Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Many of the problems caused by excessive corporate power could be resolved by prosecuting corporate officers, for actions taken under their direction, as individuals, clawing back their bonuses and locking them up. Laws enabling this have always been on the books, but somehow people have come to tolerate corporate officers getting a free pass. Prosecutors don't even try to fulfill their public duty.

Exxon and coal executives are personally responsible for a substantial part of global climate disruption. Paint executives are responsible for deliberately poisoning hundreds of millions of children. Tobacco executives got millions of children addicted to nicotine. Coke and Pepsi are poisoning whole generations. Yet, the most we seem able to do is fine shareholders, when shareholders really have hardly any say in what companies do. A nut job who shoots up a bus station triggers a nationwide manhunt, yet these rich bastards kill by the millions, wholesale, and more horribly, and are allowed to retire to their yachts. It would not take much prosecution to bring about a sea change in how corporate executives behave.

Do you not realize how unhinged what you're saying is? "Coke and Pepsi are poisoning whole generations"? So you want to put business people in prison because they supply customers with products that they genuinely enjoy? I enjoy soda, I enjoy being able to drive, I enjoy occasionally smoking, I enjoy air conditioning my home. Perhaps I should go to jail too?

If you tell me your job, I could also make up ridiculous reasons about how you're personally responsible for starving children, or destroying the environment, or putting the public's safety at risk.

If you want regulation, pass laws. Don't go starting corporate witch-hunts by politically motivated completely unaccountable prosectors.

You can't participate in civil society if your only solution to problems is "let's throw everyone in jail for doing things I don't like!" And the outrageous unhinged rhetoric: "poising children", "killing millions", and "destroying the planet"... it's obvious what type of leader you'd be if you ever got any power.

You are an example of the problem.

It was known for decades that lead in paint was poisoning everyone. Paint maufacturers persuaded US Congress not to ban lead in paint in the '40s, promising to "phase it out". In 1973 Congress finally banned lead in paint because manufacturers had done exactly nothing in 3+ decades.

The crime waves of the 20th century exactly track (with a ~20 year latency) exposure to lead, so not just cancer and lower IQ, but thousands of violent deaths resulted, knowingly.

We have known, for certain, since 1957, that trans fats in shortening and margarine were major causes of heart failure. They were not scheduled to be out of the food supply until 2017, and some manufacturers have got extensions into, thus far, 2021. ("We still have poison in the pipeline we would like to sell all of before we switch.")

If it makes a profit, it doesn't matter who is harmed?

Putting people in prison for their part in killing millions of people is properly part of civil society. We call it law enforcement.

You seem to suggest laws must not be enforced if rich people might face enforcement? Who is really unhinged, here?

> You are an example of the problem.

So, I would be on your arrest and prosecution list. What a surprise.

And I guess highway designers who choose to make the speed limit 65 mph instead of 3 mph also need to go to jail, right? After all, they KNOW WITH CERTAINTY that a 65 mph speed limit will contribute to many more deaths than if they limited cars to going 3 mph on the highway, but they chose to do it anyway.

While we're at it, why don't we prosecute the mother who bought a $18k Honda instead of a $300k tank even though the $18k Honda exposes her children to more risk of serious harm in a car accident? The mother is knowingly risking her children's lives in order to save money!

Get real and cut the rhetorical hysteria. EVERYTHING in life and the real world is about tradeoffs. And acceptable vs unacceptable tradeoffs change with time as we gain in economic prosperity. If you want regulation, pass CLEAR laws. Don't use weasely rhetoric to pretend that regular businessmen are murdering children because they sell soda.

> So, I would be on your arrest and prosecution list.

The problem I cited was failure to demand prosecution for crimes, which you repeatedly demonstrate.

It is telling that you avoid mentioning deliberate poisoning, and even invent things I did not say. Dishonesty is not engagement.

But if you have been committing crimes, then yes, you should be prosecuted, and if convicted have your takings confiscated and be locked up, like other criminals.

Of course if you have committed an actual crime you should be prosecuted. For example, those Volkswagen people who effectively used fraud to fake emissions data committed an actual crime. On the other hand, selling a LEGAL product which millions or billions of people find useful even if it may have some downstream consequences is not a crime at all. And the examples you used of poisoning were sugar and trans fats. That’s hysterical nonsense.

Yet, trans fats are no longer permitted in food. Can you imagine any reason why? Once the consequences were known, by 1957, all use since has been in reckless disregard of terrible effects. Perhaps you have no experience of a relative killed by it.

Lead in paint and fuel is banned. Can you conceive why? Was the reason known of before the ban, or even before use? (Yes and yes.)

Sugar overconsumption is directly blamed for epidemic levels of type-II diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. The crime is not selling it, but, as in the case of tobacco, contriving to get children addicted to it.

You can repeat "hysterical nonsense" all you like. Adopt it as your mantra. But it does not change the body count, or who acted recklessly to produce it.

Negligent homicide is literally in the lawbook, and no amount of frantically wishful chanting will erase it. All we need is for it to be acted on in good faith by those who are sworn to.

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