If you want corporations like Facebook to care about breaking the law, you need start handing out jail time for the CEOs. Fining a significant percentage of revenue might work, but they'd probably cook the books.
a) The only way to keep poor people in line is the threat of prison.
b) Middle class people can be kept in line by the threat of fines.
c) However the wealthy are kept in line by the threat of losing their good reputation.
Maybe he should have been more sincere by explaining how the wealthy can buy or trade their way out of trouble, by unduly (or at least unfairly) influencing the legal system to their advantage.
And the Swiss apparently keep your car until you fork out the fine..
Rich people can also be punished by fees if they got them as much as the middle class (i.e. they need to be based on net worth), prison time will affect everyone.
The biggest issue is that rich can use their money and influence to escape justice, I suppose maybe it means that reputation is the only thing left to control the rich, but that hardly helps, there are many rich people with horrible reputation that still do very well, one even got the highest office in the land.
0. make corporations admit wrongdoing. almsot every one of them that gets out of a protracted settlement like this without having to own any responsibility at the corporate level for this. They can take the fine. They cannot take the risk to their business and loss of reputation in the market.
1. Stop offering settlements and start prosecuting. Chain up their C levels, withhold bail, deny parole and do not under any circumstances allow the argument of 'hurting the market' sway you. Do the same thing you do to street criminals: freeze their assets and punish companies doling out golden parachutes (AKA bankrolled hush money.) Yes this means you wont always have a perfect record as a prosecutor, yes this means you wont get your shiny DC penthouse after you 'retire' from government life with a law firm in the beltway. and yes it means youll do real work.
A politician with clout doesn't like what some CEO said, or that he bankrolled your opponent?
Destroy their business by setting the prosecutors on them, jail their CEO, destroy their business by seizing the cashflow, and then 2 years down the line, charges dropped. Whoops.
No reason to do asset seizures or withhold bail or any of the other things he's listed as necessary to hold them responsible. Those are extreme measures that they use in the drug war because they've been losing it for decades and are giving up on the principal of fair laws in a desperate attempt to look effective.
And if they do take the job they would be hyper-cautious. This is not conducive to high profit. So companies via lobbyists make sure legislation is passed "as it should". The balance of power is incredibly tilted in the favor of corporations, and some governments really did their best to maintain this status-quo.