Isn't this to be expected?
I probably made enough money to pay all my 2023 fines by midday on January 1st.
Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
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Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you imagine adding additional fine to shareholders? Like a reverse dividend? I wonder what disasters or blesses this will cause
This SHOULD be the way as they are the ones who stand to gain the most. They should be the ones who lose the most if the actions of their responsibilities are nefarious.
It would make it incredibly risky to be a non-management shareholder.
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#43Either the fines need to be high enough until there is a material impact to shareholders, or natural persons who make decisions within the corporation needs to be held accountable (not just the legal person), OR, we need to fundamentally rethink what a corporation's charter must necessarily include (in addition to shareholder returns).
Could you imagine adding additional fine to shareholders? Like a reverse dividend? I wonder what disasters or blesses this will cause
Our entire western society depends on the ability to own and run businesses without personal responsibility for what the business does as an organisation. Sometimes in the case of fraud, or similar individual crimes within an organisation can be placed as blame on individuals or even management found to wilfully ignore internal warnings and so on, but on the whole, it’s rare that we go after private persons for what the organisations where they work does.
Shareholders are even further detached from this process, often having very little knowledge of what happens within organisations. Often having no influence on what happens within organisations. You likely own stock yourself through your pension funds, and if you made these laws your pension would be fined for what the index fonds it invest in does.
I guess from some political points of views all of this would be a good thing based on our current inequality in society, but the way to solve this isn’t through collective punishment. It’s through taxation. Right now, the entire economy is very much geared in favour of increasing the inequality by transferring more and more wealth to those who already have it. It hasn’t always been like this, 50 years ago, before the age of new public management, the taxation on things like wealth, stock and so on were high and the wealthy in our society paid most 80% of their total (not income tax) wealth generation. Today it’s often less than 10-20% through various tax law loop holes, and that’s if you keep your wealth generation absolutely legal.
Af far as organisation fines go, the situation is sort of similar to the general economy, in that major organisations and wealth owners have “rigged” the system in ways where it’s very hard to punish major corporations on a global scale. In Denmark we might find Facebook or Google guilty of something and fine them up to 10% of their income, but its income in Denmark, which is frankly so small on the global scale that they often don’t even bother fighting it in our courts like they do with the larger EU rulings. This could change, but it’s hard to do so, as the US isn’t interested in forcing US non-token companies fines to foreign countries. Similarly it would seem that even within the US there is competition between the various states to be the most company friendly.
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#44Either the fines need to be high enough until there is a material impact to shareholders, or natural persons who make decisions within the corporation needs to be held accountable (not just the legal person), OR, we need to fundamentally rethink what a corporation's charter must necessarily include (in addition to shareholder returns).
Or, alternative explanation, the fines aren't meant to deter behavior but serve as a way of rent seeking, signaling by politicians and bureaucrats and capturing ever more regulatory authority by various groups
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#45Shareholders care more about net profit than revenue. Using revenue makes the number more clickbaity. Also, you claim this isn't a deterrent, but you don't explain why . How do we know that tech companies weren't just well-behaved last year? Or, should one week's revenue never ever be able to pay off a company's past year's fines, and we should always assume tech companies are more evil than that?
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Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#46Either the fines need to be high enough until there is a material impact to shareholders, or natural persons who make decisions within the corporation needs to be held accountable (not just the legal person), OR, we need to fundamentally rethink what a corporation's charter must necessarily include (in addition to shareholder returns).
Could you imagine adding additional fine to shareholders? Like a reverse dividend? I wonder what disasters or blesses this will cause
Where do you think the money comes from? The organization has some money they can either use for stock buybacks or fines. Money that goes to fines necessarily does not go to buybacks or dividends
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#47Revenue isn't profits
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#48Should this be measuring against profit, not revenue? Edit: "This" meaning the claim that they've made enough to pay back fines, not how those fines are decided.
If the fines would impact profits in a significant way, the companies would just ensure they have no profit on paper going forward.
I didn't know companies can just ensure they have no profit on paper. Why don't they do that now and not pay corporate taxes? Why is it dependent on fines?
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#49Either the fines need to be high enough until there is a material impact to shareholders, or natural persons who make decisions within the corporation needs to be held accountable (not just the legal person), OR, we need to fundamentally rethink what a corporation's charter must necessarily include (in addition to shareholder returns).
Could you imagine adding additional fine to shareholders? Like a reverse dividend? I wonder what disasters or blesses this will cause
Hmm, could we apply a fine to share. Either as fixed amount or percentage at time it is transacted on next time. Basically make them partially non-fungible...
So fine is applied at end of some day. Now all shares are marked. And when they are sold next time this fine is paid.
Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines
#50The concept of a corporation is fundamentally unjust. It doesn't make sense that there are entities which have more rights than people. If I do a crime, I go to jail. If a corporation does a crime, they only need to pay a small fine. Not to mention that they have many thousands of people working for them doing crimes on their behalf for which are never caught and never punished. Just the scale of a corporation, makes…
> The concept of a corporation is fundamentally unjust.
No it is not.
The benefits of the current system are enormous, incomprehensibly enormous. The quality of life enjoyed by the average person even in developing countries would have been unimaginable by many measures to people living just a few centuries ago.
All the little first world boys whining on social media are perfectly happy to have clean water to drink, electricity on demand, video games to play, food to magically show up in their local grocery, roads to travel on—all these things that require the coordinated work of billions are just happen and are assumed to happen, there is never a complaint that their garbage is collected on schedule or that fresh fruits have been cultivated and harvested and shipped from the other side of the world for their enjoyment.
It is only when:
- they are asked to contribute something back to this system
or especially when
- someone else has more than them
That they decide a grave injustice is being committed.