[jussij]

As a juxtaposition consider this, just out today.

Halliburton, the US energy services giant, has admitted destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst such disaster in American history.

A Justice Department statement released late on Thursday said the company had agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct that occurred when it was carrying out its own post-accident investigation.

Is any one going to pay for the fact that they broke the law, screwed up in the lives of so many people in Florida, stuffed up the environment for years to come all for the sake of a dollar?

No. The Justice Department is going to do nothing more than slap them on the wrist.

And why is that? Obviously money talks!

[rayiner]

> Obviously money talks!

You make it sound like Halliburton just wrote a check to the DOJ to make the problem go away. Big companies don't need to write checks--they have hostages.

Put yourself in a DOJ prosecutor's shoes. You've got evidence of illegal conduct. You can't pin it on anyone specific, but you know the company overall engaged in the conduct. What do you do?

Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.

Do you shut down the company, in the process putting tens of thousands of innocent people out of work in the midst of a shitty economy, punishing shareholders who had nothing to do with the illegal activity, and destroying a local economy?[1] All for what? To prove a point?

No, you don't do any of these things. You do exactly what the DOJ did in this case: force them to make a $55 million "donation" to the National Wildlife Fund, pay a token $200k fine, and let them go on with a stern warning. That's just the nature of law enforcement in a globalized economy, where multi-national corporations can "vote with their pocketbooks" and have countries compete to see who can be the most lax about law enforcement.

[1] E.g. consider the criminal indictment and subsequent dissolution of Arthur Andersen, and its impact on Chicago. While most of the personnel moved to other accounting firms in the city, losing the global headquarters of a $10 billion/year giant in the industry was not a good thing for the local economy.

[clicks]

You make good points, but I think you overlook the fact that when you're in a climate where anything goes -- a climate that has come to be that way precisely because of a series of complex precedents where it had been unclear where the blame fell and so the real villains often went unpunished, a lack of drastic, disruptive action is probably ultimately much more disastrous than what slaps on the wrist of varying intensities will get you.

This whole thing to me is pretty reminiscent of Wall Street problems. I'm sure there will always be a number of economists who'll defend the situation there, who'll pedantically frame the issues in detailed legal, economic orientations but overlook the more damaging, permanent problems people at large face. Without drastic actions (e.g., handing Jamie Dimon a lengthy prison sentence; fining Halliburton something that'll seriously debilitate (but not bankrupt) their operations, an amount that will make it absolutely clear to management, shareholders and everyone else that strategies of 'play dirty, make big profit, pay relatively small fine' are completely unacceptable), I don't think we're likely to see any meaningfully positive change.

As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence. Much like how folks are okay with that, I'm pretty much okay if we start seeing a more rash justice come down upon CEOs and upper management, I'm okay seeing shareholders suffer a little, I'm okay with seeing fines in upwards of billions figure, I'm okay with the threat of nationalization looming over companies at detection of naughty behavior. And I don't think this is sloppy anarchist thinking, this is action apparently needed for a larger utilitarian interest (which in my view is generally a reasonable goal).

Okay, that sounded a little extreme, but tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore? How things are currently going is obviously not working very well.

> Do you randomly prosecute the CEO, simply by virtue of his position, for activity you can't directly pin on him? If you do this, watch every multi-national rush to re-incorporate in Switzerland.

Great. Another one will pop up in its place, who we should reward if they uphold higher ethical standards by doing business with them.

[rayiner]

> As a society we seem to just accept (and overlook) a high entropy in incarcerations of black teens caught with weed with shaky evidence.

By and large, black teens aren't incarcerated on "shakey evidence." That's the great thing about crimes that affect poor people: they're really easy to prove. The difference between an aggressive deal/outright fraud/honest mistake is difficult to prove. Who knew what? When? What were they thinking? Possession of an uncontrolled substance? Felon in possession of a firearm? Robbery? That stuff is easy to prove.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think it's okay that we imprison so many low-income minorities. But I don't think its the result of "high-entropy" prosecutions based on "shakey evidence." It's the result of astronomical sentences and three-strikes rules for relatively minor crimes (drugs, theft, gang activity) that are very common among low income populations.

> Great. Another one will pop up in its place,

Because we're doing such a great job keeping businesses in America as it is? All that will happen is that the capital will slowly migrate elsewhere.

> But tell me, how else can we tell them we're not putting up with bullshit anymore?

The fact of the matter is that we don't have any choice. My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout. All they do is call up a state legislator and say: "I create 300 jobs in your district; this is how high you're going to jump." And the legislators ask: "how high?"

And the people absolutely will not do anything about it, because far and away their #1 political concern is getting a job or keeping their job. And no government official is going to be stupid enough to do something like punish a corporation overly harshly because a simple ad along the lines of "so and so cost such and such county in Illinois 300 jobs!" is a nuclear weapon in the current economy.

[vl]

>My mentor in law school once pointed out to me that in Illinois politics, large companies don't have to make campaign donations to exercise their political clout.

And I was thinking that in US companies can't make campaign donations at all, but what do I know...