Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#161

Post by qp11 » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 3:42 AM UTC

input_sh wrote: post #107

dox_shepherd wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but is government really less corrupt than big tech? Its very human to want a hero come save the day but I fear that we'd just be replacing one bad actor with another.

If we still lived under monarchy, I'd agree 100%, but we don't. There's at least a theoretical chance of voting the government out in favour of someone marginally better. I don't know what are the odds of that happening, but it's definitely bigger than 0%. And if we're not in the board of directors of a company, our odds of making them less corrupt is precisely 0%.

Also post world war 2, the Japanese govts did pull it off by taking control of industry and getting everyone to row in a particular direction.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#162

Post by coderenegade » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 7:54 AM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #58

tokai wrote: post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

Why not higher fines? % of profit that increases each time?

Because at a certain point, fines punish lower level workers rather than management. Furthermore, if the company is large enough, fining it to the extent that it collapses has material effects on the economy, which governments are incentivized to avoid. This isn't to say that there shouldn't be financial consequences for breaking the law -- of course there should. But management should also be thrown in prison when the company breaks the law, because they're in a position of responsibility (it's what they get paid for). Either they knew -- in which case they're personally liable -- or they didn't, in which case they're criminally negligent, and again, personally liable.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#163

Post by coderenegade » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 8:09 AM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #130

anticorporate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you reach a certain level of wealth, fines are no longer consequential. When you can restructure both your corporate and personal assets to span multiple countries with different regulations and poor cooperation, you've effective avoided them.

> fines are no longer consequential I don't see how this can possibly be true. Any corp has finite money, and operating costs; If the fines are high enough, they will be consequential. > to span multiple countries you can't really evade US fines/sanction and continue to operate in the west.

No government is going to fine Amazon or Google enough to break the company. It would displace thousands of workers, and have a serious impact on the local economy where those companies are based, if not the whole country. If the fine is large enough to have a material impact, it's the rank and file who are laid off as the company restructures, and the company then uses tricks like tax offsets to pull through from a loss of profit. This is before considering political ramifications, e.g. it's in the US' best interests to have the largest tech companies, and clipping their wings too much would cede ground to foreign competitors.

At the end of the day, the C-suite either know that the law is being broken, or they don't. One makes them responsible, and the other makes them criminally negligent. I absolutely believe that C-suite executives of VW, for example, should have been thrown in jail for diesel-gate. Not knowing the law is not an excuse for breaking it. Similarly, if you're presiding over a company, and your company is breaking the law, plausible deniability shouldn't be a defense. If you're getting paid to run the company, you are responsible.