[_DeadFred_]

Countries should take stock equity over fines. It dilutes the owners share value and punishes stockholders who don't make a company's' boards accountable. With ownership, the government also then has the ability to 'peer behind the veil' more easily and make sure management is behaving. Finally, if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board (think a corporate equiv to a death penalty, since under the law corporations are treated as people).

[JumpCrisscross]

> With ownership, the government also then has the ability to 'peer behind the veil' more easily and make sure management is behaving

You want every politician you don’t like in the country having this power?

> if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board

This is expropriation. (It’s also fines with extra steps and ongoing costs.)

> think a corporate equiv to a death penalty

Corporate death penalties are fines with extra steps. They’re a red herring to avoid what companies actually fear, massive fines that force them into liquidation. Anything you want with a corporate death penalty, massive fines achieve more cleanly. The only function bringing the former up has is to distract from the latter.

[nullc]

Is that really true? CDP stops the operation. Massive fines would allow the company to continue operating sold off. The fines may be financially worse for the owner but in terms of the unlawful and antisocial behavior the death penalty would more directly end the conduct by ending their operation.

In many cases this would be preferable I think: the owners may well have been unaware of the bad conduct and at least individually unable to prevent it. In that case, ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners may be a more fair thing to do.

[JumpCrisscross]

> CDP stops the operation

What do you do with the assets? If you’re reorganizing them, this is no different from putting e.g. the automakers through bankruptcy. If you’re taking them over, it’s no different from a bail-out. If you’re liquidating them, why are you liquidating them? Just fine them and let them sort out the selling of assets.

> ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners

They’d just reconstitute the company. Presumably they weren’t seeking liquidation beforehand, and see the combined assets worth more than them individually.

Corporate death penalty is a distracting term from massive fines (and license revocations). Fines are a possibility. Corporate death penalties are needlessly, some might say intentionally, over complicated in a way that makes them far favourable to massive fines or revocations.

[dgfitz]

> You want every politician you don’t like in the country having this power?

What an interesting question. I personally feel like this line of thinking is a microcosm of how terrible the US frame of mind is right now.

Mostly though, you like some of them??

[the_optimist]

It’s the only question worth asking, ever, about law: when the law is inevitably misused, how bad is the outcome?

[JumpCrisscross]

> you like some of them?

Yes, the ones who understand why betting on benevolent dictators is a losing strategy in the long run.

[cde-v]

If it reduces corporate power enough we might actually be able to get some trustworthy people into office.

[Nasrudith]

Reducing the power of any potential rivals is supposed to make a position more attractive to the trustworthy? That sounds rather backwards.

[the_optimist]

Can you articulate an equilibrium of political economy that reflects your redesign? Like what’s the role of politics in economics?

[JumpCrisscross]

> reduces corporate power enough we might actually be able to get some trustworthy people into office

If what did? The history of expropriation is one way: the rulers and their families accumulate the jewels. OpenAI gets fined and given to Biden, Meta gets fined and given to Trump. The economy gets divided by the people who have the power to seize.

[kerkeslager]

This is pretty naive about the reality of stock ownership. If you're an investor in the US, you probably own the S&P 500. You want me to hold 500 different companies accountable? And, failing that, you're going to dilute my shares?

The reality is that shares are absolutely useless as a distribution of responsibility. Shareholder decisions are dominated by a few majority shareholders who likely hold shares as part of a portfolio, and in the context of a portfolio, it's the whole thing that matters, so it may even be good to tank the share price of one company if it benefits the value of other holdings. Minority shareholders are held responsible for majority decisions they may have directly opposed. And shareholders are limited in what they can do to hold people responsible anyway: if approve a bonus check to the CEO for a successful quarter and then find out that the success was built on murdering toddlers, the CEO still has the bonus check and there's nothing the shareholders can do to retract it.

I think a better solution is to admit the basic fact that people, not corporations, make decisions, and when people make unethical decisions, hold those people personally responsible. Stop trying to fiddle the knobs of your economic Rube Goldberg machine to get the invisible hand to hold people responsible, and hold people responsible.

[j-bos]

Is this a novel concept?

[mananaysiempre]

Sounds like expropriation by another name, honestly.