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3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

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Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#111
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying nationalized companies are great. I'm saying that if a company engages in such deceptive practices with materials that they know are toxic, and they fail to disclose that to the relevant parties (the government, and the people), they have no business being in business, as they are effectively externalizing the risk their products put on the rest of us. Destroying the company is not the best idea, but t…

> Destroying the company is not the best idea, but there has to be a line society has to draw and be vigilant about defending it. Why is it not the best idea? It's a great idea. Fine them more money and let them go bankrupt. Let companies that did not go under for such awful practices pick up the pieces. Why is bankruptcy acceptable for Kmart but not 3M? Be specific, no nonsense about how they are the only company in…

The US government cannot and should not run a chemical company. It's a dumb idea.

You're just throwing around the word "nationalize" because it feels empowering and edgy, not because it solves any problems.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Destroying the company is not the best idea, but there has to be a line society has to draw and be vigilant about defending it. Why is it not the best idea? It's a great idea. Fine them more money and let them go bankrupt. Let companies that did not go under for such awful practices pick up the pieces. Why is bankruptcy acceptable for Kmart but not 3M? Be specific, no nonsense about how they are the only company in…

The US government cannot and should not run a chemical company. It's a dumb idea. You're just throwing around the word "nationalize" because it feels empowering and edgy, not because it solves any problems.

Nowhere am I suggesting they should nationalize it. Reread the comment.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A plain cast-iron skillet works flawlessly for pancakes and crepes, FWIW.

Thinking about buying one. Would I be wrong in assuming it was just a matter of the order: (really) heat the pan, add the oil, and then whatever you need to cook?

You don't want to get it super hot (the oil/butter should not smoke). Medium heat is fine. They do take a long time to warm up to a uniform steady state temperature though (this is both an advantage and a disadvantage, since it means the temperature stays stable as you cook).

For instance, when making pancakes, my first step is putting the griddle on the range. Next, I start making the batter.

Of course, you can set the range to high and heat it up really fast, but then you end up risking overheating it.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose I give plasma or blood, and it removes PFAS from my body. Does it give those PFAS to the recipient of my plasma/blood?

Yes, but: - it removes only a fraction of it from your body, so it gives only a fraction of it to the recipient. - if you need a donation, this dose compared to what you get in exchange is usually a very good deal - some blood don't actually go to people, but is used for manufacturing drugs, science tests or expires - hopefully people don't get blood transfusions very often and have a blood level of PFAS close to the…

Also: recipient likely has a similar PFAS concentration in their blood already, so there's minimal net impact (aside from the life-saving part!)

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#115
post #85
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are used in all kinds of products that I personaly use everyday from pans to dental floss. And the replacements are not better, they just dont have studies yet that prove they are toxic...

Dental floss is easy - the widely available/cheap waxed Reach floss tested negative for PFAs[1], and it does a better job of cleaning too. The non-stick flosses miss stuff for me. 1: https://www.mamavation.com/beauty/toxic-pfas-dental-floss-to...

Oh thank goodness. When I started looking at the prices of the silk flosses and whatnot, I thought I'd had to take a second mortgage. I've been using Reach for years, due to the price, but also because it works so well for me. Thanks for posting this!

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#116
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shareholders shouldn't just get zeroed. There should be a clawback of profits made by 3M since the 1970s. Raid my 401k -- someone has to pay.

Taking the L out of Limited Liability Corporation. If you paid $100 for a share after the damage was done, who should pay? You, or the shareholder who sold to you?

Exactly. Dollars are fungible, and spread around the economy pretty quickly. It's just not clear the "right" way to do any clawbbacks after a few years. If not done carefully, someone who inherits $1,000 worth of stock from their rich uncle on just the wrong day could the very next day discover they've inherited a $100,000 debt through the crime of being born in the wrong family. People die, people inherit stock, there are lots of second- and third-order effects to take into account in order to have a proper accounting of everyone who profited from the misbehavior.

In a relatively short period, the answer becomes "pretty much the whole economy benefited financially". On the one hand, that's a good argument in favor of partially funding the healthcare system via a financial transaction tax, but is also less emotionally satisfying than what you're looking for.

If you want to make long-term clawbacks practical, you need to do something like force all dividends to be paid as long-duration low-seniority zero-coupon corporate bonds backed by a special-purpose legal entity that holds cash/treasuries to fully back the bonds and can only be raided via bankruptcy hearings. That way, the value is kept non-fungible and risk explicitly tracked.

Though, in practice, equity holders would probably sell those bonds immediately on the market, offloading the risk to third parties. You could make the bonds non-transferable except in case of inheritance, and ban short-selling/creating derivatives to prevent transferring the risk, but that's a lot of complication and overhead with little chance of improving corporate behavior.

Ultimately, long-term corporate responsibility is much harder to enforce than long-term personal responsibility. You need a licensed Professional Engineer (or something similar) overseeing safety testing of the chemicals putting their personal career on the line with their stamp of approval. "If everyone's responsible, nobody is responsible." You need a mechanism to make individuals both responsible and legally empowered.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#117
Strange that we sue companies for selling products we haven't even bothered to ban yet. The idea that 3M "knew the whole time" is kooky when we aren't even sure now, 15 years after people started looking into this, whether we should ban them.

Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually breaking the rules.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it? If they can earn the value of their liabilities in three years, why not just do that?1

How can they do that? Their entire sales for full year 2022 were only $34.2 billion, with adjusted free cash flow of only $4.7 billion. They literally could not cover the interest charges on a $143B judgment, let alone pay it off in 3 years.

I stand corrected, thanks.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#119
post #117

Strange that we sue companies for selling products we haven't even bothered to ban yet. The idea that 3M "knew the whole time" is kooky when we aren't even sure now, 15 years after people started looking into this, whether we should ban them. Scientists, regulators and legislatures should decide what the rules are and then hold companies accountable for actually breaking the rules.

Regulatory capture.

Re: 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They go bankrupt, because their liabilities exceed their assets. There are three main sets of creditors - the US government who are receiving this $142.7 billion, equity shareholders who own $MMM, and bondholders. In a bankruptcy, you arrange levels of creditors by "seniority", where more senior creditors are paid first. In this case, I would imagine the levels of seniority are: 1. The US government 2. Bondholders 3.…

The shareholders shouldn't just get zeroed. There should be a clawback of profits made by 3M since the 1970s. Raid my 401k -- someone has to pay.

Everyone's hating on this, but I do think we have to rethink limited liability because of some of these contexts. 3M paid out dividends for years while producing these chemicals. Their liabilities exceed their _current market cap_, but their market cap could have been higher had they not decided to consistently make those payouts.

Consider J&J's (failed) attempt to spin out a new company to hold their liability over the talcum powder case. It was attacked and shot down because it was so clearly a post-hoc maneuver. If they had merely spun out that child company earlier, would it have been ok?

What if the new playbook is:

- spin out a new company for every potentially risky product line. A parent company may hold a large stake, but other investors can hold shares too.

- sell, grow revenue, but keep few assets in the company; pay out dividends aggressively

- drag out or quash or deny any research or evidence suggesting your product is dangerous, or being sold in an irresponsible way

- when you're finally sued and lose, the company has very little money left in it; plaintiffs get relatively little compensation for their harm, but you don't care because you're busy growing your next dangerous company

If that works, it sounds like a broken system. If you're doing something you should expect will cause large liabilities to crop up later, it seems abusive to pay out dividends to shareholders today and become insolvent tomorrow.

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