[tivert]

>> Why aren't we forcing the polluters to pay for the cleanup as well as the likely-tremendous costs of damage to people's health and the ecosystem

> We are (1), but to be frank the "payment" isn't enough. We need criminal liability for executives and board members. Apparently there's not enough incentive not to destroy public health for generations.

Criminal liability for decision-makers is the way to go, along with some plan that wipes out the shareholders but otherwise doesn't destroy or cripple the company as a going concern. The company itself isn't guilty, and it has lots of innocent stakeholders (e.g. customers, lower-level employees) who would be harmed if it was damaged.

[aoeusnth1]

The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.

[andruby]

But that would also introduce a perverse incentive by giving the government a way to take over companies.

(And yes I do believe that governments and/or individuals with power would abuse this for personal gain)

[aoeusnth1]

They already have the ability to sue for cash. How is stock materially different?

[andruby]

Stock gives control over a company. I would say that is materially different.

ie: suing Apple for cash won't give them the ability to install backdoors, taking over control of Apple would. (This is probably unlikely to happen with Apple, but maybe it could with Comcast, AT&T or even Intel)

[nightski]

Yeah no thanks. The government is the reason these companies were able to do this in the first place. They lack the ability to simply regulate, let alone run a company.

[tivert]

>> The govt should be able to sue the company for more than it’s worth and simply nationalize it if it wins. Think of it as a death penalty for corporations.

> They lack the ability to simply regulate, let alone run a company.

Who says the government would run the company? The meat of the policy is all about wiping out existing shareholders to incentivize them to make sure the company doesn't do stuff like pollute a bunch of groundwater. The policy could (and should) immediately sell the company again via an IPO of reissued shares. The proceeds could go to some cleanup or compensation fund or something.

[nightski]

That's not what nationalize means, you kind of went off on a tangent. Regardless the wealthy would find a way around any scheme like this, I have no faith something like this could be done effectively. Like I said they can't even regulate because of lobbying and special interests (they need money to get elected).

My point primarily being that government is more the problem here than corporations. It's their job to put in safeguards to prevent these things from happening in the first place and they could do that without resorting to pseudo communism.

[tivert]

> That's not what nationalize means, you kind of went off on a tangent.

I didn't actually, but was bending a tangent back to my original idea. When I brought up wiping out the shareholders up thread, I never meant the government would operate the company on an ongoing basis and never used the term "nationalization." Though I could understand "nationalization" being used to describe a brief transitory state.

> Regardless the wealthy would find a way around any scheme like this, I have no faith something like this could be done effectively. Like I said they can't even regulate because of lobbying and special interests (they need money to get elected).

I don't really care. I'm tried of the idea nothing should be attempted because of a false assumption they "would find a way around any scheme like this." It's heads you win, tails I lose thinking. Screw that.

> My point primarily being that government is more the problem here than corporations. It's their job to put in safeguards to prevent these things from happening in the first place and they could do that without resorting to pseudo communism.

Alright then, if that's the case, lets reform criminal law around those lines. No punishment, no deterrence, just 100% prevention. Your friend get murdered? Don't do anything to the murderer, because it's really the government's fault it didn't successfully make murder impossible. I'm sure that would work wonderfully.

[aceazzameen]

But these companies are so big now that it would hurt someone's stock, 401k, and economy as a whole.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But these companies have to be hurting themselves in the market by other means before the govt will do anything about it, besides a slap on the wrist.

[tivert]

> But these companies are so big now that it would hurt someone's stock, 401k, and economy as a whole.

I'd think a "corporate death penalty" as a kind of creative destruction. I'm sure demise of Radio Shack hurt someone's stock stock or 401k, so that's tolerable. If it's not, I suppose part of the policy could be to reissue and return stock to certified "unsophisticated" investors (e.g. index funds open to the public and people with net worth below some middle-class cutoff). That reissued stock would still be valuable, since likely few of the company's fundamentals would have changed.

I also don't think such a thing would hurt the "economy as a whole" beyond a short-term blip, unless the company ceases to be a going concern. You'd only we wiping out the stockholders, it'd still service its customers, make debt payments, etc.

[mcpackieh]

Leaving the company intact is dangerous. The company culture that permitted these acts won't necessarily be wiped out when you purge the executives but leave the rest of management intact.

[tivert]

> Leaving the company intact is dangerous.

Not necessarily so.

> The company culture that permitted these acts won't necessarily be wiped out when you purge the executives but leave the rest of management intact.

So throw the baby out with the bathwater, then?

[nickff]

Wiping out shareholder equity will incentivize risk taking (think Bed Bath & Beyond or Hertz), and is very likely to destroy company, harming many stakeholders in the process.

[tivert]

> Wiping out shareholder equity will incentivize risk taking (think Bed Bath & Beyond or Hertz), and is very likely to destroy company, harming many stakeholders in the process.

Explain how you think punishing bad behavior will motivate more of it.

IMHO, the shareholder class puts out all kinds of noise to avoid accountability, and that includes employing people to produce very sophisticated propaganda that makes false claims against holding them accountable (e.g. false heads-I-win, tails-you-lose scenarios).

[duped]

Similarly we should let burglars off the hook because they're putting bread on their families' tables. My point being is that such a limp response is just more privatization of profits and socialization of losses/costs.

The systemic risk of not putting companies to death when they behave badly is greater than the risk of the less-guilty stakeholders (you can't be a stakeholder in a bad actor and be innocent - only less guilty; that's true of employees and customers).

[tivert]

> Similarly we should let burglars off the hook because they're putting bread on their families' tables. My point being is that such a limp response is just more privatization of profits and socialization of losses/costs.

Except we're not. Unlike a corporation, a burglar is a unitary entity. Everyone guilty in the company (including its shareholders) will be "on the hook."

> The systemic risk of not putting companies to death when they behave badly is greater than the risk of the less-guilty stakeholders (you can't be a stakeholder in a bad actor and be innocent - only less guilty; that's true of employees and customers).

No. That's an unreasonably extreme take that, if taken to heart, would cause the cons to far outweigh the pros. We live in the real world, and the real world demands tradeoffs.

Also extending this to all the costumers is nonsense. Is some dude who buys a 3M N95 mask in a hardware store even a little bit guilty of polluting the water supply with PFAS? No, of course not. You might be able to extend some blame to companies that bought PFAS from 3M, but it would have to a pretty direct connection.