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cs702

Surely, everyone involved has "good intentions."

And yet, looking at this in hindsight, it reads like something straight out of Kafka's cynical mind:

1. An accounting company's staff systematically cheats on an exam for accountants.

2. The company gets caught and charged by the government.

3. The company pays a fine to settle the charges, with a bit of fanfare.

4. The company is now assumed to have changed its behavior.

5. The company suffers no other consequences.

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If you replace "company" with "individual", then the entire thing makes sense - individuals (and therefore companies) should be assumed to have changed until further evidence proves otherwise (innocent until proven guilty and all that). That's why the concept of "repeat offenders" exists, and they do tend to be punished more harshly, at least in the case of individuals. So, time for an extension of that concept to corporations, as well?

Corporations are people too.

>individuals (and therefore companies)

Alright, you've lost me. Why should corporations always be treated the same as individuals?

In the US, the courts have declared corporations are people for all intents and purposes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood?wprov=sft...

that doesn't answer his question on why it should be that way. Courts have said many things over the years, doesn't make it any less of an appeal to authority logical fallacy.

The Wikipedia page that I linked provides a thorough explanation as to why corporations are considered citizens, so I do believe it directly answers the question. In this light, it was not intended as an appeal to authority.

Personally, I think the status quo is entirely and grossly unjustifiable. Citizens United needs to be overturned; corporations are not people and do not deserve the same rights as individuals. My opinion on that matter does not change the reality that they are considered such and only serves to confuse the matter.

No, they really haven't. Corporations are afforded only some of the same legal status as actual people are.

Corporations shouldn't necessarily always be treated the same as individuals, but in this case if it is believed that individuals will change then corporations will also change as corporations are an extension of individuals.

Assuming things like the tendency to increase the consequences for individuals is a good tendency, perhaps the desire is to have consequences for corporations also increase.

"Therefore" was not the right word there (although edit window has passed). "Also" would have been better. I also don't think that corporations should always be treated the same as individuals - just in some ways, and this is one of them.

Put the members of the corporation in jail rather than a token fine and then I'll consider them the same as an individual. But more often than not corporations get away with literal murder with nothing more than a fine. So no corporations are not the same, they deserve no extensions if anything they deserve to be cracked down on harder.

Why, there is another effect: now everyone knows that they were cheating at a large scale. This will, to my mind, give them less business.

The customers who want their books in utterly correct shape would shun them, because the company that cheated at exams could lie both to IRS and its own customers, and nobody wants trouble with IRS

The customers who would like to apply some shady practices to cut some costs would also shun then, because a cheater who cheated and got caught is a,loser, and who wants to hire a company to do shady things and get caught?

So no, there may be enough consequences.

Only in theory. In reality, I can't think of any company over the past decade that has seen a reduction in revenues after being fined by some regulator. Can you find even one example of a business actually declining because of some fines?

If you read the article EY have been ordered to retain two independent consultants in response to this.

>The SEC has ordered EY to retain two independent consultants to help remediate its deficiencies. One will review the firm’s policies and procedures relating to ethics and integrity. The other will review EY's conduct regarding its disclosure failures, including whether any EY employees contributed to the firm’s failure to correct its misleading submission, the SEC said.

And who is going to audit the independent consultants?

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