So, no more Kevlar for police protection? The problem with the idea of a corporate death penalty is that it would shutter the corporation, shock the supply chain for critical materials, terminate the employment of thousands of people, and devastate their communities (e.g. because employees have families and those families consume food and stuff from the local economy which, in turn, supports other families).
It's obvious why we haven't adopted it as a viable punishment.
But we did. It used to be a tool that was implemented when a corporation behaved egregiously badly. At some point, though, we stopped (I think it was in the 40s, but I'm not sure).
We really, really need to bring it back. There is no other way to hold them in check.
True. They're just bankrolling it. I think it's totally fair to hold them responsible as well. Perhaps it would make investors pay more attention to what they're really supporting with their investment money.
A Chapter 11 would allow the same staff who caused the problems to join the new companies. Unless the people who caused the problems are personally & criminally held liable, nothing would change.
I'd prefer we do both. Hold the actual bad actors accountable AND also kill the company and hurt the shareholders. Anybody involved needs to have incentive to stop the bad behavior.
I'm tired of people using corporate shells as a get-out-of-jail card when they do things that are illegal and/or knowingly bad for society/environment.
I sympathize with your frustration, but this statement implies a Minority Report level of knowledge of the future. What happens when executives become negligent after being hired? Are shareholders still to blame? What happens when some activity that wasn't known to be unacceptable becomes known to be unacceptable?
The shareholders willingly take a financial risk in pursuit of wealth. The people in the public harmed by the corporate actions did not willingly accept the risk to their health. The public people harmed were victimized by the corporation & the people involved with the corporation. If the shareholders have skin in the game, they will be more motivated to ensure that the corporation does not endanger the public in any way. The officers' fiduciary duty becomes aligned with public safety as well.
If the shareholders are simply chasing the bottom line without regard to the consequences of the company they invested in, there is no incentive to maintain public safety. History has shown what happens...companies repeatedly harm the public with a relatively minor punishment which is less than the money they made off of harming the public, if the company is punished at all.
Corporations are chartered for the betterment of society. If a corporation is harmful to society, anyone involved with those actions should be aggressively removed from society under criminal statute, with even greater fervor then prosecuting a murderer, rapist, or any other criminal who impacts less people than corporate criminals.
You forgot 'think about the children' part, but in this case, it actually goes against that fucked up corporations. We may have to see half of our kids infertile in a decade or two and shitload of birth defects that can bankrupt any health services (in case of US rather half of population), no amount of thinking about Kevlar or Goretex (for which there are tons of great alternatives too and I stopped using their stuff in mountains long time ago) is going to fix that