241–250 of 611 posts
I tend to think that a more just system would transfer ownership of criminal organizations to victims, which would also supersede all outstanding financial liabilities. Especially this last point would destroy credit options for companies suspected of criminal activity as the larger creditors will hire private investigators.
Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…
> You have to dismantle a company before it changes these kinds of deep-rooted issues? When you dismantle a company, people lose jobs, that does not look good on TV for politicians.
Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…
The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…
And as it stands they've already been losing money for the past 5 years. They could be losing a lot more money.
Granted a lot of those losses are due to their own mismanagement of projects like KC-46, Starliner, AF1, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point of OP was that in many ways companies have many of the same rights and privileges as individuals, but cannot be punished in the same ways.
I don't really understand that as a point, though. What would punishing a company look like? Why wouldn't we want to figure out how to punish (or hold accountable) individuals, instead of focusing on the fact that we can't punish legal entities? We can't punish countries either, even though they can also do these things. We can only punish people. So what?
We are currently trying to punish entities (with fines), and it's ineffective.
We should move back to punishing people more, and moving back the responsibility to people, instead of pretending companies are people, and therefore responsible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The U.S. is not going to shut down Boeing. How many jobs would be lost if that happened, especially in this economy? The fine is quite low.
The US has propped up Boeing, because it's primarily a military contractor.
Politicians care about getting elected, which means they don't want layoffs on their watch. Politicians don't care what the military thinks or else they'd stop funding a lot of dumb projects that the military doesn't give a shit about - of which there are many.
There are so many examples of congress putting their hand on the scale that I really don't understand the popular insistence that the military is the problem here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the legal culture I'm familiar with, the CEO and the board of directors can be held liable for everything the company does. If they are not aware of the crime but they should have been, it can be seen as gross negligence. As far as I understand, the legal theory is that the CEO and the directors are organs of the company rather than natural persons when acting in their roles. Therefore some of the usual legal prot…
You are all arguing irrelevant points. Because the premise is false. You can identify the people responsible. I won't bother to explain it all, but at very step of the manufacturing process different workers signed off on the integrity of their work. All of that paperwork was logged with the US government. If you let me peruse those papers I could tell you who designed each and every component of the landing gear, an…
If some random person on the floor didn't properly log a maintenance activity, that is the CEO's fault for not creating a culture in which proper documentation is properly stressed. Again, the buck stops at the top.
That person on the floor must be, and usually is, indemnified, because it's more important to get open and honest feedback from them on what happened. That way we know the changes the CEO failed to implement to prevent it from happening, and should now implement to prevent it from happening again. This is because the buck stops at the top.
Individuals need to be held accountable. Having the company plead guilty helps literally no one. Who were the relevant board members? The CEO? The COO. These people need to be charged.
Thoughts and prayers, an inconsequential fine and back to business as usual.
Instead we could be like China and actually punish people responsible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal#Arre...
> The Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang sentenced Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping to death, and Tian Wenhua to life in prison, on 22 January 2009.
> Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping were executed on 24 November 2009.
A much more vile crime but accountability nonetheless. (you can argue about the morality of capital punishment.. but these guys poisoned babies)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The felony murder rule is a rule that allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the defendant is not the killer.
Is whatever Boeing did a "dangerous felony"? Wikipedia suggests not every crime qualifies: >To avoid the need for reliance upon common law interpretations of what felony conduct merges with murder, and what offenses do and do not qualify for felony murder, many U.S. jurisdictions explicitly list what offenses qualify in a felony murder statute. Federal law specifies additional crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping,…
Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…
You put in place an incentive to not do these things. Corporate executives and boards do these things because they're incentivized to do so through stock price-based compensation. Great risk should come with great reward. We no longer assign risk to most executives at publicly-traded, multinational corporations, but the reward is still great. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what the risk should be, bu…
I agree with that statement, but want so add: I believe that whatever you propose will have significant problems and is likely worse than the status quo in some major way. Sometimes I'll only be able to tell you what those problems are in hindsight. Sometimes those problems are fixable sometimes not.
Don't let this dissuade you from thinking about the problem - it needs to be thought about. However do think about is in more than a shallow way, look at it from all viewpoints (including ones of people who disagree with) try to see what the downsides are and how to mitigate them. Good luck, if enough people do this maybe someone will come up with a good enough answer, (as opposed to perfect!) and you will understand the problem well enough to help debate why the downsides are worth it.
Who will resign in shame and vow to never take a leadership position again?
Oh? Nobody? Um, ok. Justice is served, I guess?