[subsubzero]

Fun fact, as a owner of a GMC auto I got a innocent looking email about the discontinuation of the Onstar Smart driver service which was the service in question that violated many US laws and sent data to insurance companies without customers authorization. I hope this hits GM really hard as this type of behavior will never cease until massive amounts of money is extracted from the perpetrators(GM etc).

[fooqux]

And not just massive. It needs to be an order of magnitude more than they made from those deals. Too many times companies get slapped on the wrist for an amount considerably less than they made from their illicit activities.

Which I never understood. Normal people that get caught doing things like selling stolen goods have to pay a fine on top of all money they may have made from selling it. Why aren't companies treated the same?

[akira2501]

> Why aren't companies treated the same?

It's more of a hostage negotiation. You want to hurt the company and it's owners, but if you sue too hard, you're likely to just hurt it's workers and it's customers.

It's why preventing companies from reaching _anything near_ monopoly size is so important for corporate jurisprudence. "Too big to fail" is just the tip of this insane iceberg we've allowed to grow into our economy.

[EvanAnderson]

> You want to hurt the company and it's owners...

The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want.

Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

[dredmorbius]

Institutional shareholders actually play a strong role in governance over companies, both in choosing where to invest, and in directing companies (and their boards) as to how they should operate.

Pension and hedge funds finding that their assets are at risk due to changes in perceptions around privacy are actually among the most effective market mechanisms for changing corporate behaviour. Far more so, it seems than the consumer/retail side of the market, where leverage is effectively nil.

Investors can effect leverage because they're not stuck with a monopolistic / oligopolistic market with a small number of vendor choices for a particular good. Investors have the entire market of stock corporations as potential investments, and can enter into or exit from those which pose attractive opportunities or undue risks with very few additional concerns.

[natpalmer1776]

Except institutional investors ARE restricted based on what kind of investment they need to fill out the specific portfolio they're administering.

Oftentimes these restrictions limit them to a subset of companies in a certain market to fill a specific niche in the name of diversification. Are they artificial limitations? Sure, but only in the sense that there is no regulation saying they cannot find a different company to invest in.

All that to say that things are not nearly as cut-and-dry as it may seem.

[dredmorbius]

With regards to the ultimate thrust of my comment, to a greater or lesser degree than ordinary "consumers" (I hate that term) within monopoly-dominated product or service fields?

Is there any investment category in which an institutional really has only, say, 1--3 options? Because that is the relevant comparison.

I'm going to posit that investment markets are overall more competitive than consumption markets.

(They may have other issues, including some that, of all people, Matt Ridley's pointed out. I believe it's somewhere in this discussion with Johan Norberg and David Runciman, which I've listened to previously but not just now in referencing it: "The New Optimism" on Intelligence Squared, <https://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/the-new-optimism-...>. It's worth listening to on its own. I'll admit to being partial to Team Runciman myself, but Ridley's comment on asset markets has been bouncing around my noggin for a while.)

[akira2501]

If they are willing to accept the profits than they must also accept the risks. Otherwise you're just vouchsafing the hostage negotiation because of one level of indirection.

Ideally, the people responsible for managing the money on behalf of these institutions end up bearing most of the responsibility.

[dontlikeyoueith]

> Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

But then who would write the campaign contribution checks on which our government depends to survive?

[tomrod]

You're getting it! This is what people want! I say this only half joking because I think you get it, so no /s required :)

[khc]

> Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

I suspect one possible outcome is many people wouldn't want to take the risk to become an executive, and the percentage of executives who wouldn't mind taking risks of going to jail will increase, which is not a desirable outcome.

[Spivak]

Then don't commit crimes? I'm usually pretty sympathetic to executives being used as sacrificial lambs by constantly being put in the position of having to bet their jobs on a coin flip they're calling in the air. But this really isn't defensible.

Jailing people with only knowledge isn't the right move compared to having a fully anonymous whistleblower program, with fine sharing. It sucks that there has to be zero transparency but you don't want some unfortunate schmuck doing the right thing and then getting blackballed for the rest of their career for it. But jailing the people with authority and accountability is completely doable-- if you didn't know that's on you because it's literally your job to know and that lands you 3rd degree $crime. If they can prove you knew that's 2nd degree, and if they can prove you ordered it or signed off on it then that's 1st degree.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Then don't commit crimes?

But that's the problem. Crimes are profitable.

Suppose there are two insurance companies. One is following the law, the other one is bribing a mid-level employee of a car company to give them driver info and then using it to set rates and solicit policies. The CEO of the car company doesn't even know it's happening and the CEO of the insurance company does, but isn't telling anyone about it and it just looks like they have above-average margins on their policies.

As long as they don't get caught, the ones breaking the law are not only making money for themselves, they're the ones investors will choose to invest in when all they can see is the bottom line. The honest CEO of the other insurance company gets deposed because investors want someone who can get the same returns as the cheating one, so they cycle through executives until they get one that posts better numbers because they're cheating too.

Some of them will never get caught and come out ahead. The others expect that to happen, which is why they're willing to do it, and if they do get caught then they get replaced by someone else who thinks they won't get caught.

The underlying problem is the structure of the system. The owners want higher profits but are also a diffuse group without the capacity to pay detailed attention to how it happens, so you create evolutionary pressure to cheat. What you actually want is for companies to be operated by their owners because then the owners know what's happening inside the company and can distinguish between a company which is making more money because it's well-managed and one which is making more money because it's cheating and putting their investment at risk. But then we need to stop having megacorps with diffuse passive investors and instead have small and medium businesses which are operated by the owners.

[chefandy]

A far more direct consequence of the current situation is that these executives just do whatever the hell they want to maximize their profits at everybody else's expense. Without punishment enough to make it unprofitable, dishonesty only has incentives, on both business and personal level.

I just don't see that twice-removed latent effect having worse consequences for society than the base problem. Not by a long shot.

As a kid, I grew up playing in a marsh that turned out to be the illegal, unmarked, non-access-controlled chemical waste dump for a large specialty chemical plant nearby that had operated there since the late 19th century. Those executives knew what they were doing was wrong— it was the 90s, not the 60s— but spent decades telling bald-faced lies to everyone involved, and when the writing was on the wall for regulatory action, they just dumped the company onto a shell company so the large international parent corporation wouldn't be in the news, and retired happily in huge mansions while the parent company dumped probably 2 years profits into the superfund project to remove the most dangerous stuff and cap/fence of the entire area. I could certainly never know for sure how much that exposure affected my cancer, but the chance of it being zero is pretty slim. Nobody even told me or anyone else around there— I only knew about it because I dug up some old EPA document scans. You're goddamned right they deserve to be in jail and not taking 4 month yacht trips. On a moral level, I think they deserve worse. It was not a sparsely populated area.

[zo1]

This is the kind of thing I expect and want investigative journalists to write about and quiz politicians about non-stop, all the time. Instead they interview them about vacuous things like "ice cream", non-committal questions about policies, "initiatives" like DEI and corporate governance, and stuff so far removed from any concrete instance (like yours) that they can answer in vague non-answers that sound like answers but answer nothing. And of course, never a follow-up, unless it's a politician they don't like, in which case the journalist gets visibly annoyed and angry (wtf?) and tries to call them out on "misinformation". The entire thing is a farce, whilst real-world people on the ground suffer.

[ClumsyPilot]

> I suspect one possible outcome is many people wouldn't want to take the risk to become an executive We will run our it if executives? Oh no, what will we ever do? It’s not like people compete for that job and salary

[dontlikeyoueith]

That's a cute tactic.

Claim that $BAD_SIDE_EFFECT would be bad, even if it's better than the status quo.

Nice way to prevent change.

[candiddevmike]

> The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want.

I mean... Shareholders are ultimately responsible for the company, they elect the board etc. If shareholders were impacted by this, maybe it would make more folks think twice about "passive investing"?

[beart]

I don't see this doing much unless everyone stops at about the same time. The largest shareholders have a disproportionate amount of power to influence the direction of most companies.

[dchftcs]

For much of SP500, the largest shareholders are the passive investors. It's common that an activist hedge fund can influence decisions with a mere 3% or so stake because the likes of BlackRock and Vanguard support them or abstain.

[tempfile]

If you properly punish the shareholders, then it doesn't matter if they stop or don't. If they stop, the bad behaviour stops; if they continue, the onerous penalties continue. Anybody who wants to sponsor bad behaviour with their AUM can pay the appropriate fee.

[gustavus]

I love when people bring this up. I passively invest by which I mean I take a couple of bucks every couple of paychecks and throw them into an index fund or buy one or two shares of stock of a company. Not to mention my 401k. How about we hold the people making the decisions accountable all the way up and down the chain instead of letting the go with the whole "following orders" defence.

[zo1]

How about we don't let companies control their dividends. Excess profit that's not reasonably ear-marked for growth, should be mandated to be distributed as dividends. And that's probably just one item we can start doing to make the stock-market less of a gamble and hedge against inflation, and more of just "people owning portions of profit-making entities".

[account42]

> The owners of big companies include lots of pension plans, index funds, etc. Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want.

It is exactly what we want. Otherwise the only deciding factor for what to invest in is maximum profit and that just incentivizes companies to skirt the law as much as possible.

[troyvit]

> Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions, is probably not what we want.

It's definitely not what we want in the short term, but thinking longer term, it's index funds and such that need to remove these actors from their portfolios if we really want to start reshaping the economy.

[consteval]

> Jail for executives who approve or have knowledge of illegal activities sounds good to me.

Life hack: make your activities so complex and distributed that it's impossible to tell who, exactly, is responsible for what. And then also just delete communications when you can.

[sensanaty]

Simple solution: You're held liable regardless of if you knew or not. It should be your responsibility to do everything possible within your power to make sure the company you're heading isn't committing illegal acts. If it is and you can't prove you tried everything you possibly can to have control over the situation, tough luck buddy.

Maybe then the inflated CEO salaries will make some form of sense for once, instead of the current system where there's 0 actual risk for them other than a golden parachute waiting for them at the end of the road after having fucked millions of people's lives irrevocably.

[BeFlatXIII]

> everything you possibly can

There will always be some bottom-feeding prosecutor willing to come up with absurd hypotheticals to ensure no one ever gets freed by this loophole.

[tempfile]

> Hurting those owners, who didn't have any say in the bad decisions

Why do you think this? Executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, so if these actions are more profitable, they are legally required to perform them. Moreover, the primary beneficiaries are the owners.

Indeed, if you harm the shareholders by reducing the price of shares, you are harming them in the most fair way possible: In proportion with their share of the responsibility.

[mrguyorama]

>Executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, so if these actions are more profitable, they are legally required to perform them.

Zero percent of this is correct, and even if they had a legal responsibility to make "as much money as possible", which they don't, that would definitely not force them to commit crimes

The "fiduciary responsibility" is NOT "to make every dollar possible", it is a "don't purposely hurt the company" rule.

[tempfile]

Surely it must be at least fifty percent correct, since you grant the first clause :)

Of course the duty does not extend to committing crimes. I was being a bit cynical. You are right that profit maximisation and fiduciary duty are distinct concepts. In practice, though, the owners are profit maximisers. Companies that do not profit maximise are less attractive to investors, attract less investment, and are outcompeted.

To advocates of the market system, this is a feature and not a bug. But its effect is that companies operate "optimally" within the bounds of the law - said differently, the line between legal and illegal conduct is generally skirted as closely as possible. And when, as other commenters have noted, punishments for breaking the law are on average less than the profits incurred by illegal activity, selection bias means you are left with lawbreakers in the long run.

You are right that this is not a (direct) consequence of the fiduciary duty of an executive. I stand by my main point, though, that this behaviour is a consequence of the owners' selection criteria, and they deserve to be punished for it.

[darby_nine]

Pension plans are nearly gone and the whole point of index funds is to weather volatility. We have unemployment to assist workers (or we would if workers had modern rights to begin with). meanwhile whole draw of market investment to everyone but the shareholders goes tits-up if failure is weathered by the market as a whole rather than the incompetent or malicious actors.

I mean, people will put up with a lot, but eventually they'll realize that the market isn't magic and its continued failure to address our the economic and social conditions can be blamed on a specific enumerable class of person.

[hiatus]

> Pension plans are nearly gone

Pensions are a large part of public sector compensation.

[darby_nine]

Ok, as I said they're nearly gone. Unless you think we should tank our society to benefit 14% of the country, or backing pensions with something more reasonable than market forces, there's not much to gain from prioritizing pensions over every other symptom of economic health.

[throwaway48476]

Companies need to have to name someone who is criminally responsible for the companies actions.

[pests]

How much would you need to be paid to assume this role for Google or other big tech companies?

[throwaway48476]

If you're being payed enough that you know you'll be imprisoned isn't that quite the indictment of their business.

[trhway]

>You want to hurt the company and it's owners

No. What you'd really want if you really wanted to fix things is to hurt the top and mid-managers who decided to commit those offenses. Unfortunately it almost never happens.

[mrcsharp]

Don't forget the board. Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth.

[tick_tock_tick]

No they choose to because of the benefits it gives them. Realistically middle management are the ones who need to start going to jail to cleanup this kind of behavior.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Top managers are made to break the law due to demands of infinite growth

No, they’re not.

[BeFlatXIII]

[ citation needed ]

[AmVess]

The only way to fix things is to drag the occupants of the c-suite into civil court and start dropping massive fines on their heads. Do that, and this type of behavior would vanish within days.

[darby_nine]

> but if you sue too hard, you're likely to just hurt it's workers and it's customers.

Something tells me the concern is more about the current shareholders than either mentioned party.

[nine_zeros]

I say, let the company be forced to be auctioned away and a ban on the executives from holding board/executive position for the next 5 years

[ensignavenger]

GM is nowhere near a monopoly in the automobile market, so that isn't an issue in this case.

[throwaway48476]

Given the recent demonstrative pricing power the auto industry appears to be an oligopoly.

[mike50]

Aided by fuel "economy" regulations, obsolete tariffs and refusal to harmonize regulatory requirements with the EU.

[Scaevolus]

IIRC the amounts involved were absolutely pitiful compared to the reputational damage-- they were being paid on the order of $10/car/year.

[TeMPOraL]

What reputational damage?

I know it's a number that gets calculated on cybersecurity assessment sheets, but I've never seen it being in any way connected to reality. Best I can tell, the actual reputational damage is almost universally $0. Security breaches are non-actionable oopsies - unless your product is literally preventing such breaches[0], it's going to be seen as a random event that has no bearing on customers making their purchasing decisions. After all, it could've happened to anyone, and might just as well happen to any of the competitors, and it doesn't even impact any of the subjects directly.

--

[0] - And not even then - see e.g. CrowdStrike, who're busy turning the greatest security fuckup to date into a net positive event for them.

[tw04]

They don’t exactly have a captive audience. Besides the corvette, their competitors pretty much universally have a drop in replacement.

Changing cars is a heck of a lot easier than a corporation ripping out software that they likely have a 3-year contract on, and would require millions in services on top of just eating the cost of the contract itself.

[bruce511]

Only if you believe the competition isn't doing the same thing.

My bank isn't a monopoly. They provide with terrible service. (Truely terrible). Trouble is all their competitors are just as bad.

GM gets no blow-back from this. Firstly because "nobody" cares. Second because "I bet you they're all doing it" and thirdly because in 20 minutes I'll be outraged about something else. By the time I buy my next car I can't remember who had this issue, plus all the other complaints about all the other manufacturers.

If I stopped buying from every company that has, or is, behaving badly, every company that had a security breach, or contributed to the wrong politician, or hired a racist, or whatever, I'd never spend a dime.

[Tempest1981]

Damage: I'm shopping for a new EV, and will now avoid the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Chevy Bolt. Or find some hack to kill cellular.

[bruce511]

Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage.

Hacking the cellular is not damage to them (you bought the car.)

But mostly, given that you have principles (which I applaud), tell me which brands you would consider. (I'm pretty sure I can Google a bad-news-day for them too.)

[ben_w]

> Firstly, with respect, one purchase is not damage.

In so far as the sense that anecdotes are not data. To the extent that Tempest1981 is a representative sample, it is an observation of damage to the brand's reputation.

[Tempest1981]

Even less... Hyundai: $0.61/car. Honda: $0.26/car. GM: unclear.

I believe this is total/car, not per year. They did it for pennies.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/senators-your-driving-data-may-ha...

[ClumsyPilot]

This is insulting and offensive.

If you are gonna sell me down the river, at least get a good price!

[dboreham]

Because this isn't Europe -- US government is essentially owned by corporate interests, regardless of party in power.

[bruce511]

If we take that as true, then we can ignore that aspect when we make our choice.

While both parties are funded by corporate interests, they still are far enough apart on policy and personality for the choice to have an impact.

Corporates are mostly caring about tax policy and industry regulation. They (mostly) have neutral stances on things like Healthcare, equality, racism, immigration, abortion and so on.

[tacocataco]

If corporations are people, why doesn't their corporate charter get revoked while they "serve their time"?

[0xEF]

Because laws exist to protect the wealthy, sadly.

[crest]

Executives behind bars and multiple times the revenue from their illicit deals should work as incentive to guide the industry.

[isr]

How about this. For criminal behaviour which crosses a certain $ threshold (as in, what size of fine is levied by the courts/fed authorities), the entire remuneration given to anyone who served on the board of directors is considered forfeit, and used to pay the fine. That means seizing secondary properties from current or ex directors, and other assets.

Once that pool is exhausted, then you ding the shareholders (via draining the company's own coffers).

Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect.

And yes, this WOULD be justice. Those who did the wrong, and profited from it, SHOULD pay.

[account42]

> Sure, this would give rise to some schemes of "how do I squirrel away my bonuses, in case they come after me tomorrow", but hubris & the unpredictability of this would still lead to some big, eye watering examples. Which would have the necessary deterrent effect.

The simple solution to such games is the same as with other monetary fines for individuals: if you can't pay the fine, you go to jail.

[zo1]

I'm a full-on free market freedom person, but even I'd agree with this kind of stuff at this point.

One thing we really need to be careful to avoid whilst going down this proposed route, is to not mimic the failure mode of socialist/communist entities. I.e. Whereby performance is mandated (produce X amount of grain), along with constraints and other mandates that make the first or all mandates impossible to achieve at the same time, thereby guaranteeing failure and/or reporting shenanigans.

E.g. in our current world context. Mandating increases in hiring as a percentage, but then also giving a mandate that we can only add female/non-white employees; all while existing in a male/white dominated pool of applicants. We have to give reasonable and understandable growth / performance mandates, and not pie in the sky stuff that takes generations to fix but we want it done by next quarter.

[mjevans]

I'd be fine with letting the company get to choose between a sufficiently large fine, and board level executives who encouraged the behavior going to jail for real durations of time.

They can pick one of three choices: Don't be evil. Pay more than they made. Go to jail for the same duration of time as having stolen Option 2's money, and not the scapegoats, people actually in charge.

[stainablesteel]

its not just that

i don't want electronics built into cars

i don't want data coming from my car

i don't need a phone to be built into my car

i don't need navigation to be built into my car

they need to stay in their lane

we need anti-enshittification laws

[ensignavenger]

I absolutely want electronics built into car! Requirements for antilock brakes, electronic fuel injection, and other electronics in vehicles has made them safer and more efficient. The other items on your list I can agree with, though.

[brendoelfrendo]

And ECUs make it so easy to manage all of these things! I love 80s/90s Japanese sports cars, but I don't think we need to go back to the era of using a gazillion vacuum lines to control all kinds of esoteric valves and sensors. But I agree with everything else; I don't want my car to connect to the internet, I don't want my car to track my travel and driving habits, and I definitely don't want that data sent to the manufacturer to be sold.

It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report.

[kaibee]

> It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report.

Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your competition starts doing that, then you're at a competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So the logic then goes that you might as well do it first.

This is a case where you need government regulations to enforce mutual disarmament.

[ensignavenger]

Or GM could not do it, and loudly advertise the fact that their cars are more private than their competitors, who snitch on you to insurance companies. The marketing alone would be worth far more than they gain from selling the data.

[csunbird]

but to what end? making 5$ more per car probably does not even cover the software engineering costs to develop the system.

[FMecha]

>I absolutely want electronics built into car! Requirements for antilock brakes, electronic fuel injection, and other electronics in vehicles has made them safer and more efficient.

There are car people out there who would rather drive a fully analog car without any electronics such as ABS - though that typically means a hardcore sports car such as a Caterham.

[beambot]

Let's add "renewable energy sources" for good measure.

Then the only viable solution is a horse. Ha!

[10u152]

Horses are the OG self driving vehicle, they’ll happily plod home if they know where they are

[s1artibartfast]

Too bad new cars are required by law to have a real time internet connection so that the police can track them and execute remote shutdown commands. There's no opting out of government law by selecting a different brand

[0xEF]

Hyperbolic comment.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/infrastructure-bill-track-...

[ericmay]

The best way to combat this is walking and bike lanes. With no alternative to cars for most people you will see this kind of behavior continue.

Trying to pit automakers against each other on this topic and others is the misdirection. They want to distract you from wanting alternatives so that you don’t even need to have a spying car in the first place.

[rockskon]

What about every single person that doesn't live in the city and needs to commute 30+ miles to get to work?

[ericmay]

What about them? The roads are still there and they can still use them.

I’m suggesting that future growth can be handled better by providing alternatives to forced car ownership, and so if you don’t want your data collected by your car you can have an alternative.

[rockskon]

????

There is no reasonable alternative. Public transport is unreasinable for most people when you look at suburban and rural areas for the bulk of places people live and work given how spread out everything is.

[ericmay]

How things are today can be changed…

But you’re also missing the forest for the trees. There are easy wins in public transit that can reduce car usage but we refuse to fund them. Bike lanes and street cars in urban areas for example can reduce car usage (and reduce congestion for drivers) and allow us to do more with less. I’d prefer riding a bike a mile down the road to grab groceries (or just walking) but our infrastructure makes that impossible and so I have to drive a car, taking up a limited parking spot and slowing your driving down too.

Most Americans actually live in urban environments as well. We aren’t that spread out actually.

[0xEF]

I am with you, but the power that Big Auto and Big Oil wield in this realm makes it impossible to foster change unless consumers start collectively organizing. Good luck with that. I hate to say it, but that war feels already lost in the US. There is hope elsewhere, perhaps, but sadly, the US is shackled to their cars and trucks by the civil engineering that resulted in suburbia.

[ericmay]

I think it's still hopeful. Even in places like Columbus we have regional leaders and mayors who recognize we can't just do "cars forever". Younger people I speak with want to be able to walk to places too. It'll be a battle but I think we can make things better for everyone, including drivers.

[olalonde]

You're definitely not a typical consumer.

[jbm]

Yes, I see a lot of this sort of comment wrt to phones too.

IE: People love the iPhone 13 mini — and it is immediately discontinued for low sales.