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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

The argument for the high wages was always the "big responsibilty" the manegerial class has to bear. IMO to hold them personally liable is the absolite bare minimum, they already for the money for it. In reality CEO processes are often among the line: "You earned 10 Millions in boni for illegal behavior? Here is a 100K fine!"

A simple tradesperson is also personally responsible when they fuck up their job despite better knowledge. So if those can go to jail for the consequences of their dealings why shouldn't a CEO where the consequences are potentially of a scale several magnitudes higher? Wasn't personal responsibility in everybodies mouths, or is that only important when we talk about poor people?

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Aren't the wages high because the people who decide the wages are the execs themselves? (Alternatively a genius scheme involving a "remuneration consultant".)

The market amd the law allow it, and so it is the case. Moral justifications are just post-hoc fluff.

That is the real reason, yeah. But I will hold them accountable to their moral fluff, because that is their public justification wheneverthat topic is being discussed publicly.

These liers should eat their words.

Singapore got this right with everything up to capital punishment for white collar crimes.

And fines as a percentage of income or with a point system, e.g. when they catch you speeding. The goal is to make it equally painful to break the law to a poor and a rich person as is only just.

Otherwise what is painful punishment for a poor person is just a laughable fee for rich people.

I agree with disincentivizing white collar crime with more severe punitive measures, but if you throw capital punishment into the mix you’re just trading one ethical dilemma for another.

Capital punishment is capital punishment, but let's be real here: if there is a group of people who should fear it, it's the people making decisions that affect people in the thousands, millions or billions.

Hypothetical: how many people should get cancer or other serious illnesses and defects from chemicals a company produces, until the company management who knew about it were in the "war criminal" crime bracket?

I still love this "hoax" the Yes Men managed to pull off [1] in it they appear as representatives for Dow Chemical on BBC and claim that the company will now after 20 years take full responsibility for the largest chemical accident in history that killed ~18k people and impacted many more, making the victims right. Only for the real company to back peddle and say "no no no, that's a hoax we will not do that.".

[1] https://youtu.be/295gCWahBxc?t=1719

I'm against capital punishment however I think life of forced manual labor would be appropriate punishment for some white collar crimes.

I am against capital punishment.

However most justice systems have a severe anti-poor bias. People that rob a store out of pure devastation for 100 bucks serve longer and harsher punishments than a CEO who embezels a million leading to safety violations that cost the life of 20 workers purely for greed.

Sure, the former is much more straigthforward in terms of the crime (= less wiggle room for excuses), but the latter is an entirely different magnitude of value and impact on human life.

We need to hold these people accountable to the same standards. If stealing 1000 bucks lands you in jail for years, stealing milions should actually result in a longer conviction.

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