Walmart Pleads Guilty After a Decade of Bribes

In theory it could unfairly handicap American companies relative to foreign companies.

This doesn’t seem to have happened much in practice though so I support the FCPA. Corruption is a big scourge in many countries and it is a really good thing American money is prohibited from exacerbating the issue.

I will just play devil's advocate. Sometimes different cultures have very different ideas about what is an ethical way of doing things. If you're passing judgement on Walmart here, I think you're also passing judgement on Brazilian culture. Of course, you're welcome to do so, and I might even agree with you. But if you want to fine Walmart for doing things the "Brazilian way" while operating in Brazil, then I think if you are going to be a principled person you must also advocate for trade sanctions or other barriers to doing business with Brazil since you think their way of doing things is naughty. I hope you're prepared for a long battle though, because once you get done fussing at the Brazilian people and their culture you've got a very, very long list of other countries you need to be prepared to harass.

From the Wikipedia page: "Although the decision does not address "corporate personhood," a long-established judicial and constitutional concept, much attention has focused on that issue."[0]

"How should one interpret [the case] then?" Recognize that Citizen's United is _not_ about corporate personhood, and actually read what the case was about. The number of times I've heard people making snarky remarks about Citizen's United without having read anything about the case is amazing.

In the US, corporate personhood is about:

(1) Corporations having equal protection under the law as persons (ie the 14th amendment applies to corporations).

(2) Coporations having the same rights as persons to draft and enforce contracts, making them "legal entities". This is related to (3).

(3) "Person" as a concept applies to associations of people rather than just individuals; associations of individuals includes corporations. See here: [1]

None of these things were decided in Citizen's United and further, it had no legal bearing on the case law surrounding these things.

Instead Citizen's United was about whether a particular law violated the 1st Amendment. Specifically the law prohibited corporations from releasing media 60 days before an election if it could impact the results of that election by reaching 50,000 or more people in the electorate. But the 1st Amendment makes no distinction between e.g. newspaper companies and other corporations, so the majority opinion was that this law and other laws that limit speech of associations of people infringe on the 1st Amendment.

From the opinion: "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person

So, now its the US governments chance to hold out its hand.

These are so trivial for a company like Walmart, and no-one is being individually held responsible. So it just looks like an official bit of us gov bribery, just like the fee's to avoid the security line at the airport. Cloak it in a bit of legal mumble jumbo and the us government gets its payout too.

Frankly though too, these foreign anti-bribery laws seem so antiquated. Every year I have to sit through training for them as part of the corporate hand waving (we can't be responsible we trained our employees). Yet really it pales in comparison to the damage actually being done, and in the cases where the officials will actually take bribes just puts us based companies at a disadvantage to other foreign companies willing to pay the bribes. Especially in cases where the companies from other countries will waltz in with "infrastructure improvements", "cheap loans" whatever...

Does you advocacy extend to other “cultural differences” like child labour, age of consent laws, or indentured servitude?