weird to get into a high-school debate about capital punishment here, but in essence: (a) Sometimes the wrong people get convicted. In this context, irreversible punishments suck. (b) “We’re going to kill you because killing people is wrong” is a weird look.
- xvector 3y ago
  (a) Sometimes the wrong people get put in prison or solitary confinement for life too, which is effectively decades-long torture. It is arbitrary to draw the line at the death penalty, which generally causes less suffering. (Read statements from prisoners in lifelong solitary confinement.) (b) It's not. Killing people that are evil is fine. Killing babies is wrong. You are intentionally simplifying the moral argument here to "killing people is wrong."
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    >which is effectively decades-long torture Maybe don't make prisons so awful that they constitute torture? That's very much a thing that we know how to do. >Killing people that are evil is fine. Who gets to decide what is evil? What happens when the definition of evil changes? Practically every genocide in history has been justified by that logic - they are evil, therefore we are justified in killing them. Other than vengeance, there is little benefit to state-sanctioned killing for the purposes of punishment; all state-sanctioned killing carries the risk of justifying other kinds of state-sanctioned killing, by removing the simple and clear moral foundation of what a legitimate state can or cannot do.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Killing innocent people is wrong, killing murderers is good. Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials before executing them.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago

I read once about a corporate death penalty that I think should really be made into law: where a corporate entity commits something so heinous that a fine or what have you is simply not enough. I cannot find the link but the process would go about such as: - The entire entity would be taken on ownership by the government agency at play. No existing stakeholders would be paid anything for this and operations would continue, assuming the operation is worth salvaging of course, with the corrections made needed. - The entity would then be either sold in-whole or carved up into pieces to other large businesses. Shareholders, stakeholders, or investors are not made whole: instead, the revenue from these sales is used to repay or remediate the damage caused by the company. - Top level leadership is, if it's felt is required, charged for neglecting their duties as leaders and fined, jailed, or otherwise punished. - In the end the original entity is dissolved entirely, any remaining assets are sold in a process similar to the above, and the name is added to a "dead corporation" list and cannot be used at any time in the future.

oakwhiz 3y ago
Sounds like a gift to short sellers.
- pigeonhole123 3y ago
  Allowing fraud is a gift to speculators just as much. And criminals.
- orbz 3y ago
  Wouldn’t this reduce the share price, effectively baking in the externality risk?
  - lmm 3y ago
    It would reduce the share price of companies that shareholders thought were at high risk of committing a major crime, and create an incentive for companies that care about their share price to make it very clear that they weren't going to do crime and e.g. have policies to prevent it.

14 3y ago

I have to disagree if someone knowingly poisoned my baby then if death penalty isn’t imposed I’m going to attempt to get revenge myself. The death penalty was probably effective at calming the entire country from rage.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
I think, as a general principle, justice should not be based around appeasing a potential lynch mob.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  There's lynch mob, and then there's righteous rage at acts so heinous that lack of punishment would call into question the legitimacy of the entire social structure. This may be something that doesn't resonate with people who are not parents, but: if your government is willing to tolerate intentional, casual murder of children at scale, what's the point of having it in the first place? And let's remember: a government isn't imposed by the heavens. It's just another agreement between people, at scale.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    I don't think that's restricted to parents: I've felt that way since I was ten years old. That doesn't mean we have to kill the perpetrators: just remove them. Retribution might make us feel better, but it doesn't solve anything. It's shutting the stable doors after the horse has bolted. We don't need a special judicial exception for the mass murder of children: we need that to not happen in the first place. At that scale, it's not one person: it's an institutional failing. We need those institutional failings to not happen: talk of punishment, except to the extent it has a deterrent effect (which I'm generally sceptical of), is a distraction. Aviation rarely blames pilots for plane crashes, even when it's clearly their fault (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_control_of_whole_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_...): they do things like a two-in-cockpit policy. Aeroplanes are among the safest places in the world. That attitude seems a better one to mimic. What does it truly mean, to say “never again”?

lupusreal 3y ago

At least six babies were killed; that's mass murder. It was done in cold blood, planned out ahead of time. The death penalty was the only fitting sentence.

Hackbraten 3y ago
The death penalty is never a fitting sentence. Prosecutors and judges can make mistakes. Executing someone is something you can never undo.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  There are plenty of crimes that deserve death. We don’t impose it because we’re unsure about culpability. But if you did it, you do indeed deserve to die.
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    >There are plenty of crimes that deserve death. In your opinion. In the opinion of many others, there is no crime that deserves death, hence the widespread abolition of the death penalty in developed countries. We used to execute people for stealing cattle and I imagine that many people at the time though that it was an entirely right and proper punishment. A jurisdiction that uses the death penalty with any real frequency will at some point inevitably execute an innocent man. What is the appropriate punishment for those who supported the laws that caused his death?
    - devilbunny 3y ago
      I don’t support it because it’s irrevocable, but that’s the reason to oppose it. Some crimes do deserve it, even if we don’t impose it every time.
serf 3y ago
i'll get behind the death penalty once we get that 100% accurate justice system i've been waiting on. until then i'll just view it as a tool of the government to sate public bloodlust with regards to heinous crimes with the very thing they seek to punish : murder. the very embodiment of "well, that's the best we can do." when confronted with the idea of correcting the loss of a life -- two losses to make the original victim feel less alone. Not a great correction.

rocqua 3y ago

You can't "sell the company". Any company you sell with an immediate and complete change of management is very likely completely dead in the water. Institutional knowledge is very important.

MarkMarine 3y ago

Unfortunately the companies manage to wriggle out of all liability by saying they are bankrupt or transferring to a new company structure. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsona... https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/2-billion-verdict-in-missouri-motivates-jj-to-settle-talcum-powder-lawsuits.html https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/2-billion-verdict... $200,000 per victim for knowingly being given cancer. Obscene. I think China executing people is much closer to justice than our system.

ordinaryradical 3y ago
Something like a real solution is to create a way to reintroduce personal liability for executive teams in cases like this where extraordinary harm is done. Human beings need to have their own assets and personal well being at risk, otherwise the incentives for perpetrating mass pollution are too lucrative. Jail and financial annihilation are basically the only ways to try to counterbalance the massive upside you can get from sociopathic behavior like this. We need to start treating this more like fraud, but perpetrated as a form of violence.
- MarkMarine 3y ago
  I completely agree
atoav 3y ago
So if I want to legally murder people I can do it if I create corporation and create a plausible deniable way of killing them? Cool. Certainly a good system. If the hardest punishment is a fine, it becomes a fee for rich people.

ekianjo 3y ago

> Death sentence is probably a bit much Why? If you knowingly decide to poison thousands of people, that makes you a mass murderer. Since when are we so lenient about those?

ufo 3y ago
Most countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, for good reason.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  How is that working out for you?
lostlogin 3y ago
Some places don't execute mass murderers either. There are plenty of arguments around this. For example, based on the crime rates in places with death sentences, I'm not sure it provides as strong a disincentive you think it does.
atoav 3y ago
Because undoing a death sentence if it turns out the culpit was one level higher in the corporate chain is pretty hard. I agree in principle that IF your country has the death sentence, there is no reason why it should not be applied in such cases as well. But I think death sentences are problematic. Put them in jail and bar them from ever running a company again. That should be enough.
saiya-jin 3y ago
... but they're in suits! (nah joking burn them in hell, they are all bunch of power hungry sociopaths, normal folks wouldn't survive a day among such C-suites due to being decent human beings). But realize that list for whatever action would be done would be... very long. Monsanto, bunch of Wall street guys (if you trace actions to real consequences), this and probably many more. I think life sentence in maximum security prison in US would be actually worse. Also, you soon hit grey area, say defense industry and its bribing of government to start wars that killed millions... where do you draw the line? One's man patriot is another's murderer

at_a_remove 3y ago

I dunno, if there's no money left, the execs can live in a cell where they are fed the various tainted products, but not told which.

akokanka 3y ago

[flagged]

paiute 3y ago

I think this is naive. Selling off a large company like this is not smart, think about it for a minute. First, who owns 3M (I own a handful of shares for example). Average shareholders will get screwed. Then think about who will buy their assets (IP and manufacturing). Will it be foreign companies? What will the contracts for medical supplies look like for like? Companies that discover they are doing harm will be incentivized to bury, lie, and hide. It’s not that simple,

acdha 3y ago
What J&J tried is called the Texas two-step: they fold the liability into a subsidiary, which relocates to another state and declares bankruptcy. This has failed for that specific case but that is not a given. This is especially common for industries like mining which are guaranteed to require significant cleanup: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1127520991/west-virginia-coal-mining-alpha https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1127520991/west-virginia-coal... https://www.propublica.org/article/west-virginia-coal-blackjewel-bankruptcy-pollution https://www.propublica.org/article/west-virginia-coal-blackj...

ornornor 3y ago

> In this case, force 3M to pay for everything Hasn’t that ship sailed recently? They were sued for damages and cleanup costs from PFAS and won, resulting in them not be liable?