To what end? The severity of capital punishment barely effects civilian crime numbers.

Instead - and i have spent all of 10 seconds thinking this through - what about we just pay people to snitch on a business/employer if its knowingly doing such things. Perhaps in % of the settlement and/or potential fall out costs.

That'd change behavior as well as catch issues soon enough to prevent them.

It has been said that a person cannot serve two masters.

The incentive system in the West right now is structured such that corporate executives gain a great reward from serving their company, and little punishment from failing to serve humanity. If society is to flourish, humanity must be structurally prioritized.

Due to regulatory capture and general corruption, I don't think an approach that merely tries to punish corporations financially will ever work. If you have executive powers and commit or permit a crime against humanity in the name of your company, then you have declared your allegiance. A functioning society would punish this in the most serious way possible. Great power, great responsibility and all that.

To the end of hindering people from literally poisoning all of hunanity??

I’m no proponent of capital punishment, but to take the question seriously: as an extreme measure to disincentivize extreme externalities that would otherwise never be priced in. In the status quo, captains of industry have something close to a call option on the social utility of their products. They capture much of the upside (they get paid when people enjoy their goretex jackets), but are pretty free to socialize tail risks (relative to the harm, they have little to lose from poisoning thousands. Maybe a lawsuit. Maybe they have to sell the third house.) A society could decide that this is not a desirable incentive structure.

There’s a pirates-and-emperors aspect to this: such measures are taken in some societies to disincentivize O(1) violent crimes. Why (really, why? It’s worth thinking about!) are they rarely taken for O(n) crimes?

Simply to assuage public indignation

x% of the money distributed to shareholders for how long this was going on taken from current revenue, not benefits. That should also push shareholders to do the right choices in who they support.

You mean like whistleblowers?

> To what end?

The satisfaction of revenge and the entertainment value of watching it televised.

No punishment can undo the crime. So we might has well end the criminal and save the money that clothe and feed them otherwise.

But the larger point is that we should abolish the notion of 'limited liability' about corporations. That'll strike fear into the heart of executives, knowing that the law can come after both them and all their moneys and possessions. Suddenly the thought of 'oh, what if I fuck up?' pop up in their heads. They'll imagine their families begging on the streets for basic sustenance. That, if nothing else, will get them to behave like a normal person.

The vast majority of "civilian crimes" are crimes of passion, desperation, or being actually mentally incapable of reasoning about consequences.

That is not what these crimes are nor who commits them. These people actually tend to speak with lawyers prior to committing their crimes, and their lawyers will report something between "not technically illegal" to "probably illegal and the penalty is [something you really don't care about at all]"

We can, should, and in fact already do have whistleblowers as well. But all you're doing is (slightly) raising the chances that you get reported. There are still many, many corruptible steps from that to being investigated, then from being investigated to being convicted, then from being convicted to being punished.

In fact, as we've already established, the actual "punishment" is frequently not a punishment at all. It's just the cost of doing business.

Consider these responses to an executive asking their lawyer for guidance on a legally ambiguous but clearly antisocial decision (where most of these decisions land):

Response 1: "Not clearly illegal, we could argue it in court, and if we lose the penalty is a couple million dollars."

Response 2: "Not clearly illegal, we could argue it in court, and if we lose the penalty is you going to prison for the rest of your life."