Sounds like a very extreme remedy. Not sure you want whatever government is elected every four years to have this power. Doesn't address the concern re regulatory capture, could lead to worse government incentives. Why not focus on allowing regular people to more realistically hold corporations and their owners/officers liable in civil courts? It's already hard enough given the imbalance of funds, access and power... but often legal doctrine makes the bar to clear impossible at the outset.

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bikelang 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I would posit that we are in the current political situation precisely because we do not hold the capital class accountable. Do you sincerely believe that investors losing their investment is a “very extreme” response to gross corporate lawbreaking on their behalf?

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tock 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We are in this situation because we elect people who do not hold the capital class accountable. Look at the people we elect. How would them running companies be any better?

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lenkite 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We are in the situation because the capital class have turned the people we elect into servile puppets. Because they have simply been allowed to become too big and powerful.

	▲	tock 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I disagree with you there. We need to stop infantilising politicians.

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TFYS 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The capital class chooses and presents the people you can vote for. They decide what issues are talked about in the media, they decide who gets the most funding, and they probably have ways of getting rid of or corrupt the people who somehow get popular without first being accepted by at least some people from the capital class.

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pear01 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why not make the civil case path easier then? The extreme nature of your remedy is the idea of a government taking over and owning a corporation. That creates bad incentives. I think if individuals could reasonably expect to be able to knock people like Mark Zuckerberg out of the billionaire class in a civil suit, then yes, he and the types of people he represents would behave better. Having the government run Facebook or Enron or Google or whatever both sounds less desirable than empowering individuals and weakening corporate protections in civil cases, and frankly; worse than the prevailing situation re the "capital class". If you think the current political situation is bad the last thing you should want is more government power.