6 ms·

We need to start seizing IP into the public domain and sending shareholders to jail when their companies misbehave. I'm on the hook if my dog bites somebody, it

We need to start seizing IP into the public domain and sending shareholders to jail when their companies misbehave. I'm on the hook if my dog bites somebody, it should be no different if the role of my dog is played by a company. Monetary risk is not a real enough risk.

layer8 2y ago
While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment, I don’t see how “sending shareholders to jail” could possibly work, given how many people own shares. It’s like your dog would be collectively owned by a million people. Maybe you mean the board?
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  A charitable reading of that would be shareholders who have enough sway to push corporate action. Boards, really.
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  To continue the analogy, if a dog is aggressive and hurts people it gets put down, why not put down the corporation?
  - brookst 2y ago
    Because the ripple effects are much larger. Lay off a few thousand people in most cities and you’re sinking all sorts of businesses that had nothing to do with the crime.
    - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
      Putting down a corporation doesn't necessarily mean ending a productive operation. Employee or government takeover are options too.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        Right, just transfer ownership to the employees and let them decide which leaders to keep around.
      - brookst 2y ago
        So it’s good for employees when the company does something criminal? That seems like misaligned incentives. If you and I can engineer a crime, we can seize all of the stock from shareholders? I don’t think these solutions are well thought through.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    I do think judicial dissolution is underused, but it should require a rather high bar of malfeasance. Significant penality for executives or the board seems like a more sensible first step in general.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  "Shareholder" are not people who own a stock in robin hood. It's large players with board positions who reap the benefits and turn a blind eye to blatant corruption.
  - pwg 2y ago
    > "Shareholder" are not people who own a stock in robin hood. If you own even a fraction of a share of a business (say IBM), you are, by definition, a "shareholder" in that business. It does not matter if it is via the RobinHood app., or a JP Morgan Chase Premier Brokerage Account.
    - datavirtue 2y ago
      Yeah, this place is starting to sound like reddit. Unhinged SJW everywhere.
      - maeil 2y ago
        I own stocks in several companies, as most people on here probably do. There's nothing wrong about what they're saying, I'm a shareholder. If one of the companies I've invested in commits genocide I don't think it would be unfair for me to be punished in some way beyond the monetary loss of my investment. Though I agree that monetary punishments to the company are much more effective than jail for some random shareholders. They just need to be large enough.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        It's not about justice, it's about designing incentives to prevent future bad behavior. If you have neither control nor information that is sufficient for betting that the investment won't harm people, don't invest.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    The people on the board are rarely the largest shareholder. In the case of both Google and Facebook, the board doesn’t really have too much control at all since the founders hold the majority of voting power.
- miohtama 2y ago
  There is no room for million people in any jail system on the planet. What should happen is to send the share price to zero or give to the government. This was e.g. done with 2008 financial crisis for Fannie Mae and it had been paying dividends to the US citizens since then. However there exists discussion whether this was a good thing in the end.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    FYI, the US prison population is 1.2 million. Obviously that's not the same as havingva million of currently empty capacity, but still.
  - daedrdev 2y ago
    Some of the largest shareholders include pension plans and every day peoples retirement accounts
    - miohtama 2y ago
      Yes, I got voted to oblivion for stating this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42831013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42831013
- threatofrain 2y ago
  But the board is just an elected representative of the shareholders. They don't necessarily own anything and they don't have day-to-day insights over the company, which is where the details of crimes lurk. They might not even have any direct financial interest in the company, and instead they're employed by an institution to represent their interests.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I figure the sentence would be something like: > 5 years of jail time distributed across the top 20 shareholders proportional to their stake Ideally a judge wouldn't hand out such a sentence if it involved punishing people who didn't have a controlling stake, but I don't think we should rule such things out. I can be held criminally liable for negligence when my dog does something that I wasn't even around for or aware of, there's no reason that shareholders couldn't also. If you don't have enough control to prevent your property from committing crimes, you should probably change that. I don't know enough about where corporate structure norms stop and where the law starts to know if "the board" is something that is always going to be available for prosecution, which is why in general I mean the shareholders.
scarface_74 2y ago
So should every one who owns stock in a company - including mutual funds go to jail?
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Maybe? It should at least be debatable, not taboo, to consider. One's investment into a criminal enterprise could arguably be contributing to or encouraging that crime. Having this nearly-impenetrable corporate veil that shields decision-makers, footsoldiers, and funders (both institutional and retail investors) from consequences of their actions seems like the extreme end of a spectrum that should be explored. But when you even bring up that it's a spectrum, people clutch their pearls and trot out the "think of those poor retiree passive investors" line that shuts down thought and prevents even considering change.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > It should at least be debatable, not taboo, to consider It's not taboo, it's stupid and unworkable. You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. Massive. Fines. Everyone keeps trying to be creative about penalising corporations without levying massive fines. Just levy the fines. You don't need to lay anyone off, you're just wiping the shareholders (and management) of their wealth and transferring ownership to creditors. The "corporate death penalty" was the greatest invention of the corporate lobbyist. It successfully derails conversations about massive fines, which are workable and scary, into ones about charter revocations and whatnot, which is not.
    - maeil 2y ago
      Agreed that massive fines (or, in my view preferably, massive stock dilutions) are better. However > You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. This is a poor argument. If the law would be as such and be upheld, everyone would start making damm sure the companies they invest in are trying their hardest to adhere to the law. It would also work as a strong counterbalance to megacorps. Both which would be incredibly positive developments. It's similar to rules in football. "Well if you start carding players for getting angry at the ref then half the team will get a yellow card every game!". Yes, the very first game this might happen. The second and third it sure won't.
adrr 2y ago
That would be like you sending the whole family to jail if one of them commits a crime. They are separate legal entities.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  No, it would be like sending one or more family members to jail because of what their dog did. If the family can't agree on who is responsible for the dog's behavior on their own, it's not crazy to distribute the sentence to more than one family member.
  - adrr 2y ago
    Dog isn’t a legal entity.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Corporations can't be jailed, so if the sentence would otherwise be jail time, neither are they in any way that matters.
throwaway98797 2y ago
yea sure let’s make taking risks even harder we as a society are better off when people take risks
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  That's only true when they're risks associated with outcomes that people generally find favorable. If the corresponding reward is that I pull off a successful crime, then we as a society are worse off for having funded the risk.

layer8 2y ago

While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment, I don’t see how “sending shareholders to jail” could possibly work, given how many people own shares. It’s like your dog would be collectively owned by a million people. Maybe you mean the board?

dclowd9901 2y ago
A charitable reading of that would be shareholders who have enough sway to push corporate action. Boards, really.
RobotToaster 2y ago
To continue the analogy, if a dog is aggressive and hurts people it gets put down, why not put down the corporation?
- brookst 2y ago
  Because the ripple effects are much larger. Lay off a few thousand people in most cities and you’re sinking all sorts of businesses that had nothing to do with the crime.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    Putting down a corporation doesn't necessarily mean ending a productive operation. Employee or government takeover are options too.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Right, just transfer ownership to the employees and let them decide which leaders to keep around.
    - brookst 2y ago
      So it’s good for employees when the company does something criminal? That seems like misaligned incentives. If you and I can engineer a crime, we can seize all of the stock from shareholders? I don’t think these solutions are well thought through.
- thfuran 2y ago
  I do think judicial dissolution is underused, but it should require a rather high bar of malfeasance. Significant penality for executives or the board seems like a more sensible first step in general.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
"Shareholder" are not people who own a stock in robin hood. It's large players with board positions who reap the benefits and turn a blind eye to blatant corruption.
- pwg 2y ago
  > "Shareholder" are not people who own a stock in robin hood. If you own even a fraction of a share of a business (say IBM), you are, by definition, a "shareholder" in that business. It does not matter if it is via the RobinHood app., or a JP Morgan Chase Premier Brokerage Account.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Yeah, this place is starting to sound like reddit. Unhinged SJW everywhere.
    - maeil 2y ago
      I own stocks in several companies, as most people on here probably do. There's nothing wrong about what they're saying, I'm a shareholder. If one of the companies I've invested in commits genocide I don't think it would be unfair for me to be punished in some way beyond the monetary loss of my investment. Though I agree that monetary punishments to the company are much more effective than jail for some random shareholders. They just need to be large enough.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      It's not about justice, it's about designing incentives to prevent future bad behavior. If you have neither control nor information that is sufficient for betting that the investment won't harm people, don't invest.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  The people on the board are rarely the largest shareholder. In the case of both Google and Facebook, the board doesn’t really have too much control at all since the founders hold the majority of voting power.
miohtama 2y ago
There is no room for million people in any jail system on the planet. What should happen is to send the share price to zero or give to the government. This was e.g. done with 2008 financial crisis for Fannie Mae and it had been paying dividends to the US citizens since then. However there exists discussion whether this was a good thing in the end.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  FYI, the US prison population is 1.2 million. Obviously that's not the same as havingva million of currently empty capacity, but still.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  Some of the largest shareholders include pension plans and every day peoples retirement accounts
  - miohtama 2y ago
    Yes, I got voted to oblivion for stating this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42831013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42831013
threatofrain 2y ago
But the board is just an elected representative of the shareholders. They don't necessarily own anything and they don't have day-to-day insights over the company, which is where the details of crimes lurk. They might not even have any direct financial interest in the company, and instead they're employed by an institution to represent their interests.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I figure the sentence would be something like: > 5 years of jail time distributed across the top 20 shareholders proportional to their stake Ideally a judge wouldn't hand out such a sentence if it involved punishing people who didn't have a controlling stake, but I don't think we should rule such things out. I can be held criminally liable for negligence when my dog does something that I wasn't even around for or aware of, there's no reason that shareholders couldn't also. If you don't have enough control to prevent your property from committing crimes, you should probably change that. I don't know enough about where corporate structure norms stop and where the law starts to know if "the board" is something that is always going to be available for prosecution, which is why in general I mean the shareholders.

scarface_74 2y ago

So should every one who owns stock in a company - including mutual funds go to jail?

ryandrake 2y ago
Maybe? It should at least be debatable, not taboo, to consider. One's investment into a criminal enterprise could arguably be contributing to or encouraging that crime. Having this nearly-impenetrable corporate veil that shields decision-makers, footsoldiers, and funders (both institutional and retail investors) from consequences of their actions seems like the extreme end of a spectrum that should be explored. But when you even bring up that it's a spectrum, people clutch their pearls and trot out the "think of those poor retiree passive investors" line that shuts down thought and prevents even considering change.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > It should at least be debatable, not taboo, to consider It's not taboo, it's stupid and unworkable. You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. Massive. Fines. Everyone keeps trying to be creative about penalising corporations without levying massive fines. Just levy the fines. You don't need to lay anyone off, you're just wiping the shareholders (and management) of their wealth and transferring ownership to creditors. The "corporate death penalty" was the greatest invention of the corporate lobbyist. It successfully derails conversations about massive fines, which are workable and scary, into ones about charter revocations and whatnot, which is not.
  - maeil 2y ago
    Agreed that massive fines (or, in my view preferably, massive stock dilutions) are better. However > You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. This is a poor argument. If the law would be as such and be upheld, everyone would start making damm sure the companies they invest in are trying their hardest to adhere to the law. It would also work as a strong counterbalance to megacorps. Both which would be incredibly positive developments. It's similar to rules in football. "Well if you start carding players for getting angry at the ref then half the team will get a yellow card every game!". Yes, the very first game this might happen. The second and third it sure won't.

adrr 2y ago

That would be like you sending the whole family to jail if one of them commits a crime. They are separate legal entities.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
No, it would be like sending one or more family members to jail because of what their dog did. If the family can't agree on who is responsible for the dog's behavior on their own, it's not crazy to distribute the sentence to more than one family member.
- adrr 2y ago
  Dog isn’t a legal entity.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Corporations can't be jailed, so if the sentence would otherwise be jail time, neither are they in any way that matters.

throwaway98797 2y ago

yea sure let’s make taking risks even harder we as a society are better off when people take risks

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
That's only true when they're risks associated with outcomes that people generally find favorable. If the corresponding reward is that I pull off a successful crime, then we as a society are worse off for having funded the risk.