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3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

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Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#11

Post by wahnfrieden »

acdha wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China, there was a case of baby formula execs (Edit: pointed out to me further down thread that the execs were only jailed for 5-15 years with Sanlu's general manager receiving a life sentence, and the people executed very those directly responsible for tainting the product mentioned) knowingly selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were exec…

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life?

Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

They might get back out and are a known quantity. The premium is for assurance. Death at the hands of the state and your fellow citizens should be an absolute last resort, but still an option depending on severity of offense and when determination of guilt is ironclad. I understand the position of people who don’t believe in the death penalty, but I don’t agree with them. There are terrible humans amongst us. Everyone makes the world a better place: some by entering it, some by leaving it.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#13

Post by acdha »

steve1977 wrote: post #7
acdha wrote: post #5

I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end. As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning, maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too many people who’ll chase the larger number. You need the guy who gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn’t report it to the EPA, he’ll spend the rest of his life won…

Up to and including capital punishment. If something like this causes deaths for example, it should be treated like murder.

Yeah, treat it like we would murder versus manslaughter based on proof of intent. If you knew the risks and did it anyway, we should treat that like we do someone shooting a gun in populated place.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#14

Post by rayiner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6
acdha wrote: post #5

I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end. As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning, maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too many people who’ll chase the larger number. You need the guy who gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn’t report it to the EPA, he’ll spend the rest of his life won…

In China, there was a case of baby formula execs (Edit: pointed out to me further down thread that the execs were only jailed for 5-15 years with Sanlu's general manager receiving a life sentence, and the people executed very those directly responsible for tainting the product mentioned) knowingly selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were exec…

You’re on the right track. Maybe we can get a bipartisan coalition to push through the death penalty for corporate execs and drug kingpins.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#15

Post by reqo »

I honestly don't think there is any incentive for large corporation to care too much about things like this and, on the contrary, they are incentivized to do more! The fine they get is basically cost of doing business and since our attention is engineered to be short, the negative PR won't last long enough to have a huge impact. Unless we see a "too big to fail" company actually fail because something like this, we won't see any change in their behvaiour!

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#16

Post by KyleBerezin »

monkburger wrote: post #3

This is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical companies, can more or less, police themselves. We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765 ) They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.

I think the exon-mobile report on global warming is one of the most accurate models for predicting global warming, and that was written before this was a big political issue. I think having companies produce the research to hang themself with in the future is unstable though.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#17

Post by starttoaster »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

For me, it's about ensuring some kind of deterrence. Life in prison without the possibility for parole can be too soft when the crime is the intentional negligence leading to the deaths of thousands, if the punishment is life in a low security prison with access to TV/internet. If you have the connections to ensure you end up in a nice little apartment in Club Fed, you might not think as hard about the consequences as if the punishment was potentially death.

I'm also somewhat skeptical on the idea that the death penalty _should_ cost more than life in prison (assuming that sentence carries at least 20 years for the remainder of that person's life.) It would seem to me that there is a fairly obvious problem there that needs to get worked out if it's actually true (has anyone looked closely at the studies that assert this claim? Obviously there's additional time in court, but it would seem preposterous that this would necessarily lead to an increase such that paying for someone's housing and supervision for 20+ years is cheaper than additional court time.) Obviously there are other factors like how the government allows itself to get overcharged by the company that manufactures the lethal injection for some strange reason (is it actually all that strange to anyone?) And then what is the actual reason for all the time prisoners spend on death row, this would seem to just be the state shooting itself in the foot on statistics for the costs for capital punishment?

Anyway, I'm generally for the death penalty in matters where there is a clear connection between one entity and an intentional large-scale loss of human life. Proving the intention and the connection are the hard parts, for sure. But the clear benefit to the death penalty is that it's a permanent act that would-be criminals would naturally try to avoid, potentially avoiding them becoming criminals at all. If you have a study that somehow refutes this theory, that would-be criminals, especially white collar criminals similar to officials at 3M here, don't consider punishments as a deterrence at all, I might revise my opinion.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#18

Post by rayiner »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #11
acdha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m generally opposed to the death penalty on the grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we’re going to have it on the books, I’d have a hard time saying that shouldn’t be an option. We’ve charged plenty of people for killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can be a lot more than that.

Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to cage them for life? Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec? Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)

The point of the criminal justice system is to create strong social norms and taboos. Not deterrence—not to create the fear of getting caught—but rather that internal feeling that compels people to avoid wrongdoing because they don’t want to be seen as “bad people.”

Even low level criminals mentally distinguish themselves from the “really bad people.” In prison, the people who hurt children are reviled by the other criminals. When we impose the death penalty for certain conduct, we create a powerful social norm. The point is to help the majority of people who aren’t evil, but are flawed and fallible, stay on the right side of the line.

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#19

Post by syndicatedjelly »

verdverm wrote: post #2

Given we have a recent law regarding data breaches, notifications, and penalties for not... We ought to mirror this law onto IRL products and companies

Are those laws effective at stopping any of those things from happening?

Re: 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the public

#20

Post by ClumsyPilot »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6
acdha wrote: post #5

I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for everyone in the management chain before this will end. As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning, maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too many people who’ll chase the larger number. You need the guy who gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn’t report it to the EPA, he’ll spend the rest of his life won…

In China, there was a case of baby formula execs (Edit: pointed out to me further down thread that the execs were only jailed for 5-15 years with Sanlu's general manager receiving a life sentence, and the people executed very those directly responsible for tainting the product mentioned) knowingly selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were exec…

Why is the discussing of death penalty vs prison relevant, when western evecutives never go to prison?

Boeing killed 500 people, they knew the plane was faulty, and they suffered no consequence.

Untill a CEO of a major corp or a bank thats 'too big to fail' spends a few years behind bars, this whole discussion is just some sort of fantasy revenge fap.

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