That's how I took it too. For this to work, the penalties would have to be large enough to make the harmful actions unprofitable for the company (and its execut

That's how I took it too. For this to work, the penalties would have to be large enough to make the harmful actions unprofitable for the company (and its executives). Usually, fines given out by government regulators (who are sometimes people who used to work for the industry or will in the future) are small enough to be considered part of the cost of doing business. For instance, in 2009 Pfizer was fined $2.3B for promoting off-label use of a few drugs and paying kickbacks to health care providers to push them. That year they reported $50B in revenues, so the largest health care settlement in history (at the time) probably didn't even put them in the red. If fines for law-breaking by corporations were large enough to bankrupt the company, and if executives did prison time as well, that would be an actual incentive to obey the laws.