[pfdietz]

Harms don't need to be undone, they just need to be penalized.

For example: statistical deaths can be compensated for by fines using the statistical value of a human life (about $12 M). Nuclear power regulation could be based on this principle.

[saagarjha]

How do you feel about extending this to direct murder?

[pfdietz]

Let's turn that around: how do you feel about extending the laws about murder to statistical deaths?

Because that would be completely impractical. It would cause the economy to cease functioning. Statistical deaths and individual murders are fundamentally different things.

There's a fuzzy boundary between the two (as effects are concentrated on smaller and smaller numbers of people) but that doesn't mean there's no difference.

Even with individual murders, there are gradations depending on intention and mental state. Manslaughter and first degree murder are different crimes, even if the number of dead bodies is the same.

[hnbad]

I'm sure there are at least several people in the US who would gladly pay $12 million to directly cause someone's death without further repercussions. There are several people who could easily afford that several times a year without noticeably having to give up any wealth or expenses.

But more charitably: they did say "statistical death" so I presume the implication is "unintentional and non-targeted". Deliberately setting up deathtraps or ensuring a specific person will die but not others would probably be exempt. Of course that could be extremely difficult to prove if gross negligence became so easily affordable.

[BurningFrog]

There are also millions who would volunteer to be killed for $12M to pass on to their heirs.

You "statistical death" is of course 100% correct. These kind of tradeoffs are done all the time when designing safety features, and using a monetary value per human life is the right way to do it.

Some people can't deal with that kind of rationality though.

[BurningFrog]

Giving the next of kin of murder victims $12M would certainly be a game changer.

[slightwinder]

The victim would still be dead. And there are not that many murders who even have $12M. This whole thread is so ridiculous...

[throwway120385]

I'm sure there's at least one billionaire who secretly longs to hunt the greatest game the world has ever known.

[potato3732842]

Do you:

Pay $12m in litigation to prove in litigation why your business thing is fine and legal

Pay $12m to off whoever's the driving force behind your harassment preventing them from doing it to the next guy who's pockets might not be deep enough to fend it off.

It's the pro-social thing to do really.

[saubeidl]

I don't know man, I don't wanna die in a shoddy building or an airplane crash, even if it means my partner gets $12M.

To me, my own life is invaluable. I would assume most people feel similarly.

[timeon]

Not sure if people [0] would do anything if they would not know rules (regulations) but could be drastically penalized if something happens.

[0] Except for reckless gamblers.

[discomrobertul8]

Ok cool, this bodes well for my "disposing of household waste by dropping a nuclear bomb on it in Central Park" startup

[tdeck]

Better add some AI to that pitch.

[detaro]

That's great, so we just need to make some scapegoat companies go bankrupt from fines occasionally and can do whatever we want? (It's already somewhat of an issue in construction industries, build shoddy homes and dissolve the company before the majority of buyers realizes how bad it is, repeat)

[mapt]

One of the things I have evolved on as a liberal/leftist.

There are just too many situations today where somebody is paying the fine with a smile on their face, if not settling for some trivial amount with no acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

Willful harms and even reckless harms by corporations need to be penalized aggressively and punitively. When a corporation worth $30 billion gains $1.3 billion in material benefit over 10 years by doing some activity that victimizes or risks people, it's fucking stupid to try and penalize them $10M with no jail time for anybody. "Cost of doing business" should never be a viable option, because the law needs a subjective bent, some small tyranny of justice, some adversarial person that corporations are structurally encouraged to be terrified of pissing off. If that means forcibly diluting their stock, or seizing the company, or terminating their charter, or throwing their executives down a hole for five years, that's evidently a necessary component of regulation. Deterrence is the name of the game, not just "seeking compliance".

We created corporations, and demand their executives, to behave in a psychopathic, amoral, "rational" profit-seeking manner by the legal fiduciary duty. Passively failing to significantly penalize predatory acts is actively encouraging their continuation. It's creating tools meant to do a thing (Hammers) and using them wrong (Juggling) and then acting stunned when they land on your foot, and spending the rest of the day glaring at and shaming the hammers, demanding verbal assurances that they'll never land on your foot again.

Occasionally, we hear about China rewarding corporate executives who commit malfeasance of a sufficiently malignant scale with capital punishment. The buck stops here. It sometimes makes the grass look greener on the other side, even with all the things I object to within that system.