> Possibly, but this government action could automatically trigger unemployment benefits...
I like this in a perfect world, but I think in reality it causes too much disruption, and not a type that's beneficial for consumers in the short run. Normally that doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. If AT&T is wiped out tomorrow, that's a lot of people losing their phone and/or internet service all of a sudden, and for many of those people their primary contact for ordering goods and services, or how they get emergency service access (911), etc.
What about Walmart? Walmart has eaten up the normal vendor market in large chunks of America. If Walmart was closed tomorrow, it would take a while for people to set up something to serve all the rural people that go there as their primary location for groceries, supplies, clothes, tools, etc. I imagine in a lot of places groceries would be sparse.
Once you get into things that are even more like utilities, it gets even more problematic. Private companies that act as utilities, like natural gas truck delivery?
I think there are lots of reasons and possible unforeseen problems with just wiping out a company. I think beheading the company and grafting some other head into place might alleviate those problems. At best, it's ensuring the problematic decision makers are gone and the the company can try to survive with the resources it has (whatever wasn't fined away) and the employees have time to plan and jump ship if it's still bad or benefit from better management, and at worst is a slower death which allows for the market to take over more naturally.
> A big issue I have is with founders. Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, are all de facto still in control of their companies
Yeah, and that's why I think it might also require special provisions on boards and or managers that have stock. Maybe an inability to sell or exercise voting rights for a period (those would be some interesting votes, where the majority shareholders can't participate).
> We have to destroy bad companies, make their stock worthless, so that the risk of that is factored properly into stock values.
That's one of the reasons I think we shouldn't go that far. What employee is going to blow the whistle when it's not just hard times for their company, but when they know they may be responsible for putting 30k people out of a job? At certain points, punishing too hard can have perverse incentives. We want people to come forward. We want people to think that this might be hard, but it's possible to weather it and eat the bitter medicine and come out the other side either better or at least still alive.
And for regular stock holders, this is way more complicated. Do we want to punish regular people that happened to have some of that stock but didn't have any inkling of what was going on? What about all the people that get advance notice and sell so they reaped the benefits of the high stock but avoid the drop on bad news, and the possible immediate loss (which the buyer unfortunately would get both of). Going back in time to revert sales just doesn't seem feasible to me, both because of how that may cascade for other stock bought with the profit, and because how do you tell when the cutoff is?
I think there's too many possible unforeseen problems with just stopping the company. I mean, there's also a lot with lopping off the head and replacing it, but by it's nature less, I think.