3 ms·

I'd like to see a prison sentence for corporations.

• x3n0ph3n3 9mo ago
  I'd like to see the death penalty (dissolution) for them.
  • llmslave2 9mo ago
    How would that work. Would the employees be banned from working together again or something?
    • saghm 9mo ago
      The corporation would be terminated, all of its copyrights and trademarks would be nullified, and the assets seized. If investors want to try to spend their money on building the exact same thing again under a different name after those losses, that's their perogatice. I suspect that after a few of these occurrences they might start to get cagey about whether they want to give money to someone who's had this happen before though.
      • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
        The process you're describing is hardly unheard of. The problem is that a large corporation's assets include things like employees, office buildings, supplier contracts, etc, which generally aren't valuable except in the context of the business unit they operate within. So if you want to maximize recovery, you have to keep critical business units intact, which often means that large parts of the business survive in all but name. Purdue Pharma is a recent instructive case. The marketing folks did some terrible stuff, but it would be pretty rough on victims, employees, and patients who need pain meds to respond by tearing down Purdue's factories and auctioning off the contents. So the bankruptcy plan calls for keeping the factories running, transferring them to a new company called Knoa, which will be owned by a trust that's dedicated to managing the opioid crisis. Isn't Knoa just Purdue wearing a new hat? Kinda, sure, but there's no better alternative.
        • kelseyfrog 9mo ago
          What if you don't want to maximize recovery?
          • bryan_w 9mo ago
            Do you genuinely just not like businesses?
            • nrb 9mo ago
              Surely there’s some wiggle room in between “I just do not like businesses” and “businesses that are convicted of causing some amount of damage to society should not exist” At some point, recovery needs to take a back seat to deterrence.
            • saghm 9mo ago
              I'm indifferent to the idea of businesses in general. I genuinely dislike businesses that make profits from breaking laws and then don't have to suffer the consequences that individuals would suffer from the same actions.
          • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
            Again, it's pretty rough on the victims to tell them we won't bother trying to get the money they're owed. Sometimes you have no choice; I would be shocked if the healthcare company mentioned in the source link were still operating, since it doesn't sound like it was actually doing much beyond the Medicare fraud. But when you do have a choice, what does anyone have to gain from blowing it up?
            • kelseyfrog 9mo ago
              Punitive punishment serves as a deterrent to other businesses. I really dislike the black or white thinking of, "if we're not maximizing recovery then victims will get nothing."
              • 9mo ago
      • KellyCriterion 9mo ago
        ...regarding their trademarks & IP, I suggest that all of these are moved over to either Public Domain or the government should try to make much money as possible from selling the IP to someone else?
        • saghm 9mo ago
          The public domain certainly would be appealing, especially with regards to adding an additional deterrent to just forming the company again to do the same thing. Sadly all of this is probably a pipe dream though, so I'm mostly trying to make the point that there is a coherent implementation of this sort of policy, even if it's not something likely to happen.
    • bsder 9mo ago
      All investors are wiped. Anyone on board of directors is gone. Anyone in main executive management (CEO, CFO, CTO, etc.) is fired and replaced. All assets placed into immediate Chapter 11 (restructuring) bankruptcy.
      • llmslave2 9mo ago
        Keep in mind all investors would include the average joe's who are investing their retirement savings as well. You think they should just have those wiped out, despite there being no fault of their own?
        • nubg 9mo ago
          Yes as for the average Joe it's 0.001% of his ETF getting nuked.
        • cyberpunk 9mo ago
          Make those who are convicted personally liable to repay investors?
        • bsder 9mo ago
          Absolutely. It used to be that "company reputation" was part of the value of a stock certificate. That disappeared and the primary value of CEO became being a sufficiently raging asshole to pump the value of the lottery ticket at all costs. Bringing back a bit of risk to investors would help put some pushback into the system.
          • deleted 9mo ago
            [deleted]
    • philwelch 9mo ago
      The executives likely would, the SEC already does this.