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The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the ac

by deaux 2mo ago

The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the actual thing the person you're responding to cares about, and rightly so.

Aurornis 2mo ago
The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should result in people being jailed despite not having committed crimes, but I guarantee your list doesn’t match everyone else’s list. You wouldn’t be happy when the list of “societal damages” started extending to things like using a VPN or trying to be anonymous on the internet, but for many people who get to government positions it most definitely would!
- upboundspiral 2mo ago
  Executives mostly get jailed when there is large media attention + the executive was foolish enough to leave evidence pointing straight at them. For every case where an executive is jailed, there are 100 other cases where they aren't. And that is just in the overt "breaking the law cases". Even more incredible damage has been in us losing the laws that protect us in the first place. For nigh on 40 years thanks to neoliberal economists influencing policy we have been relaxing corporate and monetary regulation. This has already provided great gifts to the world, such as enabling the fraud that led to the 2008 housing crisis (who was jailed again?). When as a country you decide that punishing bad corporate behaviour is a non starter, you get the predictable consequences of increasing, not decreasing bad corporate behaviour.
  - Aurornis 2mo ago
    This is turning into a gish gallop. What specific laws would cause Mark Zuckerberg to go to jail?
    - gopher_space 2mo ago
      This conversation feels like it really captures Mangione's point of view. It's like I'm listening to an internal dialogue.
      - smsm42 2mo ago
        Mangione had a personal grudge, caused by illness, pain and personal interactions with US healthcare system, which can grind down and drive to insanity anybody. The above just reads as a mashup or angry reddit posts which contain generic "evil rich people" platitudes, with zero depth or factual support. It's just low effort ranting.
  - smsm42 2mo ago
    Thousands of people were jailed in 2008 aftermath - look up operation Malicious Mortgage and Stolen Dreams. Most of them of course low level - because those were the people actually perpetrating the fraud. But some examples: Kareem Serageldin, Lee Farkas, Edward Woodard, etc. Ken Lewis, BoA CEO, faced multiple investigations and civil penalties, but none of those investigarions could find any criminal liability. He lost his post and BoA paid out billions in settlements.
- deaux 2mo ago
  > The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US doesn't jail people according to the law and does not have a legal system you want to imitate. > The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. Yes, the US jails CEOs that defraud investors, i.e. the powerful. This is a direct application of the fuzzy concepts that the US uses when deciding whether to jail someone.
smsm42 2mo ago
You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no specific US rules for that.
- digitaltrees 2mo ago
  But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships rather than corporations or limited liability companies. Lawyers have to operate that way. Bankers did until the 90s. The rationale was that they would be more careful with risk if each partner was personally liable for the debts of their partners actions.
  - smsm42 2mo ago
    Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore to blame. Even when the danger of TEL became known, there was no single "evil CEO" that was responsible for it's continued use - and it took a long time to make it unlawful. Once it was made unlwaful, I don't think there's a CEO on record that had still instructed his employees to use TEL despite what the law requires. So if the narrative is "evil CEOs put lead in gasoline and avoided jail because of US legal system being broken" - this would have very little connection to what actually happened, however tragic it was.
    - 2mo ago

by deaux 2mo ago

Aurornis 2mo ago

The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should result in people being jailed despite not having committed crimes, but I guarantee your list doesn’t match everyone else’s list. You wouldn’t be happy when the list of “societal damages” started extending to things like using a VPN or trying to be anonymous on the internet, but for many people who get to government positions it most definitely would!

upboundspiral 2mo ago
Executives mostly get jailed when there is large media attention + the executive was foolish enough to leave evidence pointing straight at them. For every case where an executive is jailed, there are 100 other cases where they aren't. And that is just in the overt "breaking the law cases". Even more incredible damage has been in us losing the laws that protect us in the first place. For nigh on 40 years thanks to neoliberal economists influencing policy we have been relaxing corporate and monetary regulation. This has already provided great gifts to the world, such as enabling the fraud that led to the 2008 housing crisis (who was jailed again?). When as a country you decide that punishing bad corporate behaviour is a non starter, you get the predictable consequences of increasing, not decreasing bad corporate behaviour.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  This is turning into a gish gallop. What specific laws would cause Mark Zuckerberg to go to jail?
  - gopher_space 2mo ago
    This conversation feels like it really captures Mangione's point of view. It's like I'm listening to an internal dialogue.
    - smsm42 2mo ago
      Mangione had a personal grudge, caused by illness, pain and personal interactions with US healthcare system, which can grind down and drive to insanity anybody. The above just reads as a mashup or angry reddit posts which contain generic "evil rich people" platitudes, with zero depth or factual support. It's just low effort ranting.
- smsm42 2mo ago
  Thousands of people were jailed in 2008 aftermath - look up operation Malicious Mortgage and Stolen Dreams. Most of them of course low level - because those were the people actually perpetrating the fraud. But some examples: Kareem Serageldin, Lee Farkas, Edward Woodard, etc. Ken Lewis, BoA CEO, faced multiple investigations and civil penalties, but none of those investigarions could find any criminal liability. He lost his post and BoA paid out billions in settlements.
deaux 2mo ago
> The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate. The US doesn't jail people according to the law and does not have a legal system you want to imitate. > The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX. Yes, the US jails CEOs that defraud investors, i.e. the powerful. This is a direct application of the fuzzy concepts that the US uses when deciding whether to jail someone.

smsm42 2mo ago

You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no specific US rules for that.

digitaltrees 2mo ago
But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships rather than corporations or limited liability companies. Lawyers have to operate that way. Bankers did until the 90s. The rationale was that they would be more careful with risk if each partner was personally liable for the debts of their partners actions.
- smsm42 2mo ago
  Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore to blame. Even when the danger of TEL became known, there was no single "evil CEO" that was responsible for it's continued use - and it took a long time to make it unlawful. Once it was made unlwaful, I don't think there's a CEO on record that had still instructed his employees to use TEL despite what the law requires. So if the narrative is "evil CEOs put lead in gasoline and avoided jail because of US legal system being broken" - this would have very little connection to what actually happened, however tragic it was.
  - 2mo ago