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Comment by c0nducktr | Hacker News Reader

Just because there are more people who might need to sue the company isn't a reason to allow it to continue to operate. This is just 'too big to fail' but for different (and now theoretical) reasons.

Maybe the solution is to nationalize J&J.

"You can't bankrupt my company because someone might need to sue me later" is absurd reasoning.

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And what good will bankrupting J&J at the first lawsuit do for society?

"What good will it do society to punish people who do heinous things to others?" It acts as a great deterrent to keep other corporate stooges from entering into high-risk activities. In many cases I advocate for "restorative justice" as opposed to punishment, but in the case of faceless corporations we can crash their value to 0 and call it even.

We have a system of private ownership where the owners get to reap the rewards of others' labor, but when they do something wrong they pull the "but think of the employees" bullshit. No. Full ownership, full liability.

Bankrupting J&J would achieve none of the things you say you want. It would just mean the first to sue gets everything and everyone else gets nothing. The assets get stripped and sold off to the next company who can just continue to do the same thing.

> The assets get stripped and sold off to the next company who can just continue to do the same thing.

But the shareholders of J&J lose everything, making the ones of the next company think twice before doing the same… Whereas with the shell company bankruptcy, J&J shareholders losses are limited, and they still own and run the company that killed thousands of people.

Ask yourself “what good had jailing Charles Manson at the first lawsuit done for society?” then remember that J&J is responsible for thousands more death than Manson, and likely more than all psycho killers in the history of the US combined…

Rogue corporations are killing people at a scaled rivalled only by dictators…

Comparing a pharmaceutical company to Charles Manson or Pol Pot is… frankly insane.

At least THIRTY NINE THOUSAND people suffered from a cancer that would have been avoided if the execs, who knew about the dangerousness of their product, stopped selling their contaminated crap. We're talking about TENS OF THOUSANDS of shattered lives, children who ended up growing without a mother, and women not able to bear children because the cancer destroyed their body.

This is what's “insane”.

The people who knowingly made this happen are literal monsters, there's just no other words.

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