this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Lefty Memes
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Wiegraf was right in the beginning
God, Vagrant Story was such a good game. And I typically don't like JRPGs like at all. Just something about VS really hooked me.
I believe the picture is from Final Fantasy Tactics
Well I'm an idiot then. It looks just like the text boxes in Vagrant story. At least what the text boxes look like in my head lol. I stand by it being great though.
Well FF Tactics and VS were set in same universe, so stylistic choices and overall vibe were similar on purpose probably.
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?
Just need to pair with enough transparency so that no one politician can own a business because the state owns it.
Except that we don't hold politicians accountable for Jack shit. So in the end the billionaires would just pay the politicians to pretend the government owns it while getting all the decision making back through ~~bribes~~ lobbying
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.
Actually determining the total gain seems insanely hard to impossible. Percentage of turnover is just easier to implement, and still effective if it can scale up as it can for gdpr.
Even if the total gain is determinable, the fine should be at least x% turnover +total gain.
It's easy math otherwise. If i try to steal something from a shop and just have to pay it if i get caught There's not much incentive to not do it.
Well. Besides being a decent human being that doesn't steal from local shops.
This is what auditors are for.
If it were up to me there would be a government office specifically to audit businesses in such cases. When a court deems it necessary, a team of auditors would be attached to a company and have access to all of their financial records, for the express purpose of determining how much of their revenue was gained through the illegal activity. The company would be responsible for paying all of the expenses of the audit team for as long as the audit takes (if the company drags their feet in giving access to records, it costs them).
For the same time period, a government representative would be given a seat on the company executive board and be privy to all board meetings. As long as the company is under audit they are also under operational observation.
At the conclusion of the audit, all revenue determined to proceed from the illegal activity is forfeit, and a fine is issued for each violation.
If the fines are against the executives personal assets first, a full freeze on all of them during this process would be prudent during the audit. Confiscating their passports and accessorizing with a nice ankle bracelet during the process might help as well.
You don't really need to freeze them. Just a snapshot of what their assets were at the time, and then promise to go after their family and friends assets, if theirs appear to be suddenly lacking. Finding themselves totally isolated and unemployable is a much bigger threat than just the fine, or even prison.
I like the passport and ankle bracelet thing, though.
Not sure about the second one. What happens if a middle manager does it without the executive's knowledge?
The company needs a mechanism to report illegal activity and get it fixed. A middle manager making illegal decisions should raise red flags quickly before any significant damage is done.
Failure to implement adequate controls for decision makers below them make the executive team complicit in the crime. Ignorance of something the executives should reasonably be aware of is not a defense.
"my 'dog' biting your child is between them and it, not me." - daycare operator w/ "tamed" wolf as pet
Hey, the execuitives already make believe they're taking risks. There's no harm in making their fantasy a little more real.
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.
the wells fargo paddy wagon is coming down the street
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.
- Make a company
- Violate the law until all but one strike is used, making huge profits each time.
- Disband the company.
- Repeat.
Love the idea of holding companies accountable, but this would be the outcome of that solution. If you want it to stick, you need to target their pockets.
Add a strike system for board members and/or executives too. If you're on the board while the company committed the action that got it a strike, you could get a strike too. Too many and you get whatever punishment.
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?
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.