Non-IT News Thread
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
I do not think that corporations are above the law. But you can't put a corporation into prison.
You can fine a corporation, heavily if wanted. I totally get the idea of throwing the leadership into prison, but it doesn't work like that legally.
That's something that I think should change. I'm not sure how it would look or work, but if "the corporation" does something illegal, then "the corporate leadership" should be the ones facing the jail time.
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@dafyre said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
I do not think that corporations are above the law. But you can't put a corporation into prison.
You can fine a corporation, heavily if wanted. I totally get the idea of throwing the leadership into prison, but it doesn't work like that legally.
That's something that I think should change. I'm not sure how it would look or work, but if "the corporation" does something illegal, then "the corporate leadership" should be the ones facing the jail time.
I agree as well, or some form of shared punishment. But in the cases like publicly traded companies, every investor is a part of the leadership.
So fines are the easiest approach to punishing the leadership for illegal activities.
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Um Enron? Business leaders do go to jail. Government can revoke a company's ability to operate in a country, therefore, forcing it out of business in that country.
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@DustinB3403 Then I should ammend that statement to be the person / people who actually authorized the illegal thing.
Just because I hold 3 shares of Google, doesn't mean that I should go to jail because the Google Board of Directors decided to do something illegal.
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@DustinB3403 Youre right you cant put the managers in prison. What you can do is punish the company so severely with fines that the other shareholders get pissed off and replace them with people who wont commit crimes. You dont do that by fining a company 12% of their profits for 1 year(and lets be serious it is usually less than 1%). Maybe a fine of 12% profits over a 5 or ten year period every year would be a deterrent to stop this sort of behavior. Certainly not a joke one time fine.
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@dafyre said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 Then I should ammend that statement to be the person / people who actually authorized the illegal thing.
Just because I hold 3 shares of Google, doesn't mean that I should go to jail because the Google Board of Directors decided to do something illegal.
You are a part of the leadership though. Buy having stock in the company, you are leadership.
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
But the stock holders (generally) are investment providers, not decision makers.
One and the same. No one is a higher power than the owner of a company. Investment = owner = ultimate decision maker.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
But the stock holders (generally) are investment providers, not decision makers.
One and the same. No one is a higher power than the owner of a company. Investment = owner = ultimate decision maker.
I agree, but you have investors who are cash investors who have no say in the business operations and then you have investors who have say in the operations.
They are 2 very real things
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
Significant investors could be on the board, and thus should feel the pain of doing something scrupulous I agree. But the peon investors have almost no say.
All owners, no matter how small, voluntarily participate in the running of the company including the appointment of the board. The owners benefit from the positive outcomes of all actions, and are penalized by the negative ones.
The board does illegal things for the sole purpose of benefiting the investors. The investors are the only people for whom punishment makes sense.
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Opting to just take your money and leave isn't the same as agreeing or disagreeing with the business.
Maybe you just need the money.
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
The peon investors are the people who are hoping to have bought low and to be able to sell high.
And? What does this have to do with it? Selling high is making money on illegal activities in this case. Certainly they need to be the ones held accountable.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
Significant investors could be on the board, and thus should feel the pain of doing something scrupulous I agree. But the peon investors have almost no say.
All owners, no matter how small, voluntarily participate in the running of the company including the appointment of the board. The owners benefit from the positive outcomes of all actions, and are penalized by the negative ones.
The board does illegal things for the sole purpose of benefiting the investors. The investors are the only people for whom punishment makes sense.
Which is why I said fines are the only way to punish illegal activity.
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
To clarify as you're nitpicking my words apart.
Most investors have little to no actual say in the business operations. It's the large investors who control 51% and up of the business who decide these things.
I agree, every investor has a say, but that say often is completely ignored.
Not even slightly. Every investor is there voluntarily and pays for the amount of say that they have. Penalties are levied equal to their involvement. So ANY mention of the scale of an investor is a misunderstanding of how it works. Their profits and losses and penalties are all proportionate to their responsibility for such.
Because all owners can leave at any time, there is zero lack of culpability for the actions of the company.
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Also what I believe many people here are overlooking is that there can be a few investors who own the majority share of a company like Google, and decide to do things illegally because they have the most say.
An investor with less than .01% stock in a company, has a say, and its shut up and let us run the way we want, or sell your stock.
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@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 Google DID do something wrong. That is why they were fined. A pittance that means nothing, but they were fined. I dont lie, and havent done anything wrong.
Google may not agree that they did something wrong.
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@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 Shareholders are owners of the company. By investing they are agreeing with decisions of the board. Why shouldnt individual retail investors feel the pain of this fine? They agreed to the bad activity by investing.
And if they are NOT fined, what is the purpose of the fine? The only people that can be fined are the owners. Everyone else works for them and is not the party at fault.
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@scottalanmiller Well, they might not agree, but they are wrong according to EU antitrust regulators.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 Shareholders are owners of the company. By investing they are agreeing with decisions of the board. Why shouldnt individual retail investors feel the pain of this fine? They agreed to the bad activity by investing.
And if they are NOT fined, what is the purpose of the fine? The only people that can be fined are the owners. Everyone else works for them and is not the party at fault.
Corporations are PEOPLE! Individual PEOPLE!
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@DustinB3403 said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:
@DustinB3403 Shareholders are owners of the company. By investing they are agreeing with decisions of the board. Why shouldnt individual retail investors feel the pain of this fine? They agreed to the bad activity by investing.
And if they are NOT fined, what is the purpose of the fine? The only people that can be fined are the owners. Everyone else works for them and is not the party at fault.
Corporations are PEOPLE! Individual PEOPLE!
And the humans who work for corporations are the employee of a individual Corporate person!
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My point is a fine is all you can legally do, short of forcing the business out of the country.
The business pays the fine, or has worse fines and punishments due.
