• Blackmist
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    4 months ago

    My local water company was fined £2m for dumping huge amounts of sewage in the river.

    Their profit for the year was about £500m.

    Like, what is even the point? We should be renationalising this shit. Fuck these people.

    • random9@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I agree.

      It reminds me of that joke that a corporation is an ingenious tool for personal profit without personal responsibility.

      It may be radical, but I strongly believe that the people running corporations (aka those making decisions) should be personally held accountable for crimes and wrongdoings of their corporations. It goes against the very idea of a corporations, but absolutely horrible people have been exploiting hiding behind corporations. I bet that if those people had to face the prospect of serious prison time, some actual personal responsibility, they would think twice before committing crimes. (edit for spelling mistakes)

      • Blackmist
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        4 months ago

        I think the worst case in the UK at the minute is the Post Office, who knew there was a massive fuck up in their computer system, but prosecuted their sub-postmasters anyway for the “missing” money. People went to jail. People committed suicide. Hundreds faced financial ruin.

        I can’t wait for the bosses to face absolutely no consequences, or for them to shove some low level minions under the bus.

        • Tak@lemmy.ml
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          4 months ago

          Even when there are consequences the consequences for the wealthy are always drastically lighter than the consequences for the poor.

      • yamanii@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Your proposition is only fair since they love to pretend to be people in the eyes of the law, but when any wrongdoing happens, nobody is ever held accountable and they just pay some fines that are like 1% of their profits.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        The whole concept of corporations does seem to be purpose-built for avoiding negative consequences. For example, if the company makes a profit, the shareholders own that profit. But if the company goes into deep dept… the shareholders are not on the hook for that.

    • Joe Cool@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Since you can’t put a company in prison, all of management should be on trial for intentional poisoning of the population.