Remix.run Logo
PessimalDecimal 3 hours ago

Are there any serious attempts to enact a "corporate death penalty" in the US? Is there even a viable route to getting something like that in the current regime?

dragonwriter 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Charter revocation is, I think, technically on the books in every state, but its not used for variety of reasons, one of which is because while it destroys the corporate entity, it mostly punishes the people least responsible for any wrongdoing (it can sometimes be accompanied by real punishment for the responsible actors, but those are separate processes that doesn’t require charter revocation, such as individual criminal prosecution or civil process that ends with fines, being barred from serving as a corporate officer, etc.)

binarymax 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My opinion is that if corporate personhood is OK, then the corporation should face the same consequences as people do when they break the law. So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.

dragonwriter 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Corporate crimes can and sometimes do go to criminal court (PG&E, for instance, has convicted of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2018 Camp Fire, obstruction and various criminal pipeline safety violations in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, and various other crimes at other times), but aside from fines most criminal punishments don’t apply to corporations. You can’t imprison a corporation as such, nor can you execute it except metaphorically. So, ultimately, that’s largely just a higher standard of proof route to fines than civil court (though probation restrictions are also a thing.)

vlovich123 an hour ago | parent [-]

You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board. A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.

dragonwriter 6 minutes ago | parent [-]

> You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board.

Right, that's just normal individual criminal prosecution; it doesn't require prosecuting the corporation.

Of course, it's possible for the corporation to be guilty of a crime without any individual officer or board member being guilty.

> A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.

Piercing the corporate veil is holding shareholders liable for certain debts (including criminal or civil judgements) of the corporation. It has nothing directly to do with criminal prosecution of corporate officers or board members for crimes committed in the context of the corporation (though there are certainly cases where both things are relevant to the same circumstances.)

Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.

Be careful what you wish for.

Who else should go to criminal court for facilitating human trafficking? The airlines because they sold flights to these people, statistically speaking? What if they used a messaging app you use, like Signal? Should the government shut that down or ban it too? I have a feeling these calls to regulate platforms don’t extend to platforms actually used by commenters, they just want certain platforms they don’t use shut down and don’t care how much the law is bent to make it happen, as long as the law isn’t stretched for things they do like.

crtasm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Knowing facilitation. Facebook knows about specific users, it's not a case of statistics.

twen_ty 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

This. I've reported scammers so many times in Facebook, it's so obvious but obviously it's not a priority for them.

knuppar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nah I'd feel pretty okay with more regulation. In your two examples predictable crimes happened in these platforms. An airline should most definitely be liable to enable that, just like they are liable for letting people without visas boarding a flight. Signal should also be liable for enabling a crime, but realistically all they could do in an investigation is give e2e encryption logs with some timestamps.

parineum 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The entire point of corporate personhood is to be able to hold corporations liable for their actions.

benoau 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. And same for games for children that somehow don't detect pedophiles spending $100s and $1000s to lure children. And same for the platforms taking immense fees from Meta and such games that are suspiciously unaware of what's going on.

llbbdd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Only among the terminally unserious

anthem2025 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]