Comment by perplex3d

> You can't put a corporation in prison. But a person you can. This is one of the big problems.

It really isn't -- we're talking about a category of activities that involves only financial liability or civil torts in the first place, regardless of whether the parties involved are organizations or individuals. You can't put people in prison for civil torts.

Prison is irrelevant to 98% of the discussion here. And the small fraction of cases in the status quo that do involve criminal liability -- even within organizations -- absolutely do assign that liability to specific individuals, and absolutely can involve criminal penalties including jail time. Actual criminal conduct is precisely where the courts "pierce the veil" and hold individuals accountable.

> Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths of hundreds (especially the second crash was entirely preventable if they would have been honest after the first one), all they got were some fines.

All anyone would ever get in a lawsuit is some fines. The matter is inherently a civil one. And if there were any indications of criminal conduct, criminal liability can be applied -- as it often is -- to the individuals who engaged in it regardless of whether they are operating within an organization or on their own initiative.

The only real difference is that when you sue a large corporation, you're much more able to actually collect the damages you win than you would be if you were just suing one guy operating by himself. If the aim of justice is remunerative, not just punitive, then this is a much superior situation.

> Those just end up being charged back to their customers, a big one being the government who fined them in the first place.

Who would be paying to settle the matter in your preferred situation? It sounds like the most likely outcome is that the victims would just eat the costs they've already incurred, since there'd be little chance of collecting damages, and taxpayers would bear the burden of paying for the punishment of whomever ends up holding the hot potato after all the scapegoating and blame deflection plays out.

> Even when Boeing knowingly caused the deaths

Since corporations aren't people, Boeing didn't know anything.

Did someone at Boeing have all of that knowledge?

You need a judge and jury for prison sentences for criminal convictions.

If the government decides to prosecute the matter as a civil infraction, or doesn't even bother prosecuting but just has an executive agency hand out a fine, that's not a matter of the corporation shielding people, that's a matter of the government failing to prosecute or secure a conviction.

> If the company is a sole proprietorship, you can sue the person who controls it up to bankruptcy, which will affect their personal life significantly.

I'm sure it will. But how do you collect $30M in damages from a single individual whose entire net worth is e.g. $1M? What if the sole proprietor actually owns no assets whatsoever, because he's set up a bunch of arrangements where he leases everything from third parties, and contracts out his business operations to a different set of third parties, etc.?

I don't get why so many people are so intent on trying to attribute the motivations to maximize one's own take, deflect blame for harm away from themselves, and cover up their questionable activities to some specific organizational model. All of those motivations come from the human beings involved -- they were always present and always will be -- and those same human beings will manipulate whatever rules or institutions are involved to the greatest extent that they can.

Blaming a particular organizational model for the malicious intentions of the people who are just using that model as a tool is a deep, deep error.

> If you're an individual you actually can't just set up an LLC to limit your own liability.

What are you talking about? Of course you can. People do it all the time.

> rather as the owner you need to find and employ enough judgement-proof patsies that the whole thing becomes a "group project" and you can say you personally weren't aware of whatever problem gave rise to liability.

You're conflating entirely unrelated concepts of liability here. Limited liability as it relates to LLCs and corporations is for financial liability. It means that the organizations debts are not the shareholders' debts. It has nothing to do with legal liability for one's own purposeful conduct, whether tortious or criminal.

The kind of liability protection that you think corporations enjoy but single-member LLCs don't -- protection from the liability for individual criminal behavior -- does not exist for anyone at all.

> A person or group of people who want to exercise their personal natural rights through hired employees can always forgo the government-created liability shield and go sole proprietorship / gen partnership.

The ownership structure of a business has nothing at all to do with how it hires employees and directs their activities. The same law of agency and doctrine of vicarious liability applies to all agent-principal relationships regardless of whether the principal is a corporation or a sole proprietorship.