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Comment by wdr1 | Hacker News Reader

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wdr1·

> The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this.

I'm not sure if it's hyperbole or not. If it's not, what law was broken?

(Honest question. I'm not a fan of this, but I was curious if it's actually illegal.)

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The argument isn't. "This is illegal so the CEO should be jailed". Instead the argument is "This should be made illegal so the threat of jail ensures CEOs keep this from happening."

Worth noting that we make things illegal when we feel they should be illegal, and for no other reason. In a democracy the feeling turns to a vote which turns to legislation. In this case, we would pass a law making executives personally criminally liable for anti-competative, anti-consumer behavior like this. I do not think it would run afoul of the Constitution, either.

I think we should pass the law and try it out, see how it feels.

Maybe none. Everything was done above board, capitalism (growing capital as a core value) worked as intended.

It was immoral and unethical but those are lesser concerns than maximising return on capital invested. Possibly, no law was clearly broken.

We need to outsource some of our lawmaking to ethics boards/commissions if we want to keep capitalism. Otherwise, every other company is now looking to defraud its customers and that’s the only way an endless desire for capital growth (exponential growth expectations from investors) goes.

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