> but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders.
But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done.
> Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome?
Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.
Why would you assume the market efficiently adjusts for things like fines? Have you seen the stock market lately? There is at best a loose correlation between business reality and stock prices.
Why would there be a 1 to 1 relationship between the price of stocks and reality, when most investing is blind passive investing that ignores reality by design?
It doesn't really matter that much if he thinks or knows a stock is under or over valued if he also expects that bad valuation to be maintained for any significant length of time.
Stock prices are not rational and there is no consistent way to calculate the value of a company. An expensive media campaign that accomplishes nothing related to their business offerings and may even lose the company significant amounts of money can end up raising a stock price. And you also don't have unlimited time to try and wait out stocks which also have so many other random factors being thrown in over the years.
> But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done.
Not directly, but surely I don't need to explain to you what effect cutting costs typically has on share price?
> Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.
Sorry, I'm missing the part of this where you answered the question. Why is this a desirable outcome? What is the problem with holding human beings responsible for their own actions?
I don't give a fuck about the foundation of joint-stock corporations. If the foundations of joint-stock corporations result in sociopaths profiting off harming people with no consequences, the foundations of joint-stock corporations need to change or be discarded completely.
> surely I don't need to explain to you what effect laying off a bunch of workers might have on share price?
Surely you do, because sometimes the stock goes up if the workers weren't needed in the first place, sometimes it goes down because it shows the company is flailing, and sometimes it does nothing because it's business as usual.
You're operating under an illusion that execs have control over how the market will respond.
> Sorry, I'm missing the part of this where you answered the question.
And I'm missing the part where anything I wrote gave you the excuse to be rude. Please be civil, this is HN.
I had to double check and you were not responding to me, but yes, it was in fact you who was passive aggressive rude and underhanded with your snide “surely I don’t have to”, conceited, pretentious, snarky response. If you’re going to accuse others of being rude, you should start. This is not reddit. Are you lost? Pretentious pomp should best be left at the door anywhere outside of the reddit quarantine of awful humans.
What normal people are concerned about: "Corporations are destroying people's lives for the profit of a few."
What Hacker News is concerned about: "Someone was slightly snarky in an internet post."
I didn't accuse anyone of being rude. I don't care if you're rude to me. This whole "rudeness" thing is just a transparent way of distracting from the question:
Why can't we hold executives personally, financially or criminally responsible when they make decisions that harm other people?
Because "make decisions that harm people" is vague, and criminal codes should be explicit and clear? Who the fuck would want to do business if someone can arbitrarily claim they broke some vague law that most surely would not get applied fairly and equally? It's a terrible idea.
> Because "make decisions that harm people" is vague, and criminal codes should be explicit and clear?
Nobody was proposing that "make decisions that harm people" should be the wording of the criminal code. Obviously nobody's drafting legal language to be passed as law on Hacker News.
We're discussing, at a high level, the concept of holding people responsible for their actions. If a concrete example would help you, consider the Ford Pinto case, where people committed murder (a law that's already on the books, in clear language) and didn't go to jail for it because it was behind the veil of a corporation.
> Who the fuck would want to do business if someone can arbitrarily claim they broke some vague law that most surely would not get applied fairly and equally?
Oh no, what will we do without sociopaths in charge of the economy? Who will want money if they can't harm other people to get it?
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like if people decide not to go into business because their business doesn't work without harming people, that's a good thing?
If you're worried about people being treated unfairly, why are you completely ignoring everything that's being said about businesses harming workers and customers? Why are you only worried that the rich and powerful might be treated unfairly, despite a complete lack of historical precedent for that happening?
Sure, of a law is on the books, then hold people responsible. But we are talking about 3rd party printer ink here. Why is criminality and jail even being mentioned at all?
"Destruction of property" is a law on the books in some form in pretty much every jurisdiction[1].
When you sell a printer to someone, it's no longer your property, it's their property, and if you destroy it, that's destruction of property.
Arguably there's also some cyber crimes involved here as well.
If I hacked into your printer and bricked it, I'd go to jail, no question. Why is HP above the law in your mind, when they did it on a much larger scale?
that's simply how civile law, the most popular legal system in the World, works: the trial establishes if the company harmed people and decides if the decision makers are to be punished or not.
Nothing hard about it.
OTOH the way corporate law is applied today is neither fair or applied equally and it mostly harms people and benefit corporations, I don't see a problem if we reverse the outcome
less corporations that operate on higher ethical standards sounds like a win-win to me
The person answered your question implicitly, you just didn't understand it.
Not only that, you're completely wrong in the earlier exchange about laying off workers. I think you need to understand business better to see that it doesn't work out the way you think it does. Shouting "fuck" on HN with a wrong take doesn't make you right.
If you have any problems with my understanding of business, feel free to say what they are, but so far you've just claimed that I'm wrong without any reason, and objected to my choice of words.
But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done.
> Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome?
Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.