6 ms·
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 entit
by 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 agoJust nationalize the company. Make shareholders fear this so much that they keep executives in check.
- pear01 11mo agoSounds 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 agoI would posit that we are in the current political situation precisely because we do not hold the capital class accountable. Do you sincerely believe that investors losing their investment is a “very extreme” response to gross corporate lawbreaking on their behalf?
- pear01 11mo agoWhy not make the civil case path easier then? The extreme nature of your remedy is the idea of a government taking over and owning a corporation. That creates bad incentives. I think if individuals could reasonably expect to be able to knock people like Mark Zuckerberg out of the billionaire class in a civil suit, then yes, he and the types of people he represents would behave better. Having the government run Facebook or Enron or Google or whatever both sounds less desirable than empowering individuals and weakening corporate protections in civil cases, and frankly; worse than the prevailing situation re the "capital class". If you think the current political situation is bad the last thing you should want is more government power.
- tock 11mo agoWe are in this situation because we elect people who do not hold the capital class accountable. Look at the people we elect. How would them running companies be any better?
- idle_zealot 11mo agoMy view is that the corporate death penalty is either dissolution or nationalization, whichever is less disruptive. If you make your company "too big to fail" without hurting loads of people, then use it to hurt people, then the people get your company. If it's a smaller operation it can just go poof. The priority should be ensuring the bad behavior is stopped, then that harm is rectified, and finally that an example be made to anyone else with a clever new way to externalize harm as a business model.
- terminalshort 11mo agoSo punish the owners of the company because it's harmful, but keep the harmful company around just now controlled by the government?
- bluefirebrand 11mo agoSometimes harm is a matter of degree and intent Doctors selling you fentanyl so you can be sedated for surgery is a good thing. Drug Dealers selling you fentanyl so you can get high is a bad thing
- johnisgood 11mo agoExcept drug dealers do not sell you fentanyl just so you can get high because they do not care. They do not care about YOUR OWN intention. People demand, they supply. And these people can have legitimate reasons.
- bluefirebrand 11mo agoYou ever been approached by anyone selling drugs? Of course they care about you getting high, that's their sales pitch
- johnisgood 11mo agoI have not, but perhaps it applies to low-level drug dealers, sure, but big-time suppliers really do not care what your intent is. Many of them sell legitimate pharmaceuticals and they do not ask you what your intent is before they sell it to you, as it is none of their concern.
- bluefirebrand 11mo agoIt is very difficult to sell anything to anyone if you don't care what they want Even if it is as simple as "do you want to get high?" drug dealers absolutely do care what your intent is before selling to you And they certainly care if your intent is to get them arrested and put them in jail
- sofixa 11mo agoWhat would they fear about it? Nationalisation would include compensation (as per relevant laws), so the shareholders don't lose a lot. Maybe the compensation would be less than the potential highs of the stock price, but it's not like they entirely lose out
- BrenBarn 11mo agoIn my conception, part of the corporate death penalty would be personal asset forfeitures and prison time for individuals who knew or should have known about the malfeasance.
- pear01 11mo agoIn these cases, what is prison time going to accomplish that a severe enough monetary remedy would not? Putting someone in a prison cell is a state power (criminal remedy). I think that is a useful distinction generally, and a power that should be employed only when legitimized through some government process which has a very high bar (beyond a reasonable doubt, criminal rules of evidence, protections against self incrimination etc), as it deprives someone of their physical liberty. It strikes me that if you also appreciate this distinction, then your remedy to corporations that have too much power is to give the government even more power? Personally, I would like to see more creative solutions that weaken both government and corporations and empower individuals to hold either accountable. I think the current gap between individuals and the other two is too severe, I'm not sure how making the government even more powerful actually helps the individual. Do you want the current American government to be more powerful? Would your answer have been different last year?
- BrenBarn 11mo agoI do not see any equivalence between corporate power and government power. The population as a whole controls government power. Corporate power is constrained only by government power. I think one of the most pernicious notions in our society is that the idea that "the government" is something separate from ordinary people. Of course, our current government has a lot of problems, but that doesn't mean I don't want the government to have power. I just want it to have power to do what the population actually wants it to do (or, perhaps, what the population will actually be happiest with). What would be your proposed mechanism for empowering individuals? How would such a mechanism not ultimately rely on the individual leveraging some larger external power structure (like a government)? I think if we want to empower all individuals roughly equally (i.e., not in proportion to their wealth or the like), then what we wind up with is something I'd call a government. Definitely not the one we have, but government nonetheless.
- zzo38computer 11mo agoThe actual death penalty is not a good idea for several reasons, including possibility of error (even if that possibility is small). (In the case of a corporation, also many people might be involved, some of whom might not know what it is, therefore increasing the possibility of error.) However, terminating the corporation might help (combined with fines if they had earned any profit from it so far), if there is not an effective and practical lesser punishment which would prevent this harm. However, your other ideas seem to be valid points; one thing that you mention is, government monopoly can (and does) lead to corruption (although not only this specific kind).