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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

Are you a programmer? Would you accept having most of your money, retirement, possessions, and wealth taken away if it is discovered you made a mistake and there's a serious big in your code?

I'm not talking about just criminal negligence, I'm taking about honest mistakes too. If you want to be ultra rich, more than 20 million, then you have to be competent enough to not make big mistakes. For everyone else, they get to keep their retirement, etc. That's why I said 20 million.

And I'm thinking about more than punishment. It's about compensation. A CEO should be compensated for making good long term decisions, and if it turns out they have not make good decisions, they should retroactively lose compensation, but not be left in ruin over honest mistakes.

As for criminal cases, apply criminal penalties, which are beyond what I was suggesting.

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My issue with your argument is in what world is a net worth of $20 million not "ultra rich." The median net worth of an individual near retirement age is $400,000. Under 35 it's a tenth of that.

I don't really have an opinion about statutory fines for executives in situations like this, but the idea that reducing someone's net worth to a measly 50x that of what most people have is somehow punitive is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

It's an arbitrary number, but I believe it should be fairly high in this idea I propose. (And this is all pie in the sky theory crafting anyway.)

My goal is not punishment as much as it is compensation. I want a world where if someone has a billion dollars, it's because they made good decisions and have proven to be good in the long term. Currently that is not the case, if someone has a billion dollars it might be because they made greedy short term decisions and then bailed and deployed their golden parachute and left others to clean up their mess.

I also think it's about liability. I like not being personally liable for mistakes I make a work, but I don't get paid millions of dollars either. I think once enough money is involved people should no longer be able to disconnect financial liability from their personal money.

I also proposed it as a conservative high number, because if this ever were to happen, you know talking heads would be screaming about it, but regular people are going to scoff when they learn the only threat is to take away wealth in excess of 20 million.

>I'm not talking about just criminal negligence

But that was the topic of the discussion. Actually, the context was gross negligence rather then mere negligence, let alone just ordinary mistakes.

Yes, but a once society crossed that boundary then it will be on you and your lawyer to prove that it wasn't criminal negligence, just the regular old kind

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