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by wrren 723 days ago
I don’t think millionaires losing some money is sufficient punishment for hundreds of lives lost. What’s so crazy about prosecuting individuals?
3 comments

Why not both? Punish those making the decisions with prison time, and those turning a blind eye because it was profitable with at least some of that profit.
It's not crazy, but many company divisions are set up in such a way to dilute guilt, and make people feel helpless about fixing issues near them. It will often be difficult to follow a paper trail and find that yes, X Y and Z were the people that decided on a criminally negligent tradeoff.

Just like the unread targets in Wells Fargo, nobody asks for the fraudulent behavior by name, but the incentives often make it inevitable.

> many company divisions are set up in such a way to dilute guilt

not only the internal structure of the firm, but the legal framework in which firms operate, not to mention the cultural mythology situating it all

diffusion of responsibility as one of the defining characteristics of the modern era

Likewise.

In olden times, the monarch's wealth was the state's wealth, and vice-versa.

CEOs being shareholders has a similar problem, in that the only monetary punishment possible against the collective necessarily also harms those with no power to prevent the actions which were punished because it's not a democracy.

(One dollar one vote != one person one vote; also the workforce generally, not sure about Boeing in particular, have minimal to zero shares/votes).

For this reason, I favour a degree of personal responsibility for management all the way from line managers to the board… and for government officials all the way from parking inspectors to presidents.

The details of such a system to make it fair and balanced are an entire constitution, not something I'd be qualified to write, and definitely to big to fit into this comment.

> In olden times, the monarch's wealth was the state's wealth, and vice-versa

Most monarchies at least pretended to separate the state and privy purses, FYI.