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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

pluralistic.net

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#261

Post by brookst »

namaria wrote: post #241
brookst wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the lack of accountability for corporations is crazy, I’m a firm believer in the Cube observation: there is no master plan.

There is one master plan tho: might is right. It gets pushed back, but it seeps through every contention wall we have put up so far.

A flaw in human nature, but not a plan. There was no board meeting where people came up with it and set out a roadmap and had milestones and KPIs.

It’s an emergent property and it sucks, but there’s no conspiracy.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#262

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hermannj314 wrote: post #32

This is the way our world works. If you steal a potato, you will be arrested immediately and the case will be resolved in a few weeks or months. If you illegally fix the price of potatoes and steal billions from the market, you will be allowed to operate for years in the open while a lengthy civil procedure eventually may ask you to give 1 or 2% of what you stole back in fines. Don't blame the potato theives or potat…

> If you steal a potato, you will be arrested immediately and the case will be resolved in a few weeks or months

Have you been to San Francisco?

We don't prosecute petty crime in America. If you want a proper example, compare it to wage theft (including by small businesses).

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#264

Post by thfuran »

RobotToaster wrote: post #186
layer8 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment, I don’t see how “sending shareholders to jail” could possibly work, given how many people own shares. It’s like your dog would be collectively owned by a million people. Maybe you mean the board?

To continue the analogy, if a dog is aggressive and hurts people it gets put down, why not put down the corporation?

I do think judicial dissolution is underused, but it should require a rather high bar of malfeasance. Significant penality for executives or the board seems like a more sensible first step in general.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#265

Post by amelius »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

This will get worse soon with the oligarchs in power.

And by the way, this is preaching to the choir. Nothing will change if we keep echoing the same things to ourselves.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#266

Post by qwerty_clicks »

constantcrying wrote: post #103

What a terrible article. The title and the first paragraph talk about how new business models are circumventing existing laws, which seems fair enough and actually quite an interesting subject. Then, there is a switch to the most traditional of businesses with the most traditional business models. Who, the author argues, are engaging in price gauging. In the second paragraph he claims that apps cause this inflation (…

While some of the article’s leading point in apps doesn’t clearly connected to collusion to raise egg prices, it’s all valid. Tearing it all down is sore of you.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#267

Post by JumpCrisscross »

namaria wrote: post #241
brookst wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the lack of accountability for corporations is crazy, I’m a firm believer in the Cube observation: there is no master plan.

There is one master plan tho: might is right. It gets pushed back, but it seeps through every contention wall we have put up so far.

Countries with might is right systems don't have corporate ownership, they have personal fiefdoms.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#268

Post by gruez »

ryandrake wrote: post #249
maiar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The entire point of corporations is to shield individuals from penalties, but they don’t work. Business failure in good faith, where the shielding makes sense, is not really protected because bank loans require personal liability and because it’s impossible these days to recover from a damaged reputation unless you come from a family rich enough to hire its own PR firm. On the other hand, when it comes to letti…

The corporate veil should provide enough protection from random and unforeseeable failures to encourage entrepreneurship, but not enough that it shields wrongdoers from consequences. Currently it shields nearly everyone from everything in nearly all cases from run-of-the-mill business failure all the way up to straight-up fraud.

>Currently it shields nearly everyone from everything in nearly all cases from run-of-the-mill business failure all the way up to straight-up fraud.

Tell that to Bill Hwang or Sam Bankman-Fried.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#269

Post by margalabargala »

miohtama wrote: post #190
layer8 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I’m sympathetic to the sentiment, I don’t see how “sending shareholders to jail” could possibly work, given how many people own shares. It’s like your dog would be collectively owned by a million people. Maybe you mean the board?

There is no room for million people in any jail system on the planet. What should happen is to send the share price to zero or give to the government. This was e.g. done with 2008 financial crisis for Fannie Mae and it had been paying dividends to the US citizens since then. However there exists discussion whether this was a good thing in the end.

FYI, the US prison population is 1.2 million.

Obviously that's not the same as havingva million of currently empty capacity, but still.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#270

Post by maiar »

ryandrake wrote: post #249
maiar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The entire point of corporations is to shield individuals from penalties, but they don’t work. Business failure in good faith, where the shielding makes sense, is not really protected because bank loans require personal liability and because it’s impossible these days to recover from a damaged reputation unless you come from a family rich enough to hire its own PR firm. On the other hand, when it comes to letti…

The corporate veil should provide enough protection from random and unforeseeable failures to encourage entrepreneurship, but not enough that it shields wrongdoers from consequences. Currently it shields nearly everyone from everything in nearly all cases from run-of-the-mill business failure all the way up to straight-up fraud.

It doesn’t shield small business owners in practice, though. Bank loans tend to require personal liability, and there are ways to pierce the corporate veil when the company is provably one person. So individuals get only a small amount of protection in practice. Even if you fail in good faith, there’s a good chance that your life and reputation are ruined.

On the other hand, large companies are basically private armies in which the presumably passive shareholders are so distant from the actions taken on their benefit that people almost never go to jail unless they are deliberately thrown to the wolves by shareholders or superiors.

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