Comments on: Fiat Shuffle

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:41:03 +0000

And on the other side of the practicality coin, (and I cannot believe that I get to be the one making this point on a blog like this), what exactly keeps the system of dissolving or even seriously punishing companies in the manners suggested from being a gross misuse of government authority? You don’t think Target would line pockets of people to give Wal-Mart the death penalty? A lot more of corporate money would go from investment in running hteir business to trying to have their competition offed by the government and to avoid being offed themselves.
I still think that a better course is to stop pretending that corporations have the same rights as persons do. It’s a joke distinction given all the ways that people and corporations don’t have the same rights, and if the government could actually stop corporations from crushing whistleblowers or bombarding the airwaves with ridiculousness (we can call this the Brown and Williamson playbook in the post-Wigand Congressional investigations), I think a lot of these problems would be mitigated. But talk about a practically challenging problem! It looks like right now the most effective consumer group is in the same party as most large business interests and the opposition party contain many who would refuse to abridge speech on coroporations because they feel it’s a civil liberties issue. Oh, and the companies themselves are still big and powerful and can influence the system. grr…

By: fnook

fnook — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:44:05 +0000

Something less drastic than the “corporate death penality” would be a federal law permitting an appropriate federal agency to attach serious punitive conditions on the corporate charters of companies that engage in systematic violation of federal laws, e.g. WalMart. Sort of like a permanent consent decree, or something.

By: fling93

fling93 — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:40:30 +0000

I think it might be better to focus on incentives that more specifically target shareholders. One-time penalties don’t affect future revenues, so maybe some sort of ongoing “behavior tax” or something?

By: Yoni

Yoni — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:09:06 +0000

What you’re neglecting is that government often helped create segregation in the first place! How could you neglect that? It’s key!

By: Carlos

Carlos — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:23:24 +0000

Julian has a good point, but sometimes in politics it’s easier to overcome a big, visible obstacle than a lot of small, less visible ones.

By: Brad Plumer

Brad Plumer — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 06:13:35 +0000

Okay, I admit, it's a good point!

On the other hand, in some cases it should be somewhat easier to implement the corporate death penalty -- state AGs just need to be convinced to start revoking corporate charters -- than it would be to reform the tort-system in a seriously anti-corporate way. (Of course, if AGs ever started doing that, every single company in America would just rush to incorporate in Delaware and that would be the end of that.)

At any rate, I mostly think of support for the corporate death penalty as way to express frustration with the current system rather than a remotely serious policy proposal, although obviously not everyone supports it for that reason. But you're right, it's on some level an illogical way to express frustration.