5 ms·

> 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,

> 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.

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.