Comment by causesothere

9 hours ago

And the companies are also struggling to recover, right? Because the damage to the company is commensurate with the damage to the environment it works within?

No? The companies are largely free from consequence?

Maybe our system is a bit broken.

13 comments

causesothere

Reply
bagacrap  1 hour ago

What does it even mean for a company to have consequences?

You could dissolve the corporation. The assets are sold off to competitors, including their claims to oil fields. The employees find new jobs. The shareholders (your retirement plan) might get screwed? But basically the same economic activities eventually continue under a different flag. I struggle to see what this actually accomplishes.

  • November_Echo  6 minutes ago

    Large government fines that represent a significant portion of that company's revenue would be a good place to start. The fine would need to be big enough to hit the share price hard as that seems to be the only thing that CEOs/boards notice. This should also cause investors to be more careful about which companies they invest in and avoid companies with lax standards and push companies towards better outcomes.

  • floatingtorch  15 minutes ago

    Show the board, major shareholders, and C-suite that accountability matters. If it’s a critical risk to key shareholders they are more likely to take it seriously. If not, good luck. Pretty simple, just add some skin in the game. Better yet, add in some criminal liability.

gambiting  8 hours ago

As another comment pointed out - total cost to BP over this is somewhere in excess of $140BN. It's hardly "free of consequence".

  • palata  6 hours ago

    When a human does something really really really bad, they go to jail and then they struggle for the rest of their life (not saying it's good).

    When a company fucks up like that, it should die, and the people deemed responsible should go to jail. And if we cannot find who is responsible, then the top-level executives should go to jail. They are paid so much because they are "responsible", aren't they?

    "But think about the normal employees losing their job when such a company fucks up", I hear. Well, think about the employees who lose their job when a normal company bankrupts "normally", who cares? And maybe, just maybe, there would then be whistleblowers from the inside because they would actually risk their job by just not contributing to preventing the company from fucking up that bad.