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Comment by jgeada | Hacker News Reader

Government, in a democracy, is supposed to represent the choices of the people. They serve us. If they're not serving you, you are voting wrong.

If you vote for corrupt imbeciles because their sound bites align with some of your narrow interests, don't expect them stop being corrupt imbeciles when they are in power.

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Great. Then I want them encouraging corporations. I don't want my power company limited to the risks that their CEO can absorb (so projects under what? 20% of the CEOs disposable wealth that the CEO will willing to risk on the total of all projects?). I want a power company that can risk creating large solar farms and absorb the lawsuits that the CEO on their own would not be willing to take on if they were bearer of so much responsibility just couldn't risk it. You are pushing for a world of all large projects being limited to those done by billionaires just like the world of peasants that existed prior to the creation of the concept of corporations. You are pushing a much worse and limited world for the little people where they can't pool their resources and do ANYTHING larger than any one individual can assume the ENTIRE risk of.

NOTE: you missed the qualifying word "illegal" in my proposal. You can continue to take all legal risks just the same as before, but all shielding disappears if/when you commit to doing illegal activities. Hold CEOs and boards directly accountable for illegal activity.

edit: went through the thread and realized I didn't make it explicit that the proposal is to go directly at executives and board only in cases of illegal activity. It was implied but not explicitly clear. Making this edit to clarify my intent.

I like the logic of that. Corporations were originally given limited liability in return for doing a public good.

If they are doing something illegal - the opposite of a public good - then they broke the deal, so those who broke the law don't get limited liability.

On a previous thread someone posted a interesting idea. Every time a company conducts criminal actions, the feds assume X percentage of undilutable ownership. This punishes the company and stakeholders (or stockholders) as it dilutes their equity and if too much illegality occurs the company changes hands (and probably gets spun out as a new public company with the proceeds going back to the public and the original investors/etc still get an acceptable punishment).

We already have this. I was in prison federal prison with some of these guys. What you want is maybe less prosecutorial discretion but mandatory sentences/etc have been ruled unconstitutional in federal law so it would be a tricky prospect when it comes to removing individualized assessments. It's easy to grab a pitchfork after reading an article but their might be realities we don't see that prosecutors (who do this for a living and really really like having scalps to hang) did.

> …supposed to…

You’re right. But “supposed to” is just an ideal.

> …They serve us.

Do they really? The evidence suggests otherwise. So we must ask, why do they not serve us?

Leading us to…

> If they're not serving you, you are voting wrong

Well sure, in a democracy, if the representatives don’t work towards the population’s interests, then the population must be “voting wrong”.[1] But that is just begging the question…

“Why are they voting wrong?”

And sure…“They are fooled.”

But, How?

“They are fools.”

But, Why?

[1] Ignoring the problem of asymmetric information. A population simply does not a have access to all the information needed to ensure they’ll be served properly. The representatives know far more about their own intentions than any set of voters ever could.

Proper education, a corner stone of democracy (sometimes forgotten? In particular in that context). Not the full story, but for sure a critical part of it.