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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

Having worked for many bosses, never ever never undersestimate the power of ego of an executive. It's only second to the ego of a lawyer.

Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.

The myth of a rational businessman is just that - a myth.

Being publicly regulated is exactly that scenario for Apple. There's execs in that very company that are frothing at their mouth in irrational anger ready to throw their weight around and WIN. Stomp on the opponent. SPLAT the unimportant fly that DARED challenge them.

(I'm exaggerating... but not by much. This seems more of an emotional than thoughtful response Apple is doing here.)

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What if, and hear me out, execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets? Would they still be as cocky?

> execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets?

You want to send an executive to jail for cancelling a contract?

I’d be curious for a jurisdiction to try this. In my opinion, I wouldn’t want to do business in a place where commercial disputes can be twisted by a political insider into jail time.

Do you also not drive a car in a place where your driving can be twisted into jail time when you hurt people?

Why does the concept of personal responsibility for decisions insult you so deeply?

> Do you also not drive a car in a place where your driving can be twisted into jail time when you hurt people?

If you believe figurative and actual violence are identical, this analogy makes sense.

People can and do go to the prison in many instances when companies are just fined for similar offense.

What are those kind of offense which company or individual commit equally?

Tax evasion. Bribes (sorry, I meant lobbying). In case of self-driving cars, literally running over people.

Economic violence is a form of violence - it isn't identical to physical violence... but violence can take many forms.

> violence can take many forms

This is a bogus modernist interpretation that dilutes the meaning of violence. Fortunately, it’s being rejected after having a moment that peaked during lockdown.

Earlier in the threat someone mentions PG & E and how their negligence resulted in deaths.

How should this be treated? Fining the company for someone’s actions that caused deaths doesn’t seem enough.

People go to jail for non-violent crimes as well.

Again, why does personal responsibility for harm to others bother you?

> why does personal responsibility for harm to others bother you?

Personal responsibility is irrelevant. You’re constructing a lower threshold for criminality. I know the first thing I’d be trying to figure out is how to put my competitors in jail.

Let’s take Epic v Apple. Epic went to court. It lost. This entire saga has cost Epic’s shareholders billions. Should Sweeney go to jail? Would the world be better if an Apple-friendly prosecutor could take up that challenge?

If we have a cultural failing in America, it’s having a reflexive urge to turn outrage into jail time.

> I know the first thing I’d be trying to figure out is how to put my competitors in jail.

Provide an incentive for companies to regulate each other! Let rational self-interest clean up the market while the state steps back and looks on!

> Provide an incentive for companies to regulate each other

Do you think there is a reason every modern democracy resists privatising criminal prosecution? (They had it in Rome. We probably need a history of law section in the basic high-school curriculum.)

The justice system in this hypothetical would not be private, it's just that companies would be trying to sue each other for breaking the rules, accidentally advancing the public interest.

> companies would be trying to sue each other for breaking the rules

We already have private enforcement of many rules. Environmental ones, for example. We’re specifically discussing criminality, putting people in jail.

Fair enough. I just see it as an escalation in deterrence.

Does not this already happen in case of fraud pretty much everywhere?

Fair enough, no jail time then but how about the personal liability in money. You fuck up, it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's bottomless war-chest.

> it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's

I agree with this, and it could be constructed out of shareholder rights. Perhaps it could only be applied past a certain threshold of compensation, say, 100x the median wage. ($4.6mm [1].)

I’d argue the threshold should be final, unappealable regulatory penalty or criminal conviction of the corporation.

[1] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/economy/jobs-and-income/job...

> You fuck up, it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's bottomless war-chest.

Sort of good and sort of bad - some percentage of the time this would lead to zero money changing hands as the executive is bankrupt or has no assets.

> I wouldn’t want to do business in a place …

And that's rather the point. Apple earns a lot of money in the EU and much of that seems to be through abusing their position.

So yes, if you're the executive who signs off on something that is so clearly anticompetative, you should own the penalty. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.

That, or leave.

It’s still to be determined if this is illegal.

It’s also to be determined whether somebody will go to jail for that and criminal law already errs on the side of defendant.

It changes the risk appetite, sure, but that’s the point.

You're ignoring the second half of that sentence, and pretending like the laws will only ever be enforced morally.

I'm not ignoring it, it's just irrelevant.

Anything you do —atomically legal or not— becomes illegal if it smothers the chance of competition by using you market dominance.

The thing I'm arguing here is that the person taking those decisions faces consequences.

> twisted by a political insider into jail time

No - you seem to be assuming such a law would only be invoked in cases where the company legitimately did something wrong. But that's not what's at stake here. We're talking about what happens when someone with political clout and a vendetta is able to use that law to wrongfully get a a CEO tossed in prison. Because sometimes laws get twisted for personal gain, and you're raising the stakes pretty high.

I wouldn't want to do business under those conditions, not because I might violate the law, but because it could be used wrongfully against me.

Do you want to send executives to jail when their products kill people? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and if there is no (functioning) regulatory oversight then businesses will absolutely not self-regulate.

PG&E caused the death of hundreds and the loss of hundreds of homes, and they've done it multiple times. Is there regulatory oversight because I'm not seeing it. They will happily cut corners in the name of profit even if it means killing people.

Considering how impactful some executive decisions can be why would this be so inconceivable? A CEO can definitely cause more harm to a community than a shoplifter and we have no qualms about sending them to jail. If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?

> If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?

Yes, and we do. That’s well below the threshold of commercial disputes.

Public servants can and do go to jail for corruption, so should private sector officials for certain acts.

It’s much better for a shareholder too, as I for example don’t want to pay with my money for ceo’s ego trips.

The question you should be asking is: would execs still exist? And we know the answer to this from before the advent of corporations: yes, just as tycoons and barons with barely any checks on their political and financial power instead of as execs.

> with barely any checks on their political and financial power

I fail to see the difference?

When was the last time a warlord stole your children?

Personally - never... but illegal adoptions are a very dark side of human trafficking so you may want to be more careful with your example. The truth is that we live in a far better society than fifty or a hundred or a thousand years prior - we have far more access to justice. But if you think that access to justice is universal then there are some hard truths in your future.

When this question is asked, it's always with an implicit bias that executives are all morally bankrupt demons that would be beaten to death by the public if not for police.

My response to that is: we should change the laws.

Nobody ever asks this question thinking about multi-generation family businesses where the executive is the head of household and if everything works out, the business will be passed down to their progeny.

Of course, it also begs the question why do we accept this?

Interestingly countries that jail people for corruption still have corruption. For example in China you can be jailed and even executed for corruption but there is still a lot of corruption there. Here's an example I read about a few days ago where a city government arrested someone who demanded to be payed for their construction contract. (Obviously the real story may be more complicated.)[0] And there are definitely petty execs there as well. I think it may be because you need more power in enforce corruption laws, and power itself multiplies the effect of corruption. That is why I think the civil law vs. criminal law is an important distinction.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3253705/c...

Seems current laws look civilized/weak for your taste.

I think you'd rather prefer Sunday gala of past where convict would be covered with oil soaked rags and then set on fire. So while that person ran crying, howling it provided tons of entertainment to hardworking folks gathered there. And in that process of course justice prevailed.

This is what one call win-win proposition.

I think it would be wise to reflect on whether the next logical step from "I think fines are not effective enough and decision markers should face jail setences" is "I think we should set people on fire as punishment and public entertainment". Do you genuinely believe that a person arguing for the first, would agree or would be close to agreeing with the second?

I'm willing to believe Apple may be like that behind the scenes, buuuuuut while reading this:

> Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.

… I thought you were going to name Sweeney as the petulant man-child chafing at rules and being told "no".

Let's go with both and even more on top? The exec positions attract the personality type.

It's hard to avoid any conclusion but this one.

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