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Comment by quantified | Hacker News Reader

Bankruptcy isn't a criminal matter.

If you admit to a crime while testifying in a non-criminal matter, you can be charged with that crime and that testimony can be used against you. Therefore you can take the 5th in non-criminal cases - as you have a right not to incriminate yourself in future criminal matters. Therefore non-criminal courts can and do grant immunity against future prosecution (although I'm not sure if it's jurisdictional, ie whether federal bankruptcy court can grant you immunity against future state charges).

TFA is a bout civil immunity though, not criminal immunity.

The first paragraph talks about the board of TWC allegedly knowing about Weinstein paying off people accusing him. One could make the argument that not acting on this knowledge to protect the value of the is an abrogation of their duties as board members.

However the board was granted immunity in Chapter 11, so no such arguments can be advanced in court now.

Also, "executives" don't sound like lower level

Aren't executives just doing what the board wants, and the board just following what the owners want?

And the owners what the market wants. Really you, the consumer, is responsible!

Well not really. The owners are ultimately responsible for the company's behavior.

And yet the owners rely on the market/consumer giving them money to put food on the table and afford a roof over their head. Which is to say, user?id=delusional above was mostly joking.

Corporations respond to profit motives above all else, but there are still humans making those decisions within the corporations

The shareholders will end up with the valuation they end up with, but are immune from prosecution in all but the most explicit and egregious cases.

If they vote in directors, which they suspect will hire a criminal CEO, that’s enough levels of indirection that unless they write a memo explicitly stating to do so (and maybe even then!), the worst outcome for them is the valuation of the company drops to zero and they lose their capital, minus whatever dividends have been pulled out.

That is barring potential criminal conspiracy anyway, which would require concrete actions in furtherance of a conspiracy, which would be difficult to prove without something like that memo.

Look we were all just following orders.

Chemical and electrical orders

The consumer does what the marketeers want, which do what the executives want, and round we go. It's a vicious cycle of inefficiency from people trying to get larger parts of the pie rather than growing the pie.

Isn't creating new markets the canonical strategy of doing startups?

You might enjoy reading meditations on moloch: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

After reading the first two chapters I'm hooked. Thanks a ton for recommending it.

To be fair, this is how causality works. It's not only about who did it. In practice the ball rolls as much because it was kicked as because it is round and because it isn't made of solid lead.

TFA is about Board Executives.

I guess not everyone has time to read the articles before commenting.

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