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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

by 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.

by layer8 2y ago

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.