Hacker News Reader

Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

> This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road

I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people.

There's essentially no difference $3M and $300M fine against most individuals, but $3M means very little to Tesla. If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them.

That's another difference - fining an indivisible is not going to change risks much, the individual's behavior changing is not that meaningful compared to Tesla's behavior changing. And it's not like a huge fine is gonna make a difference in other drivers deciding to be better, whereas other automakers will notice a huge fine.

View on HN

>I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people.

Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.

Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.

Perhaps better to achieve symmetry by ceasing to execute humans.

You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human, so you can't make the scores even but you can stop putting more on the total for human misery.

Historically it was impractical to permanently warehouse large number of humans, death was more practical = but the US has been doing it for all sorts of crap for decades so that's not a problem here.

The US would still have much harsher punishments than Western Europe even without the death penalty, because it routinely uses life-means-life sentences where no matter what you're never seeing the outside again.

>You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human

What if we garnished 100% of the future wages of all the employees in perpetuity as well as dissolving the corporate entity? You know, to to make sure the company stays all the way dead.

I guess my bad for not specifying that it'd need be wicked for the corporation not the humans.

> Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment

Fines. Massive fines.

"Corporate death penalty" is a genius invention of corporate lawyers to distract from the punitive effect of massive fines.

Fines and license revocable are precedented. They take real money from the corporation and its owners. Corporate death penalties are a legal morass that doesn’t actually punish shareholders, it just cancels a legal entity. If I own an LLC and have a choice between a fine and the LLC being dissolved, I’d almost always opt for the latter.

But fines are boring. Corporate death penalty sounds exciting. The anti-corporate folks tend to run with it like catnip, thus dissolving the coalition for holding large companies accountable. (Which, again, a corporate "execution" doesn't do. Nullifying my LLC doesn't actually hurt me, it just creates a little bit of work for my lawyer, and frankly, getting out of a fuckup by poofing the LLC without touching the udnerlying assets is sort of the selling point of incorporation.)

Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers to distract from the fact that all corporate malfeasance is conducted by actual people who could be held accountable.

> Corporate fines are a genius invention of corporate execs' personal lawyers

Ahistoric and orthogonal. Corporate fines and personal sanctions have coëxisted since corporations were a thing. Charter revocations, on the other hand, have almost always followed individual liability, because again, just poofing a corporation doesn't actually do anything to its assets, the part with actual value. (In the English world, corporations frequently came pinned with trade charters. The actual punishment was losing a trade monopoly. Not a legal fiction being dissolved.)

Nothing about corporate death penalties or corporate fines prevents personal liability. And neither particularly promotes it, either, particularly if guilt is never acknowledged as part of the proceedings.

I'm guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders.

The “LL” in LLC stands for Limited Liability. The whole point is to financially insulate the owner(s).

To be fair, I think they’re talking about seizing the LLC’s assets. Not the members’.

Which is why you see execs get golden parachutes for failing. The assets get transferred to private parties who walk away to repeat the exact behavior they were just rewarded for at another firm.

"Limited" doesn't mean impenetrable. Try not paying employees.

“Piercing the corporate veil” is a viable way to hold individuals accountable so they doing hide behind the limited liability in certain cases, like fraud.

> guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders

This is just expropriation. Which is legally complicated. And raises questions around what the government should do with a bunch of seized assets and liabilities that may or may not be in a going condition, and whether some stakeholders should be reimbursed for their losses, for example employees owed pay, also do pensions count, and if so executive pensions as well, and look at that the discussion got technical and boring and nobody is listening anymore.

On the other hand, a massive fine punts that problem to the company. If it can pay it, great. It pays. If it can’t, we have bankruptcy processes already in place. And the government winds up with cash, not a Tesla plant in China.

Corporate death penalties are stupid. They’re good marketing. But they’re stupid. If you want to hold large companies unaccountable, bring it up any time someone serious threatens a fine.

>And raises questions around what the government should do with a bunch of seized assets and liabilities that may or may not be in a going condition, and whether some stakeholders should be reimbursed for their losses, for example employees owed pay, also do pensions count, and if so executive pensions as well,and look at that the discussion got technical and boring and nobody is listening anymore.

Bullshit they aren't listening. Executives get no payout. Whatever happened happened on their watch. Summary dismissal. Keeps the incentives aligned. Otherwise you're just incentivizing unlawful behavior behind the corporate veil. Pensions do count. Since we've got such a fucked up social safety net in the U.S. that doubles as a mandatory investment slush fund for our corporate overlords, stewardship of said retirement funds should obviously be escrowed until such time as a new more compliant set of execs can either be installed, or the assets can be unwound.

There is no point in leaving something in the hands of the provably reckless/malicious. Which is exactly what these type of people are (executives making decisions that are traceable to reasonably foreseeable loss of life) are.

I'm done with victim blaming when we've made a habit of building orphan mulching machines that we just happen to call corporations.

The entire company should be turned over to the government.

> Only when it comes to rights.

"Corporations are people" means a corporation is people, not a corporation is a person.

People have rights, whether they are acting through a corporation or not. That's what Citizens United determined.

I hope you think about who misled you to thinking that "corporations are people" meant a corporation is a person and trust them a little less.

In most jurisdictions, a corporation is a juridical person[1]. When not explicitly mentioning natural persons, whether a corporation is a "person" is thus ambiguous.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person

Everyone spewing opinions in this thread so they can get their upvotes from like minded readers is missing the 800lb gorilla.

It's not in the state's interest to kill profitable things most of the time except occasionally as a deterrent example. It's the same reason richer people (who pay a lot of taxes, engage in activity spawning yet more taxes, etc) tend to get probation instead of jail. Likewise, the state is happy to kill small(er) businesses. It does this all the time and it doesn't make the news. Whereas with the big ones it just takes its pound of flesh and keeps things running.

As long as that incentive mostly remains, the outcomes will mostly remain.

I agree that Tesla should receive punitive damages. And the size of the punitive damages must be enough to discourage bad behavior.

I'm not necessarily sure the victim(s) should get all of the punitive damages. $329 million is a gargantuan sum of money; it "feels" wrong to give a corporation-sized punishment to a small group of individuals. I could certainly see some proportion going toward funding regulatory agencies, but I fear the government getting the bulk of punitive damages would set up some perverse incentives.

I think in the absence of another alternative, giving it to the victim(s) is probably the best option. But is there an even better possible place to disburse the funds from these types of fines?

>> it "feels" wrong to give a corporation-sized punishment to a small group of individuals

This feeling has a name; loss aversion.

It's a really interesting human traits. About 66% of people feel bad when someone else does well. The impact of this feeling on behavior (even behavior that is self-harming) is instructive.

The concept of "Fairness" comes into play as well. Many people have an expectation that the "world is fair" despite every evidence that it isn't. That results in "everything I don't get is unfair" whereas "everything I get I earned on my own." Someone rlse getting a windfall is thus "unfair".

That really doesn't sound like loss aversion.

It is definitely not loss aversion. It also has nothing to do with whether or not someone else is getting the money. Handing me nearly half a billion because a parent died would certainty be welcome, but I think it would feel equally as disproportionate and out-of-place.

Killed, not just died.

> I'm not necessarily sure the victim(s) should get all of the punitive damages.

I have some great news for you, then: the attorney probably took a third (more if they win an appeal).

> But is there an even better possible place to disburse the funds from these types of fines?

Oh, my mistake: I thought you meant way worse.

$300M means very little to Tesla. The stock didn't even drop a bit (other than the usual market fluctuations today). Perhaps $4.20B or $6.90B would've been meaningful. Elon notices these numbers.

Not doing what it asks - “keep your hands on the wheel” and “eyes on the road” - and crashing the car is somehow Elon Musks’ fault LOL hn logic. Can’t wait to sue lane assist when I drive drunk and crash!

It's supposed to stop if objects appear in its path. For sure you're an idiot if you trust Tesla's autopilot, but I think it's reasonable to partially fault Tesla for setting the consumer's expectation that the car stops when obstacles get in the way even if the vehicle isn't being operated exactly as suggested by the manufacturer.

Maybe system should sound alarm and slow down immediately when there is no hands on wheel and eyes not on the road. Would have avoided this accident, so it seems Tesla was at fault for not doing that.

"Somehow?" We're literally discussing a court case where culpability was proven and accepted by a judge.

To add, this is also punitive for endangering countless other road users that aren’t suing in this particular instance.

> If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them.

What behavior do you want them to change? Remove FSD from their cars? It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying in scores.

This is obviously targeted and the court system should not be playing favorites or going after political opponents

- FSD came out in October 2020; I suppose rounding up to 10 puts it nearly 10 years since. It also, literally, doubles the number from its actual value.

- There have been a lot more than one incident. This is one court case about one incident.

- There are an insane number of accidents reported; does it only matter to you if someone dies? A lot more than one person has died in an accident that involved a vehicle that was equipped with FSD.

- Your comment is obviously targeted and disingenuous.

There was even a recall over it: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/02/16/tesla-full-self-driv...

So to answer your question of what one might want to come out of it, perhaps another recall where they fix the system or stop making false claims about what it can do.

> This is obviously targeted and the court system should not be playing favorites or going after political opponents

This was a jury trial of a civil case - the family of the deceased took Tesla to court, not an anti-Tesla/Musk court system conspiracy.

> It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying in scores.

And how many times did humans had to take over and save themselves and others from Tesla killing or injuring them? Tesla won't tell us this numbers, guess why ? The tech might be safe as a backup driver , but so far you need a human to pay attention to save himself from the car bugs/errors/glitches etc.

I really hate this bullshit safety claims pulled from someones ass, it is like me trying to convince you to get operated but an AI doctor by claiming "it is better then the a old and drunk doctor , he only killed a few people when the people supervising it did not payed attention but in the rest was very safe, we can't tell you how many times real doctors had to perform the hard work and our AI doctor only did stitching , those numbers need to be secret, but trust us the human doctors that had to intervene are just there because of the evil laws it could do the full job itself, we would not call it Full competent doctor if it can\t perform fully all expected tasks.

> What behavior do you want them to change?

Don't advertise their driver assist system as "full self driving".

The system involved in this crash was never advertised as "full self driving".

From https://web.archive.org/web/20211002045634/https://www.tesla...:

> Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features, and *full self-driving capabilities* — through software updates designed to improve functionality over time.

> Tesla's Autopilot AI team drives the future of autonomy of current and new generations of vehicles. Learn about the team and apply to help accelerate the world with *full self-driving*.

Now you can say that can be interpreted multiple ways - which means the copywriter is either incompetent, or intentionally misleading. Interestingly, the text from 2019 (https://web.archive.org/web/20191225054133/tesla.com/autopil...) is written a bit differently:

> ...full self-driving capabilities *in the future*...

The crash in this case occurred on April 25, 2019. The advertising then was that the cars had the hardware for self driving in the future.

Context:

> > > What behavior do you want them to change?

> > Don't advertise their driver assist system as "full self driving".

> The system involved in this crash was never advertised as "full self driving".

I assume "system involved in this crash" is referring to "Tesla Autopilot"; my reply was to contradict the statement '...*was never* advertised as "full self driving"'.

But you mentioning a date made me curious about when the advert text was changed:

- "...in the future" was added ~1.5 months before the accident: https://web.archive.org/web/20190306042234/https://www.tesla...

- "...in the future" was removed ~1.5 months after that lawsuit was filed: https://web.archive.org/web/20210603132215/https://www.tesla...

It's a dumb argument anyway. Most normies think autopilot means the plane flies itself. At the very least they think it flies itself except for landing or takeoff. By the technical definition of an autopilot perhaps they were correct, but not by the colloquial meaning

It won't happen, but I really wish to see Tesla lawyers telling the court "we know the advert text, video, and the term 'Autopilot' are misleading, but they're just, you know, 'corporate puffery'".

I went into a Tesla dealership nearly 10 years ago to take a look at the cars, and the salespeople were telling me - in no uncertain terms - that the cars were fully self-driving.

I knew that was complete nonsense, because I knew people who worked on Tesla's self-driving software, but that's how Tesla salespeople were selling the cars.

10 years ago Tesla didn't even have Autopilot. All they had as far as I can tell was lane departure warnings, speed alerts, manual cruise control, some sort of of automatic parking, and low speed summoning on private property.

Could the dealer have been referring to the automatic parking or the summoning?

Autopilot launched in 2014. "Full Self Driving" has been offered as an upgrade since 2016. Musk has been saying that fully autonomous driving is just around the corner (1-3 years away) since 2015.

He's been saying it was just around the corner for a long time, but it wasn't until 2020 that FSD they actually made it available to a limited number of customers in beta.

They were selling FSD as an option all the way back in 2016. They were telling customers that it would launch imminently.

The pattern here is constantly hyping self-driving as something that is basically ready, and at the dealership I went to, they went a step further and claimed full self-driving was already a reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com