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I would go farther and argue that companies don't make decisions either. They are also not people (legal nonsense notwithstanding). Individual actual humans make decisions and they're the ones who should be held accountable.

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Isn’t that half the point of companies? To be accountability sinks? To vanish accountability like a magic trick?

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary (1906)

All of a sudden all decisions would be made by underlings, the management just choose who they want to make the decision that day.

Sure, but then the manager is accountable for delegating that decision.

Haven't seen that happen once.

It happens; sometimes the manager's manager needs a scapegoat and the magnitude of the problem is too big to blame someone low level.

I think that when there are not explicitly stated attribution of liability for decisions that are at the core of a problem the general rule should be that the accountability should be proportional to the additional benefit that each agent or person receives for that decision. That rule is in the context that each agent is responsible to read information and communicate to others in the chain about the risks that decisions entails. The overall structure of an organization should have the goal of making such information about risk available for all agents in the chain in a way that the amount of information can be digested by the agents without much problems.

Not since scapegoating was invented.

Through what mechanism are they accountable for that if not corporate liability? If I pay a taxi driver to take me home from the airport, and he hurts someone by driving in a negligent way, I'm not accountable for delegating my driving decisions.

You just have to say that you need dedicated figures for some decisions, like you already need for GDPR or financial compliance or certifications, and ultimate responsibility is always of the ceo.

...like it already happens in europe, or at least in Italy.

This is basic law and risk management in society. Let's not pretend we have just invented corporations and don't know what to do with them yet.

Of course the modern company (legal nonsense withstanding) exists specifically to limit that ability to hold any people accountable for the actions of their company.

And I would go farther and argue that governments do not make decisions either.

Oh, wait, that was a core concept from "Mein Kampf": parliament are bad because nobody is responsable, hence nobody care about doing the right thing ! (probably the only concept from that book that I can agree to)

I agree with @dril that:

One does not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to Hitler".

Yeah, when someone is literally a Nazi (I hope in 2026 we can all agree that at least Hitler was one), it's not really surprising that they would prefer a dictatorship over a parliament full of elected people.

Over the year, "a parliament full of elected people" has lost more and more of its meaning (with regard to original intent)

Regardless, this is less about dictatorship and more about personal responsibility and accountability

A solution, perhaps, would be to ensure that such decisions are not anonymous and that, if the decisions had bad consequences, then the related people would be accountable

Of course, this would make the politic business less attractive. Would that be a bad idea ?

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