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Comment by averagewall | Hacker News Reader

What difference does the motive of individual participants make? There's a system in place which incentivises people to sue to stop this kind of abuse and punish the companies doing it. I'd much rather that's done for money than waiting and hoping for a good Samaritan to come along and save people out of the goodness of his heart.

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Except in this case the payouts won't exactly stop or truly punish the offenders, and the payouts also might not go to help the victims..

@sbarre what makes you think that the payouts will not punish the offenders? are the pharma, not one of the categories of offenders in this case? Just curious.

I mean real meaningful punishment (for the companies and the individuals responsible for the decisions), not just a settlement payout that represents a fraction of the profits they actually made by causing this tragedy, or "the cost of doing business" as you often hear in these situations..

Corporations exist to protect the investors and the executives but they can only be punished monetarily.

This is why CU undermines Democracy.

Citizens United has nothing to do with why we rarely charge people who break the law while working for a corporation with charges that carry significant jail time.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Isn't pharma losing some of their ill gotten profits better than them losing one?

> Perfect is the enemy of good.

Yes, and that's why you prefer perfect ;).

> Isn't pharma losing some of their ill gotten profits better than them losing one?

The problem here is that when such a thing occurs again and again, people start to treat it as a business model. Punishments are meant to deter, by giving only a slap on the wrist and calling it sufficient punishment, they'll be further legitimizing the whole strategy as a viable business model.

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