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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
bribeslobbying
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.