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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

White Castle's complaint against "annihilative liability" is more corporate/institutional exceptionalism. Human persons are often completely financially destroyed by civil suits. I don't see any reason why just because it's a corporate person they should be protected from this outcome. If anything it should be more likely against a corporate person who has no real criminal liability.

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The question is, does the punishment fit the crime.

You don't impose the death penalty for stealing an orange.

With corporations the point of a penalty is to deter, not destroy.

If White Castle goes out of business and thousands of people lose their jobs, how is that good for society?

Justice requires proportionality.

A death penalty for the company shouldn't involve all those people losing their jobs, it should involve the wiping out of the existing shareholders and the sale of assets at auction to another buyer, who, presumably, would continue to operate the business in a law abiding manner.

I like this idea. Does any country operate such a punishment for companies?

Most American companies don’t just run out of money and close the doors with a shrug. Bankruptcy cases involve selling assets (including brands, employment, etc) to other investors.

Original shareholders lose all their money, as the shares are deemed worthless (debt>>assets). Then new investors want to buy the remaining assets and have to pay the government (or other debt-holders) back for the debts (or the “fair market value” of the assets).

There is no guarantee that this process with oust management, but the new owners may not believe in the ability of the old management after they bankrupted a company. Realistically, companies sometimes go into chapter 11 knowing it’s not the end just to restructure debt.

Isn't this chapter 11 bankruptcy?

> If White Castle goes out of business and thousands of people lose their jobs, how is that good for society?

Why would they lose their job? White Castle would declare bankruptcy, someone else will buy physical properties and equipment, and I would assume open a new restaurant(s) there.

Justice does require proportionality. But if only the especially rich get proportionality, then it's not really justice, is it?

I agree it wouldn't be fair to White Castle if they were destroyed over this. But I'm not so sure it's particularly unfair when counted on the "workers vs corporations" scoreboard, or the one for "privacy vs exploitation".

Reminds me of the PG&E situation. You can't actually hold them liable for all the fire damage because they'd have to pass it on to rate payers. I'm not even sure if they can specifically raise rates in areas with high fire risk.

PG&E is in an even tougher bind because the fix (burying the lines) might be prohibitively expensive.

"With corporations the point of a penalty is to deter, not destroy."

I don't know if this actually the point like you suggest, but why do you believe this should be the point?

There are absolutely cases where a company should be "destroyed" instead of just punished. Cases involving willful loss of human life, etc.

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