4 ms·

Indeed, the real justice would be to make them pay for cleanup efforts for the next 200 years

ben_w 3y ago
How are you planning on enforcing that given: 1) bankruptcy is a thing, and 2) that period exceeds the lifespan of not only those responsible, but also any kids they might have conceived in extreme old age, and people can just… choose not work for (or invest in) a company that's been stuck with a long-term obligation. I can see how it would be possible to make criminal liability stick on all members of a chain of command, corporate or otherwise, responsible for some decision. I can't see how setting a multi-lifetime punishment could possibly work.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > 1) bankruptcy is a thing Students loans, famously, can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and follow you your entire life. Should we have one set of law for the capital class and another for mere peasants?
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    When you sign up for student loans, you are aware (or at least should be) that they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They aren't dischargable in bankruptcy because if they were, far fewer would be made, and far fewer non-rich people would go to college, and we don't want that. Nothing would perpetuate class divisions more than restricting education to those with money. Nobody would ever get a student loan for an anthropology degree again. I don't necessarily agree with this system, as an 18 yr old probably does not have the life experience to make such large financial decisions, and I think perhaps far fewer people should go to college for things of no economic value, but the system has logic to it. It's meant to benefit the "peasants". Rich people don't need student loans and can pay for their kids' degrees. Fines aren't the same. A company only has so much money. Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. You need to allow corporations to file bankruptcy to have a healthy economy, in fact, America's bankruptcy laws are (according to some economists) one of the reasons we have such a strong economy.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      What you can do is liquidate the company and set up a non-profit fund with that money with explicit mandate to do the clean-up. Let the non-profit invest said money ethically to fund its operations. Ideally, of course, the initial capital should also include the personal wealth of all the top management personally responsible for this. > Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. And why not? Do you not see how this kind of system is deliberately engineered to produce pushback under just such a pretense by, effectively, diluting and spreading responsibility wide enough across society? OTOH if we stop taking the "ohnoes, it will hurt all those middle class investors" argument seriously, it would actually encourage people to invest ethically instead of just blindly giving their money to whichever random sociopath offers the highest return. (And yes, I do have considerable personal investments of my own.)
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > And why not? Because the biggest voting block in many democracies is the pensioners, so this being possible is a good way to lose elections. > Do you not see how this kind of system is deliberately engineered to produce pushback under just such a pretense by, effectively, diluting and spreading responsibility wide enough across society? OTOH if we stop taking the "ohnoes, it will hurt all those middle class investors" argument seriously, it would actually encourage people to invest ethically instead of just blindly giving their money to whichever random sociopath offers the highest return. Everything I have seen in my life leads me to think that people are pretty blind to risks when you dangle the possibility of a large return in front of them. Ponzi schemes, Brexit, lotteries, wars, unrestricted AI — at every scale, people will enthusiastically go for all of them in the name of some hoped-for benefit and call you names if you point out the risks they're taking.
        ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > Because the biggest voting block in many democracies is the pensioners, so this being possible is a good way to lose elections Imagine you would write ‘white people are the biggest voting block’ - this would be questionable as a justification for bad policy, right? So kids are brutally held responsible for their bad decision, but pensioners aren’t. It has become so normal to denigrate and mistreat the younger generation you don’t even consciously notice it any more. It’s a form of discrimination just like any other
  - ben_w 3y ago
    1) That's a reason to change the student loan rules where you live. 2) When a corporation goes bankrupt, it can get dissolved. This is the corporate equivalent of the death penalty, which you may approve of, but it still isn't going to help: all the assets get sold, and all the investor groups (a) know that (b) can get the stuff cheap because it's a fire-sale, and (c) know the exact size and shape of the market opportunity created by the dissolution. And there's a workforce right there, who were all laid off and are looking for work, who have exactly the skills you need and are already conveniently located and familiar with the equipment. The debt doesn't get fully paid off, there's just nobody to do the paying.

How are you planning on enforcing that given: 1) bankruptcy is a thing, and 2) that period exceeds the lifespan of not only those responsible, but also any kids they might have conceived in extreme old age, and people can just… choose not work for (or invest in) a company that's been stuck with a long-term obligation. I can see how it would be possible to make criminal liability stick on all members of a chain of command, corporate or otherwise, responsible for some decision. I can't see how setting a multi-lifetime punishment could possibly work.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> 1) bankruptcy is a thing Students loans, famously, can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and follow you your entire life. Should we have one set of law for the capital class and another for mere peasants?
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  When you sign up for student loans, you are aware (or at least should be) that they can't be discharged in bankruptcy. They aren't dischargable in bankruptcy because if they were, far fewer would be made, and far fewer non-rich people would go to college, and we don't want that. Nothing would perpetuate class divisions more than restricting education to those with money. Nobody would ever get a student loan for an anthropology degree again. I don't necessarily agree with this system, as an 18 yr old probably does not have the life experience to make such large financial decisions, and I think perhaps far fewer people should go to college for things of no economic value, but the system has logic to it. It's meant to benefit the "peasants". Rich people don't need student loans and can pay for their kids' degrees. Fines aren't the same. A company only has so much money. Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. You need to allow corporations to file bankruptcy to have a healthy economy, in fact, America's bankruptcy laws are (according to some economists) one of the reasons we have such a strong economy.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    What you can do is liquidate the company and set up a non-profit fund with that money with explicit mandate to do the clean-up. Let the non-profit invest said money ethically to fund its operations. Ideally, of course, the initial capital should also include the personal wealth of all the top management personally responsible for this. > Many of the owners of the company are pensions funds, etc., that are held by the middle class. You can't reasonably squeeze money from everyone who had an ETF that contained 3M. And why not? Do you not see how this kind of system is deliberately engineered to produce pushback under just such a pretense by, effectively, diluting and spreading responsibility wide enough across society? OTOH if we stop taking the "ohnoes, it will hurt all those middle class investors" argument seriously, it would actually encourage people to invest ethically instead of just blindly giving their money to whichever random sociopath offers the highest return. (And yes, I do have considerable personal investments of my own.)
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > And why not? Because the biggest voting block in many democracies is the pensioners, so this being possible is a good way to lose elections. > Do you not see how this kind of system is deliberately engineered to produce pushback under just such a pretense by, effectively, diluting and spreading responsibility wide enough across society? OTOH if we stop taking the "ohnoes, it will hurt all those middle class investors" argument seriously, it would actually encourage people to invest ethically instead of just blindly giving their money to whichever random sociopath offers the highest return. Everything I have seen in my life leads me to think that people are pretty blind to risks when you dangle the possibility of a large return in front of them. Ponzi schemes, Brexit, lotteries, wars, unrestricted AI — at every scale, people will enthusiastically go for all of them in the name of some hoped-for benefit and call you names if you point out the risks they're taking.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > Because the biggest voting block in many democracies is the pensioners, so this being possible is a good way to lose elections Imagine you would write ‘white people are the biggest voting block’ - this would be questionable as a justification for bad policy, right? So kids are brutally held responsible for their bad decision, but pensioners aren’t. It has become so normal to denigrate and mistreat the younger generation you don’t even consciously notice it any more. It’s a form of discrimination just like any other
- ben_w 3y ago
  1) That's a reason to change the student loan rules where you live. 2) When a corporation goes bankrupt, it can get dissolved. This is the corporate equivalent of the death penalty, which you may approve of, but it still isn't going to help: all the assets get sold, and all the investor groups (a) know that (b) can get the stuff cheap because it's a fire-sale, and (c) know the exact size and shape of the market opportunity created by the dissolution. And there's a workforce right there, who were all laid off and are looking for work, who have exactly the skills you need and are already conveniently located and familiar with the equipment. The debt doesn't get fully paid off, there's just nobody to do the paying.