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Comment by hndudette2 | Hacker News Reader

The upside of your proposal is that it'll create a very strong disincentive for this kind of behavior.

But if we really can't attribute blame to specific individuals, your proposal is effectively collective punishment where individuals that are genuinely innocent are punished because of wrongdoings of other members of the group. From a justice perspective, we're in murky moral waters. An analogy would be to punish everyone in a shared household if we know that one member of that household committed a crime but we can't determine which one specifically (and let's assume that the innocent members of the household don't know and aren't hiding information). This would be a state of affairs that everyone would rightly protest. So we need to think carefully as to whether we want to enact your proposal.

View on HN

Your comparison is incredibly exaggerated. Being a highly-paid C-level exec of a $120B corporation that holds people's lives in its hand isn't exactly a human right like living in a household. It's as much a privilege as anything can be. And it can and absolutely should be revocable when you show your leadership allows people to people die under your authority, your awareness notwithstanding. When hundreds of people die under your watch, it isn't about you anymore. It's about the rest of society. You can tweak it if you feel it prohibits things like being a CEO of a self-proprietorship or a small family business or whatever; I don't care if you want to do that. Just draw a line that ensures they would get nowhere near a position like this in the future.

The ultimate point being: you can still let them make decisions about their own lives if you want, but that doesn't imply you have to let them make decisions that affect other people's lives.

I absolutely agree that leadership at Boeing was responsible for the deaths but the fact that we can’t get it right for (comparatively) petty crimes means we are unable to get out right for the big ones. I’m of course referring to the sheriff in California who has not been charged for corruption and has not been forced to resign:

Previously on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193699

They didn't even touch the Sheriff.

> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.

Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.

Which one is it?

This is how tithings used to work. Ten men would be grouped into a tithing, and if any of those men were suspected of a crime, then the rest of the group either had to prove their innocence or had to condemn the guilty party. If they did neither, all were equally punished for the crime.

In principal, it strikes me as a good idea - it promotes collective good behaviour, and responsibility for ones peers.

It's collective guilt. Are you sure this is a good idea? It might be great in pre-Norman England.

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