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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

Generally speaking, when you murder someone you are punished for it. I'm not entirely sure why this would confuse you. If we didn't punish them, there would be no deterrent for the next person to kill people when it's convenient to do so. It's part of what makes us civilized.

Did the CEO PERSONALLY kill them? No, but the claim for outlandish executive pay is executives get paid like they do because they have "all the responsibility". Every time the responsibility bird comes calling, they seem to claim they should have none. Cake and eating and such.

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> the claim for outlandish executive pay is executives get paid like they do because they have "all the responsibility".

Seems like it might be better not to pay them such ridiculous amounts of money in the first place.

Companies don’t generally try to spend money they don’t need to.

I have yet to see evidence that the oft-complained-about high tier executive pay in the US is artificially inflated and isn’t just market conditions pricing the work.

But "companies" aren't a conscious being by itself, they are made up of or rather steered by high tier executives right?

How would you define "artificially inflated"? I.e., inflated against what? Overpaid compared to...average worker pay, GDP, stock market gains...?

If you pay a CEO $3,000,000/year, because otherwise he would leave and get paid that at another company (making that other company more successful than your company) then you aren't "artificially inflating" his pay. You are paying him what the market demands.

I don’t disagree but I think the argument you would typically find is that the value they bring is as symmetrical with pay.

I can find someone on my parents couch who can’t be hired for $100k/yr. That doesn’t mean they are worth that much to the economy

IANAL but for it to be "murder" there usually needs to be premeditation so I think the comparison is not appropriate in this case.

Replace with whatever term you prefer; I think the message is still true regardless of the term lay people use.

I don't think anybody would complain if the CEO at the time was charged with 300+ crimes of some sort, manslaughter, gross negligence, murder, whatever. On a jury I'd be pretty lenient to the prosecution in this matter if they could find evidence that the CEO was aware of the calculus taking place, i.e. let's cut some corners with our regulatory capture so we can ship this plane more quickly and make more money, it is at that point that premeditation for me seems apt.

This is wrong and why not only multiple degrees of murder charges exist, but multiple different charges exist for homicide, eg murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide.

So ... put it before a jury and let them decide.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

> IANAL

Indeed.

Is it really so hard to believe that this could be an organizational issue where no single individual is culpable enough to deserve a custodial sentence?

It really feels like many commenters here are just after some weird revenge porn.

There are two possible responses to your suggestion...

1. The company has an inherently bad culture and should be shuttered.

2. The leader of the company is responsible for that bad culture and should be punished (in some way).

1 is a non starter, because Boeing is "too big to fail".

We can argue about the correct punishment for 2, but "go home with $60 million" probably isn't sufficient.

> 1 is a non starter, because Boeing is "too big to fail".

This I think is the root of the problem. If we can’t conceive of and apply meaningful consequences for the distributed failures of groups of people, then people will group themselves in ways that allow them to distribute their failures in unpunishable ways.

Agreed.

I'm just not sure what a court-ordered re-structuring would look like. Something between a bankruptcy proceeding and an anti-trust action? Lots of moving parts and laws and whatnot.

How many people does an organisation "with the right culture" have to kill before there need to be consequences? I think a hundred is rather large number

Who’s arguing against consequences for the organization?

Like what kind of consequences, and why do toy think that will be successful in preventing further disasters?

if you create a business culture where your product ends up killing people, then yea I would like our government to have a good hard look at the people responsible for that culture.

> Generally speaking, when you murder someone you are punished for it. I'm not entirely sure why this would confuse you.

Right... but why always prison? Why's it always 'who's going to prison for this'?

And the way it's written 'someone should be in prison', 'why isn't anyone in prison' it looks like nobody cares much who goes to prison, just has to be someone.

And it's never a case of 'this person should be tried carefully'. It's always just 'PRISON'.

Overall, seems like you want to find someone - anyone - drag them out of bed - put them in prison immediately, and you think that'll make something better somehow.

I think that's a pretty uncharitable interpretation of the conversation going on here.

At this point it's pretty obvious that there was, at minimum, negligence. They knew what could happen, and took the least-cost route through the forest. And we've all seen countless cases where high-level people at companies have clearly committed some sort of crime, but get off incredibly easy. Prison is IMO a reasonable punishment, if we can adequately assign blame to individuals.

Another option is of course a large enough fine directed at the company, but that doesn't really hurt the people involved enough. The CEO will get his golden parachute, and will perhaps have a slightly-tarnished reputation, but will find another job and his lifestyle won't be harmed one bit. All that does is reinforce the message that you can cut corners, cause deaths, and suffer no consequences. Other executives see that and continue to do the same thing.

I suppose another alternative to prison might be fines directed at individuals, but I expect the response to that will be stronger legal-liability insurance packages for executives, and so the targets of those fines won't get hurt all that much. Depriving someone of their freedom for a period of time is the great equalizer.

That's not why we want someone to go to prison. It's to send a message to the next company that decides to cut corners. If there are no consequences, then bad behavior will continue to happen.

...but again, why prison specifically? Why do you need prison to achieve what you want? Why's that the first and only thing you reach for? And why are you calling for the punishment not the trial?

Because the court of public opinion has already ruled. It's not entirely fair, but I don't think it's entirely unjustified, either.

I'm not convinced fines work to actually punish rich executives. Likely they have liability insurance that will cover a lot of it, and golden parachutes will cover the rest. The deprivation of freedom caused by prison is pretty unique.

Do you have suggestions for alternative punishments that actually punish the target, and serve as a disincentive for other corporate malfeasance?

The layman is often more interested in the end result, and history has provided ample evidence that the legal system doesn't do the best job at making sure the general cultural message gets across.

The layman wants "don't cut corners and kill people, or punishment". The legal system tends to deliver "Accept a plea bargain, get reduced sentence," or "Cut corners,and apply sufficient lawyer to defray the consequences."

Justice is for many distinct from the machinations of the legal system. I like to use the story told in the song "The Night the Lights went out in Georgia" as an example.

A person finds out their wife was cheating with the whole town. Gets distraught. Goes home, finds just his gun left behind. Goes to a friend's house, sees weirdly sized footprints that don't match his friend's, eventually finds his friend dead. Flags down a cop with a shot. Cop assumes he killed the friend, Judge open shuts the case, guy gets hanged.

Turns out hanged guy's sister killed the friend and the cheating wife.

Without knowledge of the sister's deeds, the legal system believes justice was served by hanging him. He killed, therefore his life is forfeit. Where's the justice when the sister is taken into account and the hanging has been done? The legal system would have hanged the sister if it bothered to work right and done nothing to the man, but as the score stands, two will have been executed for the crime, one wrongfully. The judge facilitated the death of an innocent man. Should the Judge not suffer for his dereliction of duty? What about the sister? Even if we recognize she forfeit her life through her actions, an innocent man was killed. To balance that out, it stands one must be spared. Does the Sister get let off Scot-free?

Justice != legality. We try to keep them lined up as well as we can, and collectively we begrudgingly submit to it as the best compromise overall. That doesn't mean though that everyone feels that what the legal system musters is always appropriate for the perceived wrong doing.

Messy business all of it. The messier the business, the worse the legal system seems to be at generating a long-term satisfying result.

Do you have a better way to punish someone in mind? As stated, small fines make no difference.

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