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Comment by fwn | Hacker News Reader

> The EU considers the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman and irreversible punishment which fails to act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour.

http://www.eidhr.eu/highlights/death-penalty

edit: Hmm, now I'm not sure whether you meant a companies metaphorical death? ..I'll leave it here anyhow. :)

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Revocation of corporate charter is the equivalent of the death penalty for a corporation.

Doesn't happen often (at all?) and even if it did, what stops the company's leadership from starting a new, identical company with a identical board, employee list, etc. the next second?

Jail?

Sorry, I don't know how "losing your corporate charter" works. Who goes to jail?

Having to raise all that capital over again, or being temporarily or permanently barred from the industry, a common sanction for bad actors in the securities world.

It doesn't really happen. What does happen is companies going out of business from being unable to pay fines and/or liabilities to harmed parties.

There are different rules in each country around eligibility to serve in certain company functions, but those will usually only come into play after an individual's conviction for a crime committed in a business context. There are one and a half I've heard of actually happening in the real world: (1) (frequently) you'll be barred from serving as CEO or starting a corporation after a conviction for criminal bankruptcy, and (2) board-level positions for banks have rather strict requirements that would preclude most people with recent convictions for serious crimes.

I've only heard of one case of (2) being relevant, which was the possibility of Deutsche Bank's CEO having to resign after a plea deal for one of their many scandals.

In contrast to humans, who have the right to live, companies have the privilege to exist.

In contrast to humans, who have the right to live, companies have the privilege to exist.

I agree with your sentiment, but I consider being alive the greatest privilege.

privilege implies that someone has the right to take it away

Wouldn't that inhibit someone's else's rights? Companies are made of people after all, no?

But they have certain "privileges" granted by society (i.e. by consensus of the majority of he population). This only works for as long as the society deems companies beneficial to the wellbeing of the people; once that ceases to be true, the rights or privileges of the company/-ies should be modified or revoked.

This is where I have a problem. "This only works for as long as the society deems companies beneficial to the wellbeing of the people" said another way is collective good trumps (no pun) individual liberties, this is just communism worded differently. If you were to logically implement or even deduce what this implies is communism and that is bad as seen by both empirically and logical (deontological) evidence/proofs.

What has the majority done to build a company that they can take it away? If you say they've made transactions or buy buying the stuff the company makes, then I'd say they got their money's worth and that's it. There was no surplus. Additional rights were not part of that deal. So that can't be an objection.

Let's unpack this. As an example, I'm working at this company. I do no harm to others, neither does the company, but the society has the right to take this away because majority says so (for whatever reason)? So if you can take away somebody's job and their property, the company, because a majority says so, I don't see how that's ethical.

Couldn't you say the same thing about tax in a (what we usually describe as) capitalist system?

In any case, companies grant privileges as well as obligations - e.g. limited liability, and they can outlive any of their employees. It's a trade-off; if you don't like it, you van always do business as a person, then noone can take that away - but you also don't get these privileges.

I'm not sure how this actually works in UK law, or any other EU country, or whether it's even possible. Companies can be dissolved, because they have ceased to function: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/company-strike-of... (see the amazing list of names in 10.3, including "The Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer")

What usually happens to a sufficiently badly behaving company is that the directors can be struck off: https://www.gov.uk/company-director-disqualification

There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Manslaughter_and_Cor... , which is used when there is gross negligence relating to safety which gets someone killed.

(I think that may have been influenced by the long campaign after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchioness_disaster , but I'm not sure)

Surely "prosecuted to death" was a figure of speech??

I don't think he meant it literally.

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