4 ms·

>Contrast that to how individuals get the hammer put down on them by the justice system if they so much as fart in the wrong room. The lesson from the last 50 y

by gruez 2y ago

>Contrast that to how individuals get the hammer put down on them by the justice system if they so much as fart in the wrong room. The lesson from the last 50 years should be: If you want to commit a crime and get away with it, do it as a corporation. That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. It's not any different than say, simple property crimes (eg. stealing or vandalism) vs white collar crimes, both of which can be perpetrated by individuals but the latter are far harder to prosecute. Stealing a candy bar is an open and shut case, especially with surveillance footage. A long firm fraud[1] is far harder to prosecute. If you buy a truckload of candy bars on credit, fail to repay the vendor, and declare bankruptcy, prosecutors are going to have a hard time prosecuting the case. Having bad business acumen isn't a crime, so on the surface nothing illegal has happened. To prove wrongdoing they must prove that you intentionally acquired goods on credit without intending to pay it back, which is far harder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_firm_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_firm_fraud

regularization 2y ago
> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. I Yes, but why are individual crimes easy to prosecute and corporate crimes not. These are not things that just popped into being like a thunderstorm. They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way.
- pwg 2y ago
  The GP did not mean "individual crimes". The meaning was: "most crimes that an individual will commit turn out to be easy to prosecute". I.e., shoplifter steals candy bar, surveillance camera has clear view of the shoplifters face, and of the theft, and security camera in parking lot gets license plate of car they drive away in. Easy conviction for prosecutor, as there little question of who committed nor of what crime was committed. Contrast that with the GP's example "business type" crime. To prove the "business" committed a crime, they have to find a way to prove the business, when buying the truckload of candy bars, at the time of the purchase, intentionally never intended to pay back the loan taken out to buy the truckload. Proving intent (i.e., effectively "mind-reading") is way more difficult than proving a crime happened in the "shoplifter" example above. There's no security camera footage recording the "intent" of the business when it purchased the truckload of candy bars.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    That does not refute their main point: > They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way. It’s difficult to prove intent but we make that necessary to prove when it doesn’t have to be. It could be that negligence is enough for it to be a crime.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      Negligence has the same problem as intent. The difficulty with corporations is that demonstrating anything about their behavior at all (negligence, intent, ignorance, malice, stupidity...) requires doing so for a corporate body, in the sense of that word that refers to a thing visibly composed of many other distinct things. What does a corporation want? What does that question even mean? Was a corporation negligent? Does that refer to its officers? Its employees? Specific employees? A written plan? It's not that hard to come up with a definition of what you mean by a corporation for the purposes of defining a specific type of behavior. For example, you may regard negligence as being a property of the board, exhibited by the decisions the board makes. However, any given definition likely misses cases where a reasonable person would still tend to feel that "the corporation was negligent". This doesn't come from the for-profit aspects of a corporation, or its existence as part of a capitalist economy. It comes from the aggregate nature of a corporation, and talking about any sort of intent-ful behavior in the context of an aggregate is challenging.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  > They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way If you're trying to imply such crimes are hard to prosecute because The Powers That Be™ deliberately made it that, how does that explain the difficulty in prosecuting long firm fraud (and other white collar crimes)? You can argue that price fixing being hard to prosecute helps "corporate America" or whatever, but basically everyone is united against long firm fraud. Yet, it's hard to prosecute. Why is that?
  - philosopher1234 2y ago
    The thing to look for would be the way that making long firm fraud easy to prosecute would lead to companies being accountable for things they don’t want to be accountable for.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Like what? Moreover, what does this hold for public policy? Should we bring back debtor's prisons? That would be the obvious solution to long firm fraud.
      - philosopher1234 2y ago
        I’m not an expert, but the way you wrote your comment seemed to be discounting this possibility for no discernible reason
        gruez 2y ago
        Debtor's prisons were widely considered to be cruel, which is why they were abolished basically everywhere in the developed world.
        philosopher1234 2y ago
        Ok? I’m not arguing about debtors prisons? I’m not sure why you’ve focused on it
- vladms 2y ago
  For lots of problems the boring answer is: because there is no easy solution. For me as a software developer, I can imagine a lawyer asking "but why are there so many bugs in applications?". Would we be able to have a world in which there are almost no bugs? Yes, definitely. Would that be a better world?... I tend to say no. Because we trade more bugs for faster development. Because not all bugs are critical. Because some requirements are not completely consistent. And other reasons. I imagine it's the same with the law. That is not to say there are no improvements to be made, but unless multiple people with lots of experience in the field come and say "this would be better with no side effects" I would be cautious.
dartos 2y ago
> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not Maybe that’s something that should be adjusted by a legislative body. Crimes are only “easy” or “difficult” to prosecute because of the laws as they’re written.
- arcbyte 2y ago
  Most crimes done by individuals are intentional. That is most often not the case with corporations. Intentionality is an important requirement in most crimes. That doest mean that there isn't plenty of room for more centralized civil protections against negligence and recklessness.
  - CogitoCogito 2y ago
    I guess if our goal were to stop this sort of corporate behavior, we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations.
    - tehjoker 2y ago
      That or sharply raise the severity of lesser offenses if the perpetrator benefits financially from negligence with potential penalties including (a) corporate death penalty (revocation of charter) (b) nationalization.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations You still have the problem of punishing diffuse guilt. The correct answer is fines. Massive fines, potentially to the point of bankruptcy. We don't like to do that, however, because corporations have many stakeholders who may not deserve punishment, e.g. employees.
      - maeil 2y ago
        No, that's not why "we" don't like to do that, as there's countless way around that problem. They don't like to do that because it hurts the main stakeholders: those holding the reigns, the 0.1%. There's countless ways around the issue of "average" employees being punished. E.g. hard caps on top employee compensation for X years. Bans on dividends. Forced stock dilution, now that's a solid one. Create extra shares equivalent to 20% of market cap, given to the government who sells them on the open market. I'm sure there's holes in these but plenty of smarter people than me who can easily make them watertight.
noisy_boy 2y ago
Sure - then don't let them get big enough that they start to affect public at large. Name and shame the company, not the individuals. Let the public and market decide if such a company lives or dies. Right now, we are letting them get big enough that they are turning back and are eating us.
bongodongobob 2y ago
That's like saying "you can tell this is an Aspen by the way it is". The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude. We didn't just spawn in a video game and are forced to deal with it. "Cause that's what Dad says" isn't how it's supposed to be.
- gruez 2y ago
  >The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude Okay, what should we do to tackle long firm fraud?
  - flawn 2y ago
    Make the leadership (partly) liable again and create incentives against such happenings.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Overturn citizens united and/or fully treat businesses like a person (jail, death).
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Overturn citizens united Who are all the people lobbying to keep long firm fraud hard to prosecute? >and fully treat businesses like a person (jail, death). Getting stuff on credit and then defaulting on the debt isn't illegal for natural persons either.
      - bongodongobob 2y ago
        I have to believe you are a bot.
qwerty_clicks 2y ago
The era of trump will accelerate this further. Not that Obama Biden were saviors, Trump and co are putting fuel on the fire
arrosenberg 2y ago
That's true, which is why we should be heavily focused on keeping corporations small, discrete and weak enough to drown in a bathtub when they act up.
bmitc 2y ago
> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. That's part of the point and problem because it is by design. Rich people and corporations like treating their problems as so complex as to be completely intractable. "How do you tax me when I don't have income?!" "How can I be responsible for a system of decisions?!" Etc. Rich people and corporations want nothing but upsides, and they have designed the system to work this way. A great example of this is Steve Cohen, who got away with insider trading for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szayJV505M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szayJV505M. You're telling me that a small business owner whose direct reports repeatedly commit and are convicted of fraud would just be able to walk away? Yea, right. In Cohen's case, he just walked away and bought a sports team.

by gruez 2y ago

regularization 2y ago

> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. I Yes, but why are individual crimes easy to prosecute and corporate crimes not. These are not things that just popped into being like a thunderstorm. They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way.

pwg 2y ago
The GP did not mean "individual crimes". The meaning was: "most crimes that an individual will commit turn out to be easy to prosecute". I.e., shoplifter steals candy bar, surveillance camera has clear view of the shoplifters face, and of the theft, and security camera in parking lot gets license plate of car they drive away in. Easy conviction for prosecutor, as there little question of who committed nor of what crime was committed. Contrast that with the GP's example "business type" crime. To prove the "business" committed a crime, they have to find a way to prove the business, when buying the truckload of candy bars, at the time of the purchase, intentionally never intended to pay back the loan taken out to buy the truckload. Proving intent (i.e., effectively "mind-reading") is way more difficult than proving a crime happened in the "shoplifter" example above. There's no security camera footage recording the "intent" of the business when it purchased the truckload of candy bars.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  That does not refute their main point: > They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way. It’s difficult to prove intent but we make that necessary to prove when it doesn’t have to be. It could be that negligence is enough for it to be a crime.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    Negligence has the same problem as intent. The difficulty with corporations is that demonstrating anything about their behavior at all (negligence, intent, ignorance, malice, stupidity...) requires doing so for a corporate body, in the sense of that word that refers to a thing visibly composed of many other distinct things. What does a corporation want? What does that question even mean? Was a corporation negligent? Does that refer to its officers? Its employees? Specific employees? A written plan? It's not that hard to come up with a definition of what you mean by a corporation for the purposes of defining a specific type of behavior. For example, you may regard negligence as being a property of the board, exhibited by the decisions the board makes. However, any given definition likely misses cases where a reasonable person would still tend to feel that "the corporation was negligent". This doesn't come from the for-profit aspects of a corporation, or its existence as part of a capitalist economy. It comes from the aggregate nature of a corporation, and talking about any sort of intent-ful behavior in the context of an aggregate is challenging.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
gruez 2y ago
> They are a part of an economic and social system that makes things in such way If you're trying to imply such crimes are hard to prosecute because The Powers That Be™ deliberately made it that, how does that explain the difficulty in prosecuting long firm fraud (and other white collar crimes)? You can argue that price fixing being hard to prosecute helps "corporate America" or whatever, but basically everyone is united against long firm fraud. Yet, it's hard to prosecute. Why is that?
- philosopher1234 2y ago
  The thing to look for would be the way that making long firm fraud easy to prosecute would lead to companies being accountable for things they don’t want to be accountable for.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Like what? Moreover, what does this hold for public policy? Should we bring back debtor's prisons? That would be the obvious solution to long firm fraud.
    - philosopher1234 2y ago
      I’m not an expert, but the way you wrote your comment seemed to be discounting this possibility for no discernible reason
      - gruez 2y ago
        Debtor's prisons were widely considered to be cruel, which is why they were abolished basically everywhere in the developed world.
        philosopher1234 2y ago
        Ok? I’m not arguing about debtors prisons? I’m not sure why you’ve focused on it
vladms 2y ago
For lots of problems the boring answer is: because there is no easy solution. For me as a software developer, I can imagine a lawyer asking "but why are there so many bugs in applications?". Would we be able to have a world in which there are almost no bugs? Yes, definitely. Would that be a better world?... I tend to say no. Because we trade more bugs for faster development. Because not all bugs are critical. Because some requirements are not completely consistent. And other reasons. I imagine it's the same with the law. That is not to say there are no improvements to be made, but unless multiple people with lots of experience in the field come and say "this would be better with no side effects" I would be cautious.

dartos 2y ago

> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not Maybe that’s something that should be adjusted by a legislative body. Crimes are only “easy” or “difficult” to prosecute because of the laws as they’re written.

arcbyte 2y ago
Most crimes done by individuals are intentional. That is most often not the case with corporations. Intentionality is an important requirement in most crimes. That doest mean that there isn't plenty of room for more centralized civil protections against negligence and recklessness.
- CogitoCogito 2y ago
  I guess if our goal were to stop this sort of corporate behavior, we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations.
  - tehjoker 2y ago
    That or sharply raise the severity of lesser offenses if the perpetrator benefits financially from negligence with potential penalties including (a) corporate death penalty (revocation of charter) (b) nationalization.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > we would remove the requirement of a crime being intentional for corporations You still have the problem of punishing diffuse guilt. The correct answer is fines. Massive fines, potentially to the point of bankruptcy. We don't like to do that, however, because corporations have many stakeholders who may not deserve punishment, e.g. employees.
    - maeil 2y ago
      No, that's not why "we" don't like to do that, as there's countless way around that problem. They don't like to do that because it hurts the main stakeholders: those holding the reigns, the 0.1%. There's countless ways around the issue of "average" employees being punished. E.g. hard caps on top employee compensation for X years. Bans on dividends. Forced stock dilution, now that's a solid one. Create extra shares equivalent to 20% of market cap, given to the government who sells them on the open market. I'm sure there's holes in these but plenty of smarter people than me who can easily make them watertight.

noisy_boy 2y ago

Sure - then don't let them get big enough that they start to affect public at large. Name and shame the company, not the individuals. Let the public and market decide if such a company lives or dies. Right now, we are letting them get big enough that they are turning back and are eating us.

bongodongobob 2y ago

That's like saying "you can tell this is an Aspen by the way it is". The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude. We didn't just spawn in a video game and are forced to deal with it. "Cause that's what Dad says" isn't how it's supposed to be.

gruez 2y ago
>The idea is that we should have control over those laws dude Okay, what should we do to tackle long firm fraud?
- flawn 2y ago
  Make the leadership (partly) liable again and create incentives against such happenings.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Overturn citizens united and/or fully treat businesses like a person (jail, death).
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Overturn citizens united Who are all the people lobbying to keep long firm fraud hard to prosecute? >and fully treat businesses like a person (jail, death). Getting stuff on credit and then defaulting on the debt isn't illegal for natural persons either.
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      I have to believe you are a bot.

qwerty_clicks 2y ago

The era of trump will accelerate this further. Not that Obama Biden were saviors, Trump and co are putting fuel on the fire

arrosenberg 2y ago

That's true, which is why we should be heavily focused on keeping corporations small, discrete and weak enough to drown in a bathtub when they act up.

bmitc 2y ago

> That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. That's part of the point and problem because it is by design. Rich people and corporations like treating their problems as so complex as to be completely intractable. "How do you tax me when I don't have income?!" "How can I be responsible for a system of decisions?!" Etc. Rich people and corporations want nothing but upsides, and they have designed the system to work this way. A great example of this is Steve Cohen, who got away with insider trading for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szayJV505M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1szayJV505M. You're telling me that a small business owner whose direct reports repeatedly commit and are convicted of fraud would just be able to walk away? Yea, right. In Cohen's case, he just walked away and bought a sports team.