7 ms·

Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. I remember reading that oil companies were aware of global warming in internal literature even back in

by thijson 11mo ago

Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. I remember reading that oil companies were aware of global warming in internal literature even back in the 80's

MstWntd 11mo ago
true that.. but it seems that they are fostering an environment for SA and even p3dofeelia.. Channel 4 news did a piece on it..
idle_zealot 11mo ago
> Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. Not so long as we don't punish them for failure to. We need a corporate death penalty for an organization that, say, knowingly conspires to destroy the planet's habitability. Then the bean counters might calculate the risk of doing so as unacceptable. We're so ready and willing to punish individuals for harm they do to other individuals, but if you get together in a group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of civilization and get a light fine and carry on.
- measurablefunc 11mo ago
  “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ― Voltaire
  - candiddevmike 11mo ago
    See also: just war theory
    - measurablefunc 11mo ago
      People can manage to find justifications for all sorts of atrocities, including destruction of the biosphere.
      - cortesoft 11mo ago
        Just a few days ago, someone replied to one of my comments saying that considering the lives of people who aren't born yet is a completely immoral thing to do, meaning making anyone alive today sacrifice something to protect the planet in 100 years is immoral. So I guess people can find all sorts of justifications.
        measurablefunc 11mo ago
        It is the inevitable outcome of materialism, hedonism, & short-term thinking. I think it's going to get worse before it gets any better.
        zzo38computer 11mo ago
        Of course that is wrong and it is not immoral; but, if you want to do it in the moral way, you have to consider the lives of any living things (plants and animals), including but not limited to humans. Furthermore, there is the consideration of what exactly has to be sacrificed and what kind of coercion is being used (which might be immoral for a different reason); morals is not as simple like they would say. But, yes people do find all sorts of justifications, whether or not they are any good (although sometimes it is not immediately clear if it is any good, unfortunately).
        cortesoft 11mo ago
        > but, if you want to do it in the moral way, you have to consider the lives of any living things Wait, why? You can have morals that don't treat all living things as equal.
        lenkite 11mo ago
        People are being harmed today, not just hypothetical people born 100 years later.
      - immibis 11mo ago
        Just yesterday another HN user told me that always-on DRM is a pure benefit for the consumer, when it comes from Valve Software.
  - zelphirkalt 11mo ago
    Problem remains: What do we do, if others don't care and violently start killing our group? Do we reward them, throwing away all our weapons and making them our new government? This question of course currently has a very real real world parallel.
- popalchemist 11mo ago
  Well said, and yes, this is practically what must happen.
- pear01 11mo ago
  Corporate death penalty as in terminate the corporation? Why not the actual death penalty? Or put another way, why not sanctions on the individuals these entities are made up of? It strikes me that qualified immunity for police/government officials and the protections of hiding behind incorporation serve the same purpose - little to no individual accountability when these entities do wrong. Piercing the corporate veil and pursuing a loss of qualified immunity are both difficult - in some cases, often impossible - to accomplish in court, thus incentivizing bad behavior for individuals with those protections. Maybe a reform of those ideas or protocols would be useful and address the tension you highlight between how we treat "individuals" vs individuals acting in the name of particular entities. As an aside, both protections have interesting nuances and commonalities. I believe they also highlight another tension (on the flip-side of punishment) between the ability of regular people to hold individuals at these entities accountable in civil suits vs the government maintaining a monopoly on going after individuals. This monopoly can easily lead to corruption (obvious in the qualified immunity case, less obvious but still blatant in the corporate case, where these entities and their officers give politicians and prosecutors millions and millions of dollars). As George Carlin said, it's a big club. And you ain't in it.
  - bikelang 11mo ago
    Just nationalize the company. Make shareholders fear this so much that they keep executives in check.
    - pear01 11mo ago
      Sounds like a very extreme remedy. Not sure you want whatever government is elected every four years to have this power. Doesn't address the concern re regulatory capture, could lead to worse government incentives. Why not focus on allowing regular people to more realistically hold corporations and their owners/officers liable in civil courts? It's already hard enough given the imbalance of funds, access and power... but often legal doctrine makes the bar to clear impossible at the outset.
      - bikelang 11mo ago
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- foxglacier 11mo ago
  The group of pretty much all humans is such a group because we all conspire to burn fossil fuels. Do you really think a global civilization death penalty is a good idea? That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
- defanor 11mo ago
  > We're so ready and willing to punish individuals for harm they do to other individuals, but if you get together in a group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of civilization and get a light fine and carry on. Surely "plot the downfall of civilization" is an exaggeration. Knowing that certain actions have harmful consequences to the environment or the humanity, and nevertheless persisting in them, is what many individuals lawfully do without getting together.
tonyhart7 11mo ago
"Companies can't really be expected to police themselves." so does government
- smt88 11mo ago
  No one expects government to police itself. Government in functioning democratic societies is policed by voters, journalists, and many independent watchdog groups.
  - notpushkin 11mo ago
    Any examples of such societies?
    - justinclift 11mo ago
      Currently, not sure. Maybe there is a reference country, at some period in living memory hopefully, we could use as a reference?
    - sofixa 11mo ago
      France, Germany, UK, Switzerland , Netherlands, Belgium are a few I'm familiar with. There are of course areas of improvement, but in all of those you have strong press that can annihilate politicians for for crimes, as well as more or less working institutions that punish corruption. Take a look at France, where a former president went to prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest (same sentence as a former PM candidate for president), but that's still a pretty serious punishment, especially for a such a high level politician.
      - lm28469 11mo ago
        > Take a look at France, where a former president went to prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest There is no house arrest, he appealed and is innocent until proven guilty. People stay in prison after appealing in case there is a serious risk of them fleeing the country or in case they present a danger to society, both of these have been deemed low enough
Qwertious 11mo ago
The problem is that our current ideology basically assumes they will be - either by consumer pressure, or by competition. The fact that they don't police themselves is then held as proof that what they did is either wanted by consumers or is competitive.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
silisili 11mo ago
Your second point is right, but depressingly it was the 50s instead of the 80s.
vasco 11mo ago
Maybe more parallels to tobacco companies. Incredible amount of taxes and warnings and rules forbidding kids from using it are the solutions to the first problem and likely this second one too.
- pjmorris 11mo ago
  To your point... 1. "The Tobacco Institute was founded in 1958 as a trade association by cigarette manufacturers, who funded it proportionally to each company's sales. It was initially to supplement the work of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), which later became the Council for Tobacco Research. The TIRC work had been limited to attacking scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, and the Tobacco Institute had a broader mission to put out good news about tobacco, especially economic news." [0] 2. "[Lewis Powell] worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
richev 11mo ago
1970s https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...
dudinax 11mo ago
Global warming was understood for almost a century by 1980
michelb 11mo ago
>Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. Companies can't. Employees can. If someone's still working at Meta, they are ok with it.
tremon 11mo ago
even back in the 80's The 1980s is when the issue was finally brought into the political conversation. Shell internal documents go back as far as 1962: https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/31/lost-decade-how-shell-downplayed-early-warnings-over-climate-change/ https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/31/lost-decade-how-shell-down... As for science itself: the first scientific theories on greenhouse effects were published in the 1850s -- and the first climate model was published in 1896: https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...
cs702 11mo ago
No entity can police itself. Not even the police. Companies, non-profits, regulators, legislative branches of government, courts, presidential administrations, corporate bureaucrats, government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, regular citizens. They cannot self-police. That's the motivation for having a system of _checks and balances_[a]: We want power, including the power to police, to be distributed in a society. --- [a] https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances
- hhsuey 11mo ago
  go further. humanity can't police itself.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 11mo ago
Deniers should watch the movie "The White House effect". It's a great documentary that shows where and how the strategies of the oil companies changed.

by thijson 11mo ago

Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. I remember reading that oil companies were aware of global warming in internal literature even back in the 80's

MstWntd 11mo ago

true that.. but it seems that they are fostering an environment for SA and even p3dofeelia.. Channel 4 news did a piece on it..

idle_zealot 11mo ago

> Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. Not so long as we don't punish them for failure to. We need a corporate death penalty for an organization that, say, knowingly conspires to destroy the planet's habitability. Then the bean counters might calculate the risk of doing so as unacceptable. We're so ready and willing to punish individuals for harm they do to other individuals, but if you get together in a group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of civilization and get a light fine and carry on.

measurablefunc 11mo ago
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ― Voltaire
- candiddevmike 11mo ago
  See also: just war theory
  - measurablefunc 11mo ago
    People can manage to find justifications for all sorts of atrocities, including destruction of the biosphere.
    - cortesoft 11mo ago
      Just a few days ago, someone replied to one of my comments saying that considering the lives of people who aren't born yet is a completely immoral thing to do, meaning making anyone alive today sacrifice something to protect the planet in 100 years is immoral. So I guess people can find all sorts of justifications.
      - measurablefunc 11mo ago
        It is the inevitable outcome of materialism, hedonism, & short-term thinking. I think it's going to get worse before it gets any better.
      - zzo38computer 11mo ago
        Of course that is wrong and it is not immoral; but, if you want to do it in the moral way, you have to consider the lives of any living things (plants and animals), including but not limited to humans. Furthermore, there is the consideration of what exactly has to be sacrificed and what kind of coercion is being used (which might be immoral for a different reason); morals is not as simple like they would say. But, yes people do find all sorts of justifications, whether or not they are any good (although sometimes it is not immediately clear if it is any good, unfortunately).
        cortesoft 11mo ago
        > but, if you want to do it in the moral way, you have to consider the lives of any living things Wait, why? You can have morals that don't treat all living things as equal.
      - lenkite 11mo ago
        People are being harmed today, not just hypothetical people born 100 years later.
    - immibis 11mo ago
      Just yesterday another HN user told me that always-on DRM is a pure benefit for the consumer, when it comes from Valve Software.
- zelphirkalt 11mo ago
  Problem remains: What do we do, if others don't care and violently start killing our group? Do we reward them, throwing away all our weapons and making them our new government? This question of course currently has a very real real world parallel.
popalchemist 11mo ago
Well said, and yes, this is practically what must happen.
pear01 11mo ago
Corporate death penalty as in terminate the corporation? Why not the actual death penalty? Or put another way, why not sanctions on the individuals these entities are made up of? It strikes me that qualified immunity for police/government officials and the protections of hiding behind incorporation serve the same purpose - little to no individual accountability when these entities do wrong. Piercing the corporate veil and pursuing a loss of qualified immunity are both difficult - in some cases, often impossible - to accomplish in court, thus incentivizing bad behavior for individuals with those protections. Maybe a reform of those ideas or protocols would be useful and address the tension you highlight between how we treat "individuals" vs individuals acting in the name of particular entities. As an aside, both protections have interesting nuances and commonalities. I believe they also highlight another tension (on the flip-side of punishment) between the ability of regular people to hold individuals at these entities accountable in civil suits vs the government maintaining a monopoly on going after individuals. This monopoly can easily lead to corruption (obvious in the qualified immunity case, less obvious but still blatant in the corporate case, where these entities and their officers give politicians and prosecutors millions and millions of dollars). As George Carlin said, it's a big club. And you ain't in it.
- bikelang 11mo ago
  Just nationalize the company. Make shareholders fear this so much that they keep executives in check.
  - pear01 11mo ago
    Sounds like a very extreme remedy. Not sure you want whatever government is elected every four years to have this power. Doesn't address the concern re regulatory capture, could lead to worse government incentives. Why not focus on allowing regular people to more realistically hold corporations and their owners/officers liable in civil courts? It's already hard enough given the imbalance of funds, access and power... but often legal doctrine makes the bar to clear impossible at the outset.
    - bikelang 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
foxglacier 11mo ago
The group of pretty much all humans is such a group because we all conspire to burn fossil fuels. Do you really think a global civilization death penalty is a good idea? That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
defanor 11mo ago
> We're so ready and willing to punish individuals for harm they do to other individuals, but if you get together in a group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of civilization and get a light fine and carry on. Surely "plot the downfall of civilization" is an exaggeration. Knowing that certain actions have harmful consequences to the environment or the humanity, and nevertheless persisting in them, is what many individuals lawfully do without getting together.

tonyhart7 11mo ago

"Companies can't really be expected to police themselves." so does government

smt88 11mo ago
No one expects government to police itself. Government in functioning democratic societies is policed by voters, journalists, and many independent watchdog groups.
- notpushkin 11mo ago
  Any examples of such societies?
  - justinclift 11mo ago
    Currently, not sure. Maybe there is a reference country, at some period in living memory hopefully, we could use as a reference?
  - sofixa 11mo ago
    France, Germany, UK, Switzerland , Netherlands, Belgium are a few I'm familiar with. There are of course areas of improvement, but in all of those you have strong press that can annihilate politicians for for crimes, as well as more or less working institutions that punish corruption. Take a look at France, where a former president went to prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest (same sentence as a former PM candidate for president), but that's still a pretty serious punishment, especially for a such a high level politician.
    - lm28469 11mo ago
      > Take a look at France, where a former president went to prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest There is no house arrest, he appealed and is innocent until proven guilty. People stay in prison after appealing in case there is a serious risk of them fleeing the country or in case they present a danger to society, both of these have been deemed low enough

Qwertious 11mo ago

The problem is that our current ideology basically assumes they will be - either by consumer pressure, or by competition. The fact that they don't police themselves is then held as proof that what they did is either wanted by consumers or is competitive.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

silisili 11mo ago

Your second point is right, but depressingly it was the 50s instead of the 80s.

vasco 11mo ago

Maybe more parallels to tobacco companies. Incredible amount of taxes and warnings and rules forbidding kids from using it are the solutions to the first problem and likely this second one too.

pjmorris 11mo ago
To your point... 1. "The Tobacco Institute was founded in 1958 as a trade association by cigarette manufacturers, who funded it proportionally to each company's sales. It was initially to supplement the work of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC), which later became the Council for Tobacco Research. The TIRC work had been limited to attacking scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, and the Tobacco Institute had a broader mission to put out good news about tobacco, especially economic news." [0] 2. "[Lewis Powell] worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971 Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

richev 11mo ago

1970s https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...

dudinax 11mo ago

Global warming was understood for almost a century by 1980

michelb 11mo ago

>Companies can't really be expected to police themselves. Companies can't. Employees can. If someone's still working at Meta, they are ok with it.

tremon 11mo ago

even back in the 80's The 1980s is when the issue was finally brought into the political conversation. Shell internal documents go back as far as 1962: https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/31/lost-decade-how-shell-downplayed-early-warnings-over-climate-change/ https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/31/lost-decade-how-shell-down... As for science itself: the first scientific theories on greenhouse effects were published in the 1850s -- and the first climate model was published in 1896: https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...

cs702 11mo ago

No entity can police itself. Not even the police. Companies, non-profits, regulators, legislative branches of government, courts, presidential administrations, corporate bureaucrats, government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, regular citizens. They cannot self-police. That's the motivation for having a system of _checks and balances_[a]: We want power, including the power to police, to be distributed in a society. --- [a] https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances

hhsuey 11mo ago
go further. humanity can't police itself.

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 11mo ago

Deniers should watch the movie "The White House effect". It's a great documentary that shows where and how the strategies of the oil companies changed.