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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On January 15 2014 07:09 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:59 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:56 xDaunt wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. We aren't pretending that no one is responsible for the acts of a corporation are we? We're saying that the limit of the responsibility of the shareholder is the potential loss of value of the shares which makes it a fairly easy decision about whether to require the board to act responsibly within society or simply to try and maximise the share value. What more do you want? The executives are criminally (or otherwise) liable for their actions on behalf of the corporation. Shareholders stand to lose large percentages of their investment holdings if their corporations act badly and the government comes after them with sufficient punitive powers. I don't see why the problem is the corporate form as opposed to the failure of the government to enact laws proscribing specific actions that you want to stop.
More regulation would limit the amount of unethical things the businesses could get involved in, it might also limit the amount of profit that could be gained. This is why increase in regulation is frowned upon in the US. Corruption of the regulators doesn't help either but that might be getting off topic.
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On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here?
More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well?
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? No, the nightmare scenario is when people are penalized or punished for actions they had no direct responsibility for.
This assumes that it's entirely acceptable to be an absentee shareholder and show no interest in what the company actually does in your name or where the money they give you comes from. I disagree with that. Again, is it such a nightmare that people actually look into what is being done in their name? Given the corporate abuses that exist I think not.
All over the developing world corporations literally commit murder. For example the oil company Shell had tribal leaders peacefully protesting their pollution executed. I suspect most of their small shareholders didn't actively encourage Shell to pollute the rivers rather than spend the money to fix their infrastructure, nor to pressure the government to violently crackdown upon people protesting it. These things are just products of a system in which absentee shareholders vote for higher profits while showing no interest in how they're obtained because they have no accountability.
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On January 15 2014 07:13 Nacl(Draq) wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:09 xDaunt wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:56 xDaunt wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. We aren't pretending that no one is responsible for the acts of a corporation are we? We're saying that the limit of the responsibility of the shareholder is the potential loss of value of the shares which makes it a fairly easy decision about whether to require the board to act responsibly within society or simply to try and maximise the share value. What more do you want? The executives are criminally (or otherwise) liable for their actions on behalf of the corporation. Shareholders stand to lose large percentages of their investment holdings if their corporations act badly and the government comes after them with sufficient punitive powers. I don't see why the problem is the corporate form as opposed to the failure of the government to enact laws proscribing specific actions that you want to stop. More regulation would limit the amount of unethical things the businesses could get involved in, it might also limit the amount of profit that could be gained. This is why increase in regulation is frowned upon in the US. Corruption of the regulators doesn't help either but that might be getting off topic.
Regulations come in all forms. The ones that are particularly harmful to businesses are the ones that set compliance standards and require corporations to affirmatively do something (like the new public accounting standards). On the other hand, something as simple as "thou shalt not do X, and if thou does X, though shalt be liable for $Y" has a minimal burden.
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well?
Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name?
Again, the core principle here is that the business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no.
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On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no.
Aren't corporations their own entities?
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On January 15 2014 07:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no. Aren't corporations their own entities?
They are considered people now in the US. So corporations have the rights of people. The people inside the corporation are also people. You can't have a corporation without the people inside the corporation.
Kwark, is someone working for the company responsible for the unethical orders given by the board?
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no. Aren't corporations their own entities?
When a corporation exercises free speech it does so on the basis that it is a collection of individuals working together who have the right to free speech. When it exercises property rights it does so on the basis that the individuals who make up the corporation have property rights which were not forfeited just by them working collectively as a business. When it enforces contracts it does so using the rights of its shareholders. And yet when it acts criminally, negligently or goes bankrupt it does so as it's own limited entity with the shareholders disowning any association.
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:28 Nacl(Draq) wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no. Aren't corporations their own entities? They are considered people now in the US. So corporations have the rights of people. The people inside the corporation are also people. You can't have a corporation without the people inside the corporation. Kwark, is someone working for the company responsible for the unethical orders given by the board?
I guess you could say they "were just following orders". If their actions are criminal, yes. If irresponsible, no, because they are an agent acting on another's behalf.
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On January 15 2014 07:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:28 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live?
But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no. Aren't corporations their own entities? They are considered people now in the US. So corporations have the rights of people. The people inside the corporation are also people. You can't have a corporation without the people inside the corporation. Kwark, is someone working for the company responsible for the unethical orders given by the board? I guess you could say they "were just following orders". If their actions are criminal, yes. If irresponsible, no, because they are an agent acting on another's behalf.
What if we punished the corporation, not the people inside of it. If a corporation pays for a group/tribe to be removed and it results in murders then instead of punishing the people who owned the corporation we just shut down the corporation for say... 20 years.
Or you know, whatever Norway thinks is ethical.
When restaurants have an issue with food poisoning that result in a death they generally get shut down. That is an accidental death. Not premeditated.
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On January 15 2014 07:15 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? No, the nightmare scenario is when people are penalized or punished for actions they had no direct responsibility for. This assumes that it's entirely acceptable to be an absentee shareholder and show no interest in what the company actually does in your name or where the money they give you comes from. I disagree with that. Again, is it such a nightmare that people actually look into what is being done in their name? Given the corporate abuses that exist I think not. All over the developing world corporations literally commit murder. For example the oil company Shell had tribal leaders peacefully protesting their pollution executed. I suspect most of their small shareholders didn't actively encourage Shell to pollute the rivers rather than spend the money to fix their infrastructure, nor to pressure the government to violently crackdown upon people protesting it. These things are just products of a system in which absentee shareholders vote for higher profits while showing no interest in how they're obtained because they have no accountability.
The definition of absentee in this context is a person who is expected to be in a particular place or perform a particular duty but is not or does not. You wish standards to change for shareholders to be expected to perform a particular duty, namely, more stringent oversight over the activities of the company.
Let's take an example: the BP "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill. There was significant negligence and recklessness on the part of employees of BP and companies BP had contracted with. Now, how would you prescribe for shareholders to have had practical, effective oversight of the "Deepwater Horizon" oil rig? It was miles and miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Getting there required helicopter or boat transportation, either of which would entail significant effort and expense for the average person who is a shareholder of BP stock. Are we to expect people to put a significant financial and time burden on their lives because they own stock? Does each individual stockholder have paramount authority over the company? How would such a thing as the amount of authority be determined for someone who owns .0001% of a company's stock? Is it reasonable and just to expect people to spend significant amounts of time and money trying to oversee the operations of a company they have stock in? If someone owns 40% of the company's stock or some large proportion like that, sure, I would agree they have the resources to at the least appoint a proxy to look after their interests and have significant authority within the company, and large stockholders commonly do that, often by having men or women on the board who are basically empty suits for them, or through trustees or institutions that hold significant amounts of stock (CalPers, for instance). But are we going to extend that to everyone, just because, if everything goes just right, it might result in less malfeasance?
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On January 15 2014 07:32 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:20 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:15 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance.Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? More than shareholders reap the rewards though. Bondholders, workers and tax collectors all got some honey out of that pot. Do they need to be punished as well? Does the business derive its rights from acting in their name? Again, the core principle here is that t he business is just a collective name for a group of individuals working together. That's the legal protection it gets. So no. Aren't corporations their own entities? When a corporation exercises free speech it does so on the basis that it is a collection of individuals working together who have the right to free speech. When it exercises property rights it does so on the basis that the individuals who make up the corporation have property rights which were not forfeited just by them working collectively as a business. When it enforces contracts it does so using the rights of its shareholders. And yet when it acts criminally, negligently or goes bankrupt it does so as it's own limited entity with the shareholders disowning any association.
I don't think that's entirely correct. Corporations have their own laws and rules to abide by and their power comes from their corporate charters. If you are a shareholder you own a fraction of the company, not a small portion of corporate assets. It's not a pure pass-through thing.
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:39 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:15 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? No, the nightmare scenario is when people are penalized or punished for actions they had no direct responsibility for. This assumes that it's entirely acceptable to be an absentee shareholder and show no interest in what the company actually does in your name or where the money they give you comes from. I disagree with that. Again, is it such a nightmare that people actually look into what is being done in their name? Given the corporate abuses that exist I think not. All over the developing world corporations literally commit murder. For example the oil company Shell had tribal leaders peacefully protesting their pollution executed. I suspect most of their small shareholders didn't actively encourage Shell to pollute the rivers rather than spend the money to fix their infrastructure, nor to pressure the government to violently crackdown upon people protesting it. These things are just products of a system in which absentee shareholders vote for higher profits while showing no interest in how they're obtained because they have no accountability. The definition of absentee in this context is a person who is expected to be in a particular place or perform a particular duty but is not or does not. You wish standards to change for shareholders to be expected to perform a particular duty, namely, more stringent oversight over the activities of the company. Let's take an example: the BP "Deepwater Horizon" oil spill. There was significant negligence and recklessness on the part of employees of BP and companies BP had contracted with. Now, how would you prescribe for shareholders to have had practical, effective oversight of the "Deepwater Horizon" oil rig? It was miles and miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Getting there required helicopter or boat transportation, either of which would entail significant effort and expense for the average person who is a shareholder of BP stock. Are we to expect people to put a significant financial and time burden on their lives because they own stock? Does each individual stockholder have paramount authority over the company? How would such a thing as the amount of authority be determined for someone who owns .0001% of a company's stock? Is it reasonable and just to expect people to spend significant amounts of time and money trying to oversee the operations of a company they have stock in? If someone owns 40% of the company's stock or some large proportion like that, sure, I would agree they have the resources to at the least appoint a proxy to look after their interests and have significant authority within the company, and large stockholders commonly do that, often by having men or women on the board who are basically empty suits for them. But are we going to extend that to everyone, just because, if everything goes just right, it might result in less malfeasance?
You argue that it's not reasonable to expect shareholders to personally check that the company doesn't act in a negligent way.
This ignores that it's not unreasonable for shareholders to require to company regulate itself better, something it was clearly choosing not to do in the name of profit, and to collectively pay to have the company's compliance with their requirements of responsible operations checked and so forth. There is an awful lot of room between every shareholder personally checking every single oil rig and having no responsibility at all. But without accountability there is no reason for shareholders to require BP acts ethically, nor to pay for verification that their wishes are being carried out.
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On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership.
I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders.
I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior.
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:47 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership. I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders. I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they often cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm if it is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior by firms.
And in cases where the wrongdoing merits a fine then the system already works. But as I mentioned earlier, corporations literally murder when they calculate that they can get away with it and it'll increase share price. There has to be accountability.
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How would you propose to make shareholders responsible for things that can't be remedied by the firm paying a penalty?
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On January 15 2014 07:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:47 Mercy13 wrote:On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership. I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders. I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they often cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm if it is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior by firms. And in cases where the wrongdoing merits a fine then the system already works. But as I mentioned earlier, corporations literally murder when they calculate that they can get away with it and it'll increase share price. There has to be accountability.
So why are you insisting upon some bizarre form of shareholder liability as opposed to simply regulating the conduct in question?
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On January 15 2014 07:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:47 Mercy13 wrote:On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:32 Nacl(Draq) wrote:
If money is the requirement with who should be blamed then giving money to a drunk makes you accountable for him driving drunk later. You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live? But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership. I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders. I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they often cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm if it is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior by firms. And in cases where the wrongdoing merits a fine then the system already works. But as I mentioned earlier, corporations literally murder when they calculate that they can get away with it and it'll increase share price. There has to be accountability.
Murder is illegal...
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On January 15 2014 07:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:48 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:47 Mercy13 wrote:On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live?
But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership. I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders. I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they often cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm if it is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior by firms. And in cases where the wrongdoing merits a fine then the system already works. But as I mentioned earlier, corporations literally murder when they calculate that they can get away with it and it'll increase share price. There has to be accountability. Murder is illegal...
I think that's his point. If a corporation does something that merits a fine, shareholders pay a portion of that fine. If a corporation commits murder, the managers or whoever was directly responsible for the act goes to prison, but the shareholders (who happily benefited from the firm's bad behavior while failing to provide oversight) are not directly punished unless the firm is also fined.
I can agree in principle that this may be an undesirable outcome, I'm just not sure how shareholders could practically be held accountable for that sort of thing.
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United States43567 Posts
On January 15 2014 07:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2014 07:48 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:47 Mercy13 wrote:On January 15 2014 07:07 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 07:05 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 07:03 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:59 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:53 KwarK wrote:On January 15 2014 06:41 Nacl(Draq) wrote:On January 15 2014 06:39 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
You don't own drunk people. You can own a business. Jesus. Is this what passes for logic where you live?
But if I gave my slave a load of alcohol and car keys and he drove drunk I would absolutely be held accountable for his actions because he's my slave. That's how property works. So money has no business in owning things. So owning things is owning things. Ok, I see the point. So if you owned .000001% of that slave and then someone else, who owned more than 50% of him, told him to drive drunk. Would you be responsible? Again, attacking the person instead of the topic is considered ad hominem and is generally considered rude. That's fine. I can deal with it. (and oddly enough, if you own a bar and that bar gives alcohol to someone and that person later drives drunk, then the owner of the bar is held responsible. So in actuality even though you don't own the person you are responsible. This is how US law works anyway.) The bar example is completely irrelevant, bars aren't judged responsible because they own their customers, they're judged responsible because they are given a legal responsibility to ensure their product is not abused. You keep explaining how if a free person freely chooses to do something then you wouldn't hold another unrelated individual responsible and therefore that somehow means that if an institution you own that is legally controlled by you and has no individual rights but rather rights derived from you does something then you shouldn't be held accountable either. It doesn't make any kind of sense. I put the bar scenario in () to signify it wasn't truly apart of the discussion. Just as a side note/footnote if you will. So you are saying that if your, non-existent, slave which you own .0000001% of drove drunk after being told by more than 50% of the other owners then you are responsible, as a group. Which means that the person who owns .00000001% of but decided that they didn't want to part ways from the group is responsible. Ok. I think I understand what you're saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. If someone chooses to be apart of a group and that group makes a decision then the people who are apart of that group are all responsible. If the group makes a decision and a person leaves because of the decision they are not responsible? Is that correct? I'm saying that if you believe your business is acting unethically or criminally and you cannot force it to act otherwise because you are a minority shareholder then you should sell your stake in it so it is not doing it in your name. Reaping the rewards of the actions while disowning the responsibility is not an acceptable stance. Is the nightmare scenario in which shareholders desert negligent businesses such a problem here? Ok. I understand now. That is a very acceptable stance. Do you think shareholders should share evenly in responsibility or should the punishment be shared equal to the amount of the company they own. So that .000001% gets only .000001% of the punishment. Shared out by ownership. I'm a little confused then, because aren't losses already shared out by ownership? If a firm goes bankrupt, it is likely that shareholders will lose (almost?) their entire investment. If a firm gets fined, the money that it must pay belongs to shareholders. I agree that it would be great if firms were more responsible for the harm they often cause, but shareholders already stand to lose their investment if the firm if it is penalized, and this doesn't prevent bad behavior by firms. And in cases where the wrongdoing merits a fine then the system already works. But as I mentioned earlier, corporations literally murder when they calculate that they can get away with it and it'll increase share price. There has to be accountability. Murder is illegal...
Only if you get caught.
Royal Dutch Shell were caught paying corrupt Nigerian military officials for the brutal violent crackdown on peaceful tribesmen protesting the destruction and pollution of their lands by Shell. The operation resulted in 2000 deaths and 100,000 refugees, along with the public execution of 9 of the leaders of the peaceful protest against Shell's pollution. In 2009 Shell paid out 15.5 million in a settlement to the families of those 9.
Current logic says that 15.5 million paid out means that the assets of Shell are lowered by 15.5 million which will be reflected by a tiny change in share price and therefore the shareholders have been punished for what Shell did in their name and thus the system works. Except of course that the reason this happened was that Shell calculated the cost of not polluting the area as being more than the cost of bribing the government to crush opposition and, on the urging of their absentee shareholders, acted to maximise profit.
There is no justice.
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EPT
