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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 stea

by 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
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by pwg 2y ago

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
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