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Comment by salawat | Hacker News Reader

There needs to be corporate death penalty at some point. I nominate Experian.

Isn't this the equivalent of "fining the company equal to its market cap"? If the fine is equal or greater to how much it's worth, it's effectively a death penalty. Given that regulators are having trouble even fining companies for 1% of their market cap, this seems like a goal that can't realistically be achieved. You'd be better off lobbying for stronger enforcement of existing laws and/or higher fines.

Hear, hear! Let's call it "capital punishment."

What would that entail? Do you think their investors, who have profited off the harm they've done, should face any repercussions?

They should never be allowed to own or invest any business again, in part of full, for the rest of their lives (including as an indirect beneficiary via family or friends). On top of a hefty personal monetary penalty... bring them back down to the level of us filthy peasants so they can reap what they sow.

This would help dissuade people from using companies as proxies to do evil things for profit without consequence. Since it puts you at high personal risk of burning your one lifetime chance at entrepreneurship.

Or maybe fix capitalism somehow i duno (yes this is hard).

If the company is shut down, then they lose any investment that they've made in the company. Most investors have little knowledge of the day to day operations of a company.

> Most investors have little knowledge of the day to day operations of a company.

That's part of the problem.

I bet it would change if we started locking them up :)

No need to do that. Just liquidate the company, and give nothing to the investors. The threat of corporate death penalty and a 0% yield on your investment (not a good track record) will help CEOs think twice before they do something stupid on behalf of their investors.

That would be a -100% yield on investment, not 0%.

Thank you, you are correct

Roll back the game. Identify when the crime took place. Every transaction after that point is invalid. All profits made must be paid back. The corporation may resume its operations under new leadership after the rollback is complete.

If that's too hard then just wipe out the company. They're not humans, they don't have rights, they don't feel pain.

So the people who funded the crime should just go free?

well they probably get fired and sued by the stockholders.

Well... losing their entire investment would certainly be a repercussion.

Boeing should probably be subjected to termination too.

If we’re going down this rabbit hole, Exxon or Philip Morris or DuPont or Chiquita is probably way higher up the list than Boeing, as Boeing has only killed a thousand or so people via mismanagement (this is not counting their warplanes which kill deliberately).

Exxon knew definitively in 1977, in writing, that we were going to incinerate the planet.

Let's add them too.

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