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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

Along with more obvious reasons like corruption, one reason prosecutors don’t like to go after shareholders or shut down the company is that there are a lot of people who work for these companies who aren’t responsible for bad acts, who have families to support and putting lots of people out of work for something out of their control is political suicide.

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That argument is based on the premise that the best thing to do is be cowardly if it benefits you, even if it costs a lot of people who you have a duty towards substantial amounts. The long term prospect of repeatedly caving to corruption taking relatively small portions of the population hostage is eventual corruption of the entire system -- death of the system -- which costs the futures of the very people who would be angry at you.

I'm not sure I agree with that premise.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

This makes no sense, because CEOs are not irreplaceable (and, thus, should not be immune). Just replace a bad CEO with a good one and all "innocent" workers will not only not suffer, but will be in a better shape due to expected overall improvement of the company's culture and performance.

The 'just replace' kind of makes no sense. Replacing senior staff has all kinds of ripple effects throughout a corporation. I would propose that hardly any illegal or immoral act of big corp starts with the CEO. It's a cabal usually. Just cutting the head of won't work. I would like to read about clearly immoral companies coming clean, tips? In fear many only clear their act up in nominem.

I stand by my opinion, but you have to read it not literally. Firstly and obviously, the phrase "just replace" is somewhat a simplification, even though I believe that, in any decent organization, it should not have any ripple effects at all. Secondly, assuming you attempt to read between lines, my points do not specifically target CEOs per se, but upper management, who almost always is the mastermind, initiator, orchestrator and beneficiary of illegal and/or immoral acts in corporations ("cabal" in your parlance).

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