How do you hold an immortal, amoral entity that can’t be thrown in jail accountable, then? Trivial fines amounting to 0.1% of EBITDA are not the answer.
If fines are low, companies will continue to behave poorly because it may be profitable to do so.
Versus for example “technology” which is amoral, because it is itself a tool unaware of the purpose for which it is even being used.
Of course companies are also not immortal, companies “die” all the time.
However, companies certainly can and do act unethically, particularly when there are economic incentives to do so.
A 0.1% of EBITDA fine to Walmart would be hundreds of millions of dollars. They would certainly care about that, and they likely have teams of people who work to ensure compliance for a whole host of regulations which could result in fines at that order of magnitude.
Humans operating within companies may experience moral impulses, but the company as an entity constantly urges its humans to act amorally in service of its profit-seeking.
Also, the CEO may not go to jail, but the local people actually doing the bribery should.
And, speaking of 10 years, they had that long to spread that billion dollars over. They’ve probably made $300B in that time. $1B is a drop in the bucket.
They should have internal policing. When there are billions at stake, I don't understand why these kind of things aren't torn open by lawyers.