This is why I like finest as percentage of turnover like what the GDPR does. Even the big shits pay attention of you are willing to make the fines actually significant.
Or we can just start nationalising businesses that break the law. No compensation for the leaches, just now the company serves the state. Lots of folk have no problem imprisoning and nationalising the labour of human criminals.
If we are going to suffer states we should at least make good use of them.
I like that idea. If you do something illegal but minor the board has to give up a certain number of shares to the government. More for larger crimes. Do something bad enough: government nationalizes the whole company.
With enough small crimes the government gets significant influence in shares. I bet the billionaires would hate that.
Something something government abuse being used to forcefully take over companies, businesses driven over seas, new avenue for corruption to flourish, etc.
I think businesses should be held accountable too, but creating a superhighway to nationalize control of any business that steps out of line is a recipe for disaster. How long until politicians use that power to find justification for stealing whole corporations?
Two changes would shut this behavior down immediately.
Make the minimum fine = the total gain from the illegal activity.
Then remove limited liability for illegal activities. All fines for illegal activity are paid for from the executives personal assets first.
a year is a year to a rich man and a poor man alike. but a $50,000 fine is several years to a poor man and only a moment to a rich man. fines that don't scale with income are a sneaky way to make things only legal for the rich while pretending that there is equal protection under the law.
fines that don’t scale with income are a sneaky way
Same goes for owned wealth. Rich people like to do all sorts of shenanigans to make their income $0, all while getting rich in other ways.
Both income and wealth should be factored in.
The cool thing is that even if the penalty isn't a fine, there's a good chance you can plea bargain your way back down to a fine
Most often it's the lowly employee's ass that gets put on the line for being told to break the law in the end. The higher ups get their golden parachute at worst in corporate America.
"I never told them to commit fraud. I just set goals, and every time those goals were met I increased them until they had no choice but to commit fraud or be fired for not reaching their goals. I'm not responsible for their illegal behavior, and I shouldn't have to bear the consequences. I am, however, still responsible for their profitable behavior and should absolutely bear the consequences for that."
The Wells Fargo model.
Regulators said Tolstedt and the bank’s former CEO, John Stumpf, bragged to investors about the scale of the community bank’s open accounts, despite the fact that millions of accounts were fabricated by employees trying to meet unrealistic sales goals set by management.
Unfortunately this kind of repeated injustice isn't limited to just America.
At the very least, fines of this nature should be an investigation into how much money was saved/generated by breaking the rule, and then using that plus some percentage for the fine amount. Too often the fine ends up being smaller than the gain which means it's always worth it to break the rule, especially knowing there's a chance you might not even get caught.
Or do what they do for traffic tickets and attach points to violations. After enough points, revoke the company's right to operate, and if it's critical, nationalize it.
As someone else said above, it is hard to calculate exactly how much they gained.
Instead using a set % of revenue would be simpler. If enough companies do it, raise the %. If someone repeatedly does it relative to others, raise the % for them on each repeated case.
That way it is simple, but still scalable and adjustable.
Similarly, scale it down if it disproportionate to how much is saved by breaking the law, or how much it hurts the society , to ensure it is a just punishment, and not a tool for big corporations to hurt smaller ones etc.
I have a better option ban the VCs and CEOs and promoters from owning or starting another company for 20-30 years along with selling the company to someone else.
Companies actually factor in the fines for breaking the law in their accounting. Ford calculated that it would be more profitable to release a vehicle which was known to be deadly since being found guilty for negligence (if it got that far) the fine the corporation would have to pay would be covered by the profit from selling the dangerous vehicles.
The really neat part is that we all know this and none of us are changing it or hunting the rich. It's plain as day but the clarity clearly doesn't work on it's own.
Anyone wanna give me a "not all cops/yuppies"? We can keep pretending things are ok. What's it gonna matter after I'm dead?
Brilliant.
Cost of doing business.
No, it's still illegal. The punishment is just monetary, which is only a big deal to non-wealthy people.
Owning a PlayStation 5 is still illegal! The punishment is you have to pay Sony, which is a big deal to console plebs.
