[HN Gopher] 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but ...
___________________________________________________________________
3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell the
public
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 357 points
Date : 2023-12-17 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (minnesotareformer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (minnesotareformer.com)
| verdverm wrote:
| Given we have a recent law regarding data breaches,
| notifications, and penalties for not...
|
| We ought to mirror this law onto IRL products and companies
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Are those laws effective at stopping any of those things from
| happening?
| LanzVonL wrote:
| They would be if the punishment was severe enough. Heck,
| businesses might even become afraid to collect personal
| information if there was a risk of serious bodily harm and
| financial penalties for letting it loose.
| monkburger wrote:
| This is what happens when the EPA's rules state chemical
| companies, can more or less, police themselves.
|
| We've detected PFOAs in rainwater/clouds, in the artic, etc (See
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765)
|
| They are going to lead to further health problems down the road.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This kind of self regulation can probably work and be cost
| effective if you ruthlessly destroy any company found in
| violation rather than some fine and an apology.
|
| Reminds me of criminal punishment in medieval times.
| Incarceration was a complete economic non-start so the
| penalties were brutal as a deterrent.
| orclev wrote:
| Corporate capital punishment, the company gets seized it's
| patents and copyrights made public domain, and any other
| assets it has sold to the highest bidder and those profits
| used to compensate the victims.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Unless you scale fines with income/wealth, fines are just a
| way of letting the rich do what they please. On the off
| chance they're caught - and don't get let off the hook
| because of how 'respectable' they are - it's so little money
| to them, it's not a discouragement at all.
|
| A fine for dangerous driving that is crushing to a day
| laborer is unnoticeable to someone wealthy. And whereas that
| laborer, to challenge a ticket, would need to take time off
| from work costing them further - the wealthy person may have
| a standing relationship with a law firm, and that law firm
| might send a clerk or paralegal to challenge the ticket in
| court...and do so gratis.
| cromulent wrote:
| That's why Finland has "day fines" - after a threshold,
| fines are x days of your last years income. 5 or 6 figure
| fines are not uncommon.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I wonder if that makes the weight of the consequence less
| abstract? "I sped and now I'm working for free for a
| day."
| surgical_fire wrote:
| The problem of punishing corporations, is that the people
| that benefited from misconduct are possibly gone from the
| company already, and you might be punishing current employees
| who might even be unaware.
|
| The people responsible for the misconduct at the time need to
| face criminal prosecution, and their personal wealth has to
| be first on the line for damage reparations.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's not about punishment. That's the core of my comment.
| Make it so horrible for the shareholders and owners.
| orclev wrote:
| Can do both. Destroy the company, but also go after those
| responsible. Anyone who knew about the situation but
| didn't make their supervisor(s) aware is personally
| liable for damages. Anyone on the board or C-Suite that
| was aware and either did nothing or didn't notify
| regulators is also personally liable. In both cases if
| anyone died as a result the companies actions they should
| be tried for manslaughter.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| I think the exon-mobile report on global warming is one of the
| most accurate models for predicting global warming, and that
| was written before this was a big political issue. I think
| having companies produce the research to hang themself with in
| the future is unstable though.
| acdha wrote:
| That one always makes me sad - imagine how different our
| world would have been if, say, they'd gone to Carter and
| offered to go public with the data in exchange for help
| decarbonizing. He'd have gotten his French-style civilian
| nuclear power program, they'd probably have been able to
| successfully shift into emerging green industries with their
| enormous resources, and we wouldn't have an expensively
| cultivated anti-science political movement causing problems
| in other areas.
| thedragonline wrote:
| I spent half a decade working with climate data from
| institutions around the world. There are dragons in those
| datasets and it is really frustrating to watch denialism at
| large and have to deal with it personally.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| I wish more people were aware of how damaging bad science
| is, even when it is well intentioned. Environmental
| studies are often littered with double counting and
| creative data framing. One faked study does more to
| convince people global warming is over blown than 100
| rigorous studies showing that it isn't.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| The anti-science political movement was in effect long
| before Carter. He tried to switch to the metric system and
| was opposed on cultural grounds as one example. But look
| back to Darwin and Galileo and you'll see a long standing
| pattern. Sadly, at this point it looks like it will doom
| us.
| qwebfdzsh wrote:
| > Galileo
|
| To be fair one of the reasons his ideas were rejected is
| because he wrote a book portraying the pope as an idiot.
| Heliocentrism/his books were banned earlier but a few
| years later one of his friends and supporters during the
| initial trial was elected pope. So there was a non
| insignificant chance that the Catholic church would have
| accepted heliocentrism a few hundred years sooner had he
| managed to be a bit more subtle and no alienate him.
|
| Also I'm not trying to downplay the anti scientific
| attitude which was quite prevalent back in those days
| (when science couldn't be balanced with religious truths
| etc. otherwise I don't think it was that bad) but one of
| the main issues with his theory is that he couldn't
| really prove it conclusively (e.g. the issue with stellar
| parallax).
|
| e.g. While the Roman inquisition did ban his theory and
| books but first they organized a public debate between
| Galileo and one of their lawyers which which was
| primarily based on scientific rather than religous
| arguments
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is a huge problem across the board; industry and congress
| have been steadily stripping federal agencies of staff/budget,
| authority, etc.
|
| Congress long figured out how to kill off regulation that is
| publicly popular: strangle the agency budget-wise, not appoint
| new department leaders, etc. Adding ever-increasing paperwork
| is also popular.
|
| OSHA has the lowest number of inspectors in ~45 years. The
| agency is about 50 years old. https://www.nelp.org/news-
| releases/number-federal-workplace-...
|
| It has one inspector for every 77,000 workers and its budget
| amounts to $4/worker: https://www.afge.org/article/aflcio-osha-
| budget-amounts-to-3...
|
| The EPA's inspections have fallen to half the number of ten
| years ago https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-
| environment/2019/02/0...
|
| The number of ATF inspections has been falling for decades and
| the ATF apparently is allowing gun shops even with multiple
| violations to go unpunished https://www.usatoday.com/in-
| depth/news/investigations/2021/0...
|
| The poultry industry pushed and got greater self-regulation
| around 2013 to increase line speeds: https://awionline.org/awi-
| quarterly/2013-fall/usda-refuses-d...
|
| The Trump administration passed widespread overhauls of the
| meat packing industry letting them self-regulate to increase
| production https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/03/federal-
| pork-insp...
|
| In ten years the number of food inspections the FDA conducts
| have fallen to one fifth the rate in 2010:
| https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/05/fda-food-safe...
|
| Foreign drug manufacturing site inspections plummeted with the
| pandemic and have yet to recover, too.
|
| The IRS budget has been slashed, mostly for auditing - despite
| audits of the 0.1% wealthiest resulting in an average of
| $90,000 per audit recovered:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/irs...
|
| The de minimis for shipments into the US was raised from $200
| to $800 in 2016 which has allowed for a massive increase in
| goods to be imported that are not subject to any inspection or
| taxes https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/de-
| minim...
| gosub100 wrote:
| We need regulation of the regulations! /s
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I get the joke, but what we need is a constitutional
| amendment overriding Citizens United, reigning in the
| absurdity of "corporations have free speech rights and thus
| they can spend whatever they want on political campaigns
| and PACs, and without even reporting it."
| gosub100 wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly.
|
| What if one or both political parties spoke out about
| campaign finance corruption? What if they refuses
| corporate donations, and made direct appeals to their
| voters to chip in (YouTuber style). I'm trying very hard
| to not be partisan here, but why doesn't either party
| take a stand? Don't they share responsibility for
| accepting the money?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Why would they take a stand against their own interests?
| gosub100 wrote:
| because their interests are, ostensibly, with their
| constituents.
| Vecr wrote:
| No reason the ATF needs to exist though, the taxes and stuff
| like explosives enforcement should be separate.
| ejb999 wrote:
| OSHA may have the lowest # of inspectors in ~45 years, but
| the rate of worker deaths is also at just about its lowest
| over that same time period - so not sure the # of inspectors
| is really relevant.
|
| More is not always better.
|
| Worker deaths in America are down--on average, from about 38
| worker deaths a day in 1970 to 13 a day in 2020.
|
| Worker injuries and illnesses are down--from 10.9 incidents
| per 100 workers in 1972 to 2.7 per 100 in 2020.
|
| Source: https://www.osha.gov/data/commonstats
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If I understand correctly, those chemicals don't go away unless
| destroyed with highly sophisticated and expensive methods. They
| will continue to accumulate in concentration and cause more
| impact over time.
| joenathanone wrote:
| This can lead to bio-death of the planet.
| acdha wrote:
| I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for
| everyone in the management chain before this will end.
|
| As long as you can cash out your options before the reckoning,
| maybe even spin a division out to go bankrupt, there are just too
| many people who'll chase the larger number. You need the guy who
| gets that internal memo to think that if he doesn't report it to
| the EPA, he'll spend the rest of his life wondering whether the
| knock on the door is the FBI.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| In China, there was a case of baby formula execs (Edit: pointed
| out to me further down thread that the execs were only jailed
| for 5-15 years with Sanlu's general manager receiving a life
| sentence, and the people executed very those directly
| responsible for tainting the product mentioned) knowingly
| selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands
| of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were
| executed. Perhaps this type of incentive will lead to less
| harmful outcomes vs limited liability and the corporate veil.
|
| At some point, you're doing enough harm knowingly at scale that
| monetary damages and prison are insufficient.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, I'm generally opposed to the death penalty on the
| grounds of not being able to undo mistakes but if we're going
| to have it on the books, I'd have a hard time saying that
| shouldn't be an option. We've charged plenty of people for
| killing a single person, and the numbers for food safety can
| be a lot more than that.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Why advocate for killing criminals when it's far cheaper to
| cage them for life?
|
| Fear of escape and second life as an evil business exec?
| Eye for an eye morality? Understanding death to be a
| greater deterrent than life in a cage? (How do you
| reconcile that with the popularity of "death-by-cop"?)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| They might get back out and are a known quantity. The
| premium is for assurance. Death at the hands of the state
| and your fellow citizens should be an absolute last
| resort, but still an option depending on severity of
| offense and when determination of guilt is ironclad. I
| understand the position of people who don't believe in
| the death penalty, but I don't agree with them. There are
| terrible humans amongst us. Everyone makes the world a
| better place: some by entering it, some by leaving it.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The death penalty as a deterrent does not work in our
| society. Nobody thinks they will actually be executed,
| and it is kind of a fair assumption since there are so
| many automatic appeals in the process due to fear of
| making a mistake. This is before the monied interests buy
| the best lawyers for their defense.
|
| China does not care so much about mistakes, they care
| about the deterrent effect.
|
| Different ideologies on law enforcement.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > The death penalty as a deterrent does not work
|
| Agreed, this has been studied over and over, generally
| punishment doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is
| because most crimes are not planned or deliberate,
| especially not something like murder.
|
| However, in cases like this, with 3M, it is deliberate.
| Sure they try to hide it, but they also know that the
| chances of anyone in management getting personally
| punished is practically zero. The company might get a
| fine and some executive will take an early retirement, if
| he hasn't already once the information comes to light.
| This is not a crime made in desperation, this is a cold
| blood calculation where the costs are weighed against
| potential profit. I don't know, but I could imagine a
| deterrence would work differently in these scenarios.
| xvector wrote:
| The death penalty works extraordinarily well in plenty of
| countries. Singapore, for example, has a marked decrease
| in drug crime post-death-penalty - interviews with
| dealers, mules, and criminals cite the death penalty as
| the reason they avoid Singapore.
|
| Most studies citing the inefficacy of the death penalty
| are flawed and simply at odds with reality, in which
| evidence points to the opposite of what the studies
| theorize.
| starttoaster wrote:
| For me, it's about ensuring some kind of deterrence. Life
| in prison without the possibility for parole can be too
| soft when the crime is the intentional negligence leading
| to the deaths of thousands, if the punishment is life in
| a low security prison with access to TV/internet. If you
| have the connections to ensure you end up in a nice
| little apartment in Club Fed, you might not think as hard
| about the consequences as if the punishment was
| potentially death.
|
| I'm also somewhat skeptical on the idea that the death
| penalty _should_ cost more than life in prison (assuming
| that sentence carries at least 20 years for the remainder
| of that person's life.) It would seem to me that there is
| a fairly obvious problem there that needs to get worked
| out if it's actually true (has anyone looked closely at
| the studies that assert this claim? Obviously there's
| additional time in court, but it would seem preposterous
| that this would necessarily lead to an increase such that
| paying for someone's housing and supervision for 20+
| years is cheaper than additional court time.) Obviously
| there are other factors like how the government allows
| itself to get overcharged by the company that
| manufactures the lethal injection for some strange reason
| (is it actually all that strange to anyone?) And then
| what is the actual reason for all the time prisoners
| spend on death row, this would seem to just be the state
| shooting itself in the foot on statistics for the costs
| for capital punishment?
|
| Anyway, I'm generally for the death penalty in matters
| where there is a clear connection between one entity and
| an intentional large-scale loss of human life. Proving
| the intention and the connection are the hard parts, for
| sure. But the clear benefit to the death penalty is that
| it's a permanent act that would-be criminals would
| naturally try to avoid, potentially avoiding them
| becoming criminals at all. If you have a study that
| somehow refutes this theory, that would-be criminals,
| especially white collar criminals similar to officials at
| 3M here, don't consider punishments as a deterrence at
| all, I might revise my opinion.
| jabl wrote:
| > I'm also somewhat skeptical on the idea that the death
| penalty _should_ cost more than life in prison (assuming
| that sentence carries at least 20 years for the remainder
| of that person's life.) It would seem to me that there is
| a fairly obvious problem there that needs to get worked
| out if it's actually true (has anyone looked closely at
| the studies that assert this claim? Obviously there's
| additional time in court, but it would seem preposterous
| that this would necessarily lead to an increase such that
| paying for someone's housing and supervision for 20+
| years is cheaper than additional court time.) Obviously
| there are other factors like how the government allows
| itself to get overcharged by the company that
| manufactures the lethal injection for some strange reason
| (is it actually all that strange to anyone?) And then
| what is the actual reason for all the time prisoners
| spend on death row, this would seem to just be the state
| shooting itself in the foot on statistics for the costs
| for capital punishment?
|
| I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding it's all
| the extra judicial processes that end up costing a lot.
| The cost of the poison used to kill the person (or
| bullet, or however it's done) it's probably just a
| rounding error in comparison.
|
| (I'm against the death penalty, but if you're gonna have
| it, why invent these macabre Rube Goldberg contraptions
| for killing people? Just put the person up against a wall
| and shoot him, FFS.)
| starttoaster wrote:
| > I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding it's
| all the extra judicial processes that end up costing a
| lot. The cost of the poison used to kill the person (or
| bullet, or however it's done) it's probably just a
| rounding error in comparison.
|
| I would wager you're probably correct. One substantial
| cost for the death penalty seems to be just paying a
| public defender for that whole time because the average
| person on death row cannot afford their own
| representation. This would not be the case, however, for
| company executives in the context we're discussing here
| at least. I'm also curious if these studies accurately
| pull together all the costs for life imprisonment, such
| as the guard staff, infirmary staff, cost of food
| consumed, cost of clothing, etc. There are probably other
| costs associated with imprisonment that I'm not even
| aware of because I've been fortunate enough to avoid
| prison so far.
|
| > ([...] why invent these macabre Rube Goldberg
| contraptions for killing people? Just put the person up
| against a wall and shoot him, FFS.)
|
| On this, we agree. Frankly, I'm fine without the death
| penalty too, though I'm not certain that it's a fair and
| just punishment in every case, and I would assume the
| potential for capital punishment would be a major
| deterrence for people looking into committing "white
| collar" life-ending crimes.
| rayiner wrote:
| The point of the criminal justice system is to create
| strong social norms and taboos. Not deterrence--not to
| create the fear of getting caught--but rather that
| internal feeling that compels people to avoid wrongdoing
| because they don't want to be seen as "bad people."
|
| Even low level criminals mentally distinguish themselves
| from the "really bad people." In prison, the people who
| hurt children are reviled by the other criminals. When we
| impose the death penalty for certain conduct, we create a
| powerful social norm. The point is to help the majority
| of people who aren't evil, but are flawed and fallible,
| stay on the right side of the line.
| billyjmc wrote:
| If killing criminals is more expensive than caging them,
| that's an implementation detail. It's not something to
| make long term planning decisions based on. If improving
| the economics of executions were a significant concern,
| it's really straightforward to address.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That, plus there's no possible way to make executions
| _more expensive_ than life imprisonment, _unless_ the
| country is making incarceration _profitable_ by using
| convicts as slave labor or selling their organs.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm generally in that camp too but there are cases where
| there's no question of culpability or reform, and that's
| where I'm the least inclined to argue against deterrence.
| I think people overstate that in general because a lot of
| crimes are impulse, but this kind of stuff is carefully
| planned over many years and I think if there is a
| deterrent effect you'd find it strongest there.
|
| I'm not enthusiastic about that and would be fine jailing
| these guys for life, but if it's something the state does
| I want guys in expensive suits to know it's not just poor
| people.
| LanzVonL wrote:
| It can be cheaper to kill them. One appeal allowed, to be
| finished within one year of the sentencing. Then, simply
| use a bullet rather than expensive medical death.
| xvector wrote:
| It's not about expense, it's about the fact that they do
| not deserve to live. Plenty of countries can economically
| work with the death sentence today, simply because it is
| part of their societies and law.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| The death penalty _only_ makes sense for white collar
| crime, and it makes a lot of sense in this setting. Theres
| very little you can do to disincentivize people from
| engaging in crimes of irrationality or desperation, but I
| think if you threaten someone who is well off already with
| death for stealing, or failing to report accurately to the
| EPA /FDA etc. The number of cases will rapidly go to zero.
| peyton wrote:
| China uses the death penalty this way. North Korea has an
| even stricter system. I don't think the number of cases
| have rapidly gone to zero. It seems to breed endogenous
| corruption and a mafioso approach to internal affairs.
| You have to deal with lack of proportionality--no matter
| where you draw the line, once you've crossed it there's
| no reason not to keep going.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > I think if you threaten someone who is well off already
| with death ... number of cases will rapidly go to zero.
|
| You can think that, but you'd be wrong. Everyone who
| commits a crime thinks they're gonna be the one to get
| away with it.
|
| It's a very popular opinion among certain kinds of
| people, but history and even present day has shown, time
| and again - You can't slaughter your way to a peaceful
| law-abiding society.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| That's barbaric. White collar crime is a policy choice.
| Economies require a certain amount of slack in order to
| function. If an economy had a zero tolerance policy for
| white collar crime than nothing would ever get done,
| because differentiating between fraud, incompetence, and
| bad luck is extremely difficult in all but the most
| straightforward of cases. If we wanted to de-incentivize
| white collar crime we have so many options that are (a)
| more humane, (b) more effective, and (c) less
| controversial. We could start prosecuting more cases of
| fraud, or improve regulations, or increase incentives for
| whisteblowing, or reform corporate governance, or any of
| a million other ideas.
| rayiner wrote:
| You're on the right track. Maybe we can get a bipartisan
| coalition to push through the death penalty for corporate
| execs and drug kingpins.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Eddie Izzard has a great skit about mass murderers that I
| think of when this topic is discussed. We as a society know
| (or rather, have ideas on) how to handle people who kill
| 1-20 people just fine, but above that (hundreds of
| thousands or millions of people), we're at a loss. "Well
| done, you must get up very early in the morning." Feels
| very similar to these cases where people in positions of
| power cause enormous aggregate harm and we have no idea how
| to address it proportionally.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_pHZmn5QM
| ponector wrote:
| There is a saying in my country: if you steal a phone -
| you go to jail. If you steal a factory or powerplant -
| you go to the parliament.
| code_duck wrote:
| Reminds me of a saying in the US, "The best way to rob a
| bank is to own one".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Why is the discussing of death penalty vs prison relevant,
| when western evecutives never go to prison?
|
| Boeing killed 500 people, they knew the plane was faulty, and
| they suffered no consequence.
|
| Untill a CEO of a major corp or a bank thats 'too big to
| fail' spends a few years behind bars, this whole discussion
| is just some sort of fantasy revenge fap.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Capital punishment is already legal in 27 states and at the
| federal level. It's really about pushing the Overton window
| to where it is acceptable for corporate harm beyond a
| certain threshold. Certainly not revenge porn, simply
| proportionality. Otherwise, malfeasance of this scale will
| be with us in perpetuity with little to no consequences for
| those perpetrating it with no remorse. There is a need for
| genuine limited liability, but also the ability to forcibly
| pierce that protection for bad faith actors.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Death sentence is probably a bit much, but if management
| takes actions that they know will kill or maim I don't see a
| reason why punishment shouldn't be the same as if you went
| out and hit someone with a hammer.
|
| In this case, force 3M to pay for everything, if they refuse
| or can't the government sells of the company to pay for the
| cost. I'm not a fan of the death sentence, but I have no
| problem killing of evil companies.
|
| What I don't get is how people can make these decisions.
| You're informed that your product is dangerous, but you
| really like money so screw it.... What kind of person does
| that? That has to be a mental problem.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I don't think death sentence is actually a bit much here.
|
| Im generally against death sentences for heat of the moment
| situations. Think: murder.
|
| But in a situation where you've had legal teams working
| with you, where you've been planning this out, and where
| you know what the damage to this is etc., you're basically
| a massive threat to society.
|
| The active planning, intent, and maliciousness is something
| that should be made an example out of.
|
| Death sentences for crimes where the person doing the crime
| likely didn't even get a chance to think about the
| consequences is useless. Death sentences and removal of all
| assets from corporate executives that have caused a
| significant amount of damage would have a deterrence
| effect.
| nier wrote:
| For me, the death penalty contains traces of mercy and
| life-long incarceration does not. You take away someone's
| freedom for the rest of their life instead of putting
| them out of their misery.
| mcny wrote:
| I agree with you on death penalty but the parent also
| says removal of all assets.
|
| So I think life in prison with no possibility of parole
| plus removal of all assets is ideal.
|
| But I think this should only apply to the CEO and the
| board not everyone up and down the chain at least in the
| US where we have a "right to work".
|
| I don't know if the law will allow an effective removal
| of all assets. I'm thinking of trust fund babies and
| such...
|
| Edit: at least in the US, I think there is a possibility
| of a pardon or commutation by POTUS. I think we need to
| abolish that as well or at least it should be that if you
| pardon or commute the sentence for one person for a
| crime, it automatically makes the same change
| (pardon/commutation) for everyone convicted of that
| crime.
| makapuf wrote:
| Couple that with impossibility to be ignorant of what
| happens inside of a company, because if not, top level
| management has a big incentive to have a buffer to keep
| them purposedly unknowing of this kind of doings.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I don't know if the law will allow an effective removal
| of all assets. I'm thinking of trust fund babies and
| such...
|
| Civil asset forfeiture. The money itself is complicit in
| the criminal act.
| justinclift wrote:
| The quality of that extended life is probably something
| that needs to be accounted for too.
|
| "Plush mansion, good company, etc" vs "left to rot in a
| hole" type of thing.
| aaomidi wrote:
| TBH I'm not much interested in `Punishment`, so long
| incarceration does not interest me personally.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You suggest vile acts should be permitted without
| consequence?
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Consequences and punishment are different concepts, I
| support the death penalty in the case of egregious acts
| primarily from the perspective of cost and efficiency of
| removing an unacceptable risk to society.
|
| I don't need to see them tortured beforehand, as it
| serves little to no purpose (in my opinion).
| norir wrote:
| Then why not make the death penalty an option for the
| condemned? They could choose between life in prison or an
| execution in a form of their choosing if they wish to be
| put out of their misery.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| "It's your choice, but the daily beatings will continue
| until you consent to your own execution."
| ekianjo wrote:
| > life-long incarceration does not
|
| There is no such thing as life long incarceration. They
| always get out early
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Murder can also be premeditated. In many cases, proof of
| premeditation is required for "Murder One".
| ponector wrote:
| What kind of person? Regular millionaire/billionaire who
| know that they easily can get away with such decision using
| their wealth and/or power.
|
| Musk is totally ok to use materials mined by enslaved
| children of Madagascar. Or abuse his employees. Or fire
| people who try to organize a union. Or do plenty of other
| shady or illegal stuff.
|
| That kind of person.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Let me rephrase then: What is wrong in the brain of these
| people? They have to live on the planet too, they have
| friend and family, people they care... No?
|
| Normal people can't get away with things like this,
| because the decisions would haunt our dreams.
| IanCal wrote:
| I'm not sure.
|
| Regular people make, logically, truly horrifying
| decisions constantly.
|
| I bought some wine for a friends get-together. That's
| pretty normal.
|
| But in doing so, I chose to have wine rather than
| vaccinate some children.
|
| I chose having a drink over the lives of deprived
| children. Am I not a monster?
| loganfrederick wrote:
| I dove into the science of psychopathy a few years ago
| after a family incident where my father imploded his life
| and much of the family's through self-destructive
| activities and there is actually a bunch of smart people
| studying the neuroscience of pyschopaths.
|
| Two great books to start with:
|
| - The Science of Evil: https://www.amazon.com/Science-
| Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/...
|
| - The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without
| Conscious: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Whisperer-
| Science-Without-...
| dexterdog wrote:
| Which is why abnormal people are drawn to this kind of
| power.
| xvector wrote:
| You could apply the same argument to normal people.
| Normal people eat meat, which causes incredible, extreme
| amounts of torture and suffering to over 70 billion land
| animals per year.
|
| The average person's dinner involved a tremendous amount
| of sheer pain and suffering, but it's satisfying to their
| taste buds, so they are fine with it, and will find ways
| to rationalize it.
|
| Most everyone is a psychopath at some level, capable of
| discarding empathy or rationalizing evil when it serves
| their own interests. The only difference with the CEOs is
| that they're doing it for money, not for taste. It's
| quite easy to imagine someone moving the goalposts for
| what is worth causing suffering for.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I read once about a corporate death penalty that I think
| should really be made into law: where a corporate entity
| commits something so heinous that a fine or what have you
| is simply not enough. I cannot find the link but the
| process would go about such as:
|
| - The entire entity would be taken on ownership by the
| government agency at play. No existing stakeholders would
| be paid anything for this and operations would continue,
| assuming the operation is worth salvaging of course, with
| the corrections made needed.
|
| - The entity would then be either sold in-whole or carved
| up into pieces to other large businesses. Shareholders,
| stakeholders, or investors are not made whole: instead, the
| revenue from these sales is used to repay or remediate the
| damage caused by the company.
|
| - Top level leadership is, if it's felt is required,
| charged for neglecting their duties as leaders and fined,
| jailed, or otherwise punished.
|
| - In the end the original entity is dissolved entirely, any
| remaining assets are sold in a process similar to the
| above, and the name is added to a "dead corporation" list
| and cannot be used at any time in the future.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| Sounds like a gift to short sellers.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| Allowing fraud is a gift to speculators just as much. And
| criminals.
| orbz wrote:
| Wouldn't this reduce the share price, effectively baking
| in the externality risk?
| lmm wrote:
| It would reduce the share price of companies that
| shareholders thought were at high risk of committing a
| major crime, and create an incentive for companies that
| care about their share price to make it very clear that
| they weren't going to do crime and e.g. have policies to
| prevent it.
| ddol wrote:
| Nationalising the corporation would delist it from an
| exchange, preventing stock sales.
| kortilla wrote:
| Meaning short sellers never have to buy it back.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That seems like the correct incentive, no? If the shorts
| believe a company is (e.g.) poisoning 100,000 people in a
| large suburb, shouldn't they profit massively if the
| government agrees and seizes it?
| kortilla wrote:
| It should be. The entire job of short sellers is to be
| incentivized to ferret out bad companies.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The entire entity would be taken on ownership by the
| government agency
|
| We should not trust government agencies as they have zero
| accountability either. It is even worse.
| xvector wrote:
| Death sentence is absolutely not too much. It's an
| extraordinarily effective deterrent (see Singapore), and I
| don't know where the narrative comes from that it's not.
| Some people simply need to die.
| gmac wrote:
| Feels weird to get into a high-school debate about
| capital punishment here, but in essence:
|
| (a) Sometimes the wrong people get convicted. In this
| context, irreversible punishments suck.
|
| (b) "We're going to kill you because killing people is
| wrong" is a weird look.
| xvector wrote:
| (a) Sometimes the wrong people get put in prison or
| solitary confinement for life too, which is effectively
| decades-long torture. It is arbitrary to draw the line at
| the death penalty, which generally causes _less_
| suffering. (Read statements from prisoners in lifelong
| solitary confinement.)
|
| (b) It's not. Killing people that are evil is fine.
| Killing babies is wrong. You are intentionally
| simplifying the moral argument here to "killing people is
| wrong."
| lupusreal wrote:
| Killing innocent people is wrong, killing murderers is
| good. Therefore we should give accused murderers fair
| trials before executing them.
| macintux wrote:
| > Therefore we should give accused murderers fair trials
| before executing them.
|
| There are many examples of accused murderers who received
| fair trials, were convicted, and yet were still innocent.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| As 'xvector points out, the alternative punishment - like
| long sentences in high-security facilities - can, in
| practice, be much, _much_ worse. This is a theory vs.
| practice thing - theory could say that "there's always a
| chance", but actual numbers will say that the country is
| just making convicts - guilty and innocent alike - spend
| decades being tortured.
| macintux wrote:
| It's far more likely that we can fix prisons than we can
| fix the judicial system to guarantee that only the guilty
| are convicted.
| 14 wrote:
| I have to disagree if someone knowingly poisoned my baby
| then if death penalty isn't imposed I'm going to attempt to
| get revenge myself. The death penalty was probably
| effective at calming the entire country from rage.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I think, as a general principle, justice should not be
| based around appeasing a potential lynch mob.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's lynch mob, and then there's righteous rage at
| acts so heinous that lack of punishment would call into
| question the legitimacy of the entire social structure.
|
| This may be something that doesn't resonate with people
| who are not parents, but: if your government is willing
| to tolerate intentional, casual murder of children at
| scale, what's the point of having it in the first place?
| And let's remember: a government isn't imposed by the
| heavens. It's just another agreement between people, at
| scale.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't think that's restricted to parents: I've felt
| that way since I was ten years old. That doesn't mean we
| have to _kill_ the perpetrators: just remove them.
|
| Retribution might make us feel better, but it doesn't
| solve anything. It's shutting the stable doors after the
| horse has bolted. We don't need a special judicial
| exception for the mass murder of children: we need that
| to _not happen in the first place_. At that scale, it 's
| not one person: it's an institutional failing. We need
| those institutional failings to _not happen_ : talk of
| punishment, except to the extent it has a deterrent
| effect (which I'm generally sceptical of), is a
| distraction.
|
| Aviation rarely blames pilots for plane crashes, even
| when it's clearly their fault (see https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_...): they do
| things like a two-in-cockpit policy. Aeroplanes are among
| the safest places in the world. That attitude seems a
| better one to mimic.
|
| What does it _truly_ mean, to say "never again"?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I _mostly_ agree with you. I suppose I missed one
| important part in my comment - _intent_. A surviving
| pilot may not be blamed for a plane crash and associated
| deaths for merely being _at fault_. But I bet the story
| would be different if they did this _intentionally_ , or
| intentionally allowed it to happen - we'd be talking
| murder / terrorism charges.
|
| Same in this case, I feel there's a difference between
| deaths of children as a result of lack of care or
| attention, vs. knowingly letting it happen because of
| personal gains.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _A surviving pilot may not be blamed for a plane crash
| and associated deaths for merely being_ at fault _._
|
| > In the years 1999-2015 the study found 65 cases of
| pilot suicide (compared to 195 pilot errors) and six
| cases of passengers who jumped from aircraft. There were
| 18 cases of homicide-suicide, totaling 732 deaths; of
| these events, 13 were perpetrated by pilots.
|
| Pragmatically, I don't see a difference. I couldn't give
| a shit about the perpetrators: they have lost the right
| to factor into my moral calculus. I care about the
| children not dying.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Fair enough.
|
| I mean, I ultimately don't really want _even more_ people
| to die over this. Rather, I want things like this to not
| happen. Ever. Death penalty sounds like a big step in
| this direction, _in a world where white-collar crime isn
| 't just not punished proportionally to the scale of
| damage, it's barely punished at all_. I suppose it is a
| red herring, an idea of putting a band-aid on a much
| larger problem.
|
| I'll note however, that pilot suicide is a qualitatively
| different scenario than executive knowingly causing death
| of _some people, somewhere_ , because it's easy enough to
| do it and profit off it. There's only so much you can do
| about the former - at some point, it's down to an
| individual, their emotional state, and a moment. However,
| in the latter case, the process is much more sober, takes
| more time, and it's doubtful the perpetrator is
| themselves suicidal.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| In arguing against the death penalty for this, I was also
| missing the point: the criminal justice system is not the
| place for _prevention_ , only retrospective (attempted)
| remedies. We should be thinking about how to restructure
| the system that makes white-collar mass murder (corporate
| homicide) possible.
|
| (The death penalty is bad for other reasons, and I don't
| feel this warrants an exception. But that's a different,
| and well-trodden, argument.)
|
| > _There 's only so much you can do about the former - at
| some point, it's down to an individual, their emotional
| state, and a moment._
|
| And yet, it is successfully averted by two-in-cockpit
| policies (excluding possibly _China Eastern Airlines
| Flight 5735_ : investigations are still ongoing, so I'm
| not sure what went on there). If we can prevent this, we
| can prevent that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's ironic. Elsewhere today[0], I wrote about the
| problems where the correct take kind of ruins the mood of
| the argument, which is why the discourse keeps spinning
| in circles. With you spelling out the missing point, I
| realized this has happened to me here: _of course_ this
| is a hard, systemic issue. But talking about death
| penalty let me conveniently forget about it for a moment,
| and _feel_ like there 's a simple solution. Which of
| course there is not.
|
| So thanks for that bucket of cold water :).
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38674263
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That was you? I wouldn't have made the observation had I
| not read that comment!
|
| Maybe we should make a list of topics where people
| frequently miss the point in this way? Like https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions though
| this is probably not in scope for Wikipedia.
| sundvor wrote:
| If there's never any real justice, some sort of
| correction needs to occur.
| lupusreal wrote:
| _At least_ six babies were killed; that 's mass murder. It
| was done in cold blood, planned out ahead of time. The
| death penalty was the only fitting sentence.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| The death penalty is never a fitting sentence.
| Prosecutors and judges can make mistakes. Executing
| someone is something you can never undo.
| devilbunny wrote:
| There are plenty of crimes that deserve death. We don't
| impose it because we're unsure about culpability. But if
| you did it, you do indeed deserve to die.
| serf wrote:
| i'll get behind the death penalty once we get that 100%
| accurate justice system i've been waiting on.
|
| until then i'll just view it as a tool of the government
| to sate public bloodlust with regards to heinous crimes
| with the very thing they seek to punish : murder.
|
| the very embodiment of "well, that's the best we can do."
| when confronted with the idea of correcting the loss of a
| life -- two losses to make the original victim feel less
| alone. Not a great correction.
| rocqua wrote:
| You can't "sell the company". Any company you sell with an
| immediate and complete change of management is very likely
| completely dead in the water. Institutional knowledge is
| very important.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Unfortunately the companies manage to wriggle out of all
| liability by saying they are bankrupt or transferring to a
| new company structure.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-
| report/johnsona...
|
| https://www.lawsuit-information-center.com/2-billion-
| verdict...
|
| $200,000 per victim for knowingly being given cancer.
| Obscene. I think China executing people is much closer to
| justice than our system.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Something like a real solution is to create a way to
| reintroduce personal liability for executive teams in
| cases like this where extraordinary harm is done. Human
| beings need to have their own assets and personal well
| being at risk, otherwise the incentives for perpetrating
| mass pollution are too lucrative.
|
| Jail and financial annihilation are basically the only
| ways to try to counterbalance the massive upside you can
| get from sociopathic behavior like this.
|
| We need to start treating this more like fraud, but
| perpetrated as a form of violence.
| atoav wrote:
| So if I want to legally murder people I can do it if I
| create corporation and create a plausible deniable way of
| killing them? Cool.
|
| Certainly a good system. If the hardest punishment is a
| fine, it becomes a fee for rich people.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Death sentence is probably a bit much
|
| Why? If you knowingly decide to poison thousands of people,
| that makes you a mass murderer. Since when are we so
| lenient about those?
| ufo wrote:
| Most countries in the world have abolished the death
| penalty, for good reason.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Some places don't execute mass murderers either. There
| are plenty of arguments around this. For example, based
| on the crime rates in places with death sentences, I'm
| not sure it provides as strong a disincentive you think
| it does.
| atoav wrote:
| Because undoing a death sentence if it turns out the
| culpit was one level higher in the corporate chain is
| pretty hard.
|
| I agree in principle that _IF_ your country has the death
| sentence, there is no reason why it should not be applied
| in such cases as well. But I think death sentences are
| problematic. Put them in jail and bar them from ever
| running a company again. That should be enough.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| ... but they're in suits! (nah joking burn them in hell,
| they are all bunch of power hungry sociopaths, normal
| folks wouldn't survive a day among such C-suites due to
| being decent human beings).
|
| But realize that list for whatever action would be done
| would be... very long. Monsanto, bunch of Wall street
| guys (if you trace actions to real consequences), this
| and probably many more. I think life sentence in maximum
| security prison in US would be actually worse.
|
| Also, you soon hit grey area, say defense industry and
| its bribing of government to start wars that killed
| millions... where do you draw the line? One's man patriot
| is another's murderer
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I dunno, if there's no money left, the execs can live in a
| cell where they are fed the various tainted products, but
| not told which.
| paiute wrote:
| I think this is naive. Selling off a large company like
| this is not smart, think about it for a minute. First, who
| owns 3M (I own a handful of shares for example). Average
| shareholders will get screwed. Then think about who will
| buy their assets (IP and manufacturing). Will it be foreign
| companies? What will the contracts for medical supplies
| look like for like? Companies that discover they are doing
| harm will be incentivized to bury, lie, and hide. It's not
| that simple,
| graphe wrote:
| This is false. The executives were not harmed. Even the
| article you posted states that.
| acdha wrote:
| There's a table of prosecutions with links like this:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20091125173132/http://www.nydai
| l...
|
| Are you saying that's fake?
| pdonis wrote:
| No, he's saying that the people who were executed were
| not company executives.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You're correct and I'm mistaken. The execs were only jailed
| for 5-15 years, Sanlu's general manager received a life
| sentence, and the farmer and salesperson who were directly
| involved with the knowing adulteration of the product were
| executed. I'll update my top comment accordingly.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-
| executes...
| deadbabe wrote:
| A lot of super evil people are just casually suicidal. They
| had deep unsatisfaction with their life, and they don't
| really care if they die because of it. So they don't care
| about committing crimes and hurting others, and if you put a
| loaded gun in their face and threaten to pull the trigger,
| they won't grovel and beg. They have nothing to lose, their
| life was shit and their evil crimes gave them some sort of
| satisfaction, but if it's over, it's over.
| DrJokepu wrote:
| That's not what happened though, is it? Execs got away
| relatively lightly.
|
| No executives were actually executed. Only two people were
| executed, a farmer producing the protein powder with melamine
| and the manager of a workshop processing it. Sanlu executives
| got away with prison sentences.
| hinkley wrote:
| We need death sentences for corporations. Chapter 86
| bankruptcy has a certain ring to it. Forced liquidation of
| assets. No insider trading (no auction participation by
| people materially involved in the convicted company who have
| interests in related companies).
|
| We had those a couple hundred years ago, then the monarchies
| lost their teeth and capitalism and democracy got all mixed
| up together.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| That's a crude simplification of due diligence in China based
| on one example. Here's a more recent example where children
| died and parents were threatened by government workers into
| silence (otherwise they wouldn't be able to see and bury
| their bodies).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Qiqihar_school_gymnasiu.
| ..
| chefandy wrote:
| The question isn't "do they deserve to die," it's "is our
| legal system fallible enough to screw it up," and it has many
| times.
|
| The problem with our relying on prison and financial
| punishments with corporate malfeasance is that a) rich people
| can "play the game" enough to get absurdly preferential
| treatment in the prison system, and b) the financial
| penalties are never truly scaled up to the life-ruining
| penalties most regular people might experience.
|
| In the formula case, I'd rather see the executives condemned
| to physically serving the families of those affected, and
| having every asset they own liquefied and split between them.
| metaphor wrote:
| > _In China, there was a case of baby formula execs knowingly
| selling product that was harmful and led to tens of thousands
| of hospitalizations and a handful of deaths. They were
| executed._
|
| To be sure, a dairy farmer (Zhang Yujun) and milk salesman
| (Geng Jinping) were executed[1]. At the highest corporate
| levels, Sanlu general manager (Tian Wenhua) initially got
| life in prison...except she'll be released next year after 15
| years.
|
| No executives were executed in this scandal.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-
| executes...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Uhm, if it wasn't for New Zealand, this scandal may have
| never even come to light. It was being buried before sanlu's
| NZ JV partner heard about it and was horrified. Also they
| found two people to execute, and I wouldn't be very confident
| that they actually had much to do with it, Chinese justice
| will find and convict sacrificial pawns as needed.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Up to and including capital punishment. If something like this
| causes deaths for example, it should be treated like murder.
| DoktorDelta wrote:
| "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes
| one"
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| thats a good one. They are people when it suits them.
| graphe wrote:
| Isn't that what happened at Enron?
| acdha wrote:
| Yeah, treat it like we would murder versus manslaughter based
| on proof of intent. If you knew the risks and did it anyway,
| we should treat that like we do someone shooting a gun in
| populated place.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I increasingly think we need personal criminal liability for
| everyone in the management chain before this will end.
|
| I work in healthtech and it is _fascinating_ how seriously
| everyone takes HIPAA because it includes provisions for
| personal liability. Every instance of exposed data costs you
| personally $1000 or so.
|
| All other regulations seem to be seen as "Ehhhh how close can
| we push it to reasonably claim we did the things?". But with
| hipaa it's different. The conversation is always "How much
| extra can we do to make sure nothing could possibly leak?"
|
| Makes me wish GDPR and friends had the same teeth. Turns out
| even small teeth work great when they're personal.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Here in Australia they updated the Privacy Act with personal
| liability for directors.
|
| I discovered that every one of my client organisations is
| exempt, because _of course they are_.
|
| Powerful people don't go to jail, that's for the common
| people.
|
| Exemptions were put in place for all government agencies, and
| charities. Turns out they many health-related business are
| actually technically non-profits. So your health data can
| leak and they just shrug their shoulders and move on as if
| nothing had happened.
| bsder wrote:
| If companies are people, companies should be able to get the
| death penalty.
|
| _We used to do this_. Companies getting their charters revoked
| used to be something that wasn 't uncommon.
|
| Unless you make the punishments for this an _existential
| threat_ , it's just a cost of doing business.
| haltist wrote:
| How exactly do you get rid of 3M? They make so many chemicals
| necessary for modern consumer products that they are an
| irrevocable part of the global economy. There is no
| substitute for 3M. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually
| supply Intel, AMD, and other high-tech companies with
| chemicals necessary for photo-lithography. This is before we
| even get to what they supply to the military-industrial
| complex. Even if they don't make the end products I am
| certain they produce the necessary chemical precursors for so
| many industries that there would be no way to do anything
| about whatever crimes they have committed against nature.
|
| It doesn't matter how much people complain about these
| companies. Their existence is a necessary evil because of how
| the global economy is structured.
| nijave wrote:
| Government acquisition, divestiture, and all IP entering
| the public domain?
|
| Or even just forcing them to break up into more, smaller
| companies.
| ThomPete wrote:
| you live in a capitalist society not some socialist
| nightmare. Giving it to the government would be much much
| much worse.
| jmaygarden wrote:
| They didn't say to let the government run it. Make the
| patents/trade secrets public domain and sell off the
| physical assets in open auctions. Someone would buy up
| the profitable manufacturing lines that aren't known to
| be as harmful.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| except we live in a capitalistic nightmare, the solution
| proposed is textbook free market and socialism would have
| not created this nightmare to begin with.
|
| people on HN regularly confuse state capitalism with
| socialism and I can't wrap my head around on why.
|
| the two systems couldn't be more different and actually
| the USSR was not socialist, Stalin was not socialist,
| that's the biggest fabrication in modern human history.
|
| Wanna find what socialism actually looks like? Look at
| the kibbutzim in Israel.
| ThomPete wrote:
| I would suggest you read up on the history of both
| communism and socialism and their relationship with
| pollution and their environment.
|
| In a capitalist systems at least there are incentives to
| get businesses to create better systems over time, that
| doesn't exist in any other system.
| rocqua wrote:
| Split it up, and disown the ultimate beneficiaries?
|
| You don't need every single 3M factory to make those
| chemicals. So make a new company that only makes these
| chemicals.
| hinkley wrote:
| Maybe get Bayer to buy you... I'm looking at you, Monsanto.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Investors as well.
| jmaygarden wrote:
| How would investors know if something is kept secret?
| Teever wrote:
| What about the situation with 3M now? We know that they
| kept this is a secret, so shareholders should either sell
| or be criminally liable.
| jmaygarden wrote:
| That's a very good point. At the least, the stock price
| should go to zero. I guess your point is that they are
| artificially keeping the company out of
| bankruptcy/receivership.
| Teever wrote:
| No the argument I'm making is that the shareholders are
| funding a criminal enterprise and therefore should face
| RICO charges.
| atoav wrote:
| Exactly. And maybe we should make sure that crimes against
| humanity that go unpunished today can (and will) be punished in
| the future. Some climate activist kids on tiktok call this
| "Nuremberg 2046".
|
| Doing illegal stuff and lobbying your best to get away with it
| has become so normal nowadays that maybe an appeal to the honor
| of the people involved does not cut it.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| Ever wonder if things like this lead to companies intentionally
| avoiding environmental research? We need to find some way to
| align our interests, this seems like a dead end path. We are
| unintentionally incentivizing the disruption of environmental
| research.
| asdff wrote:
| Management is also incentivized to sell research that aligns
| with their own agenda to the board, rather than research that
| says maybe what they've been hired to burn money on for the
| last couple years wasn't the right direction at all.
| reqo wrote:
| I honestly don't think there is any incentive for large
| corporation to care too much about things like this and, on the
| contrary, they are incentivized to do more! The fine they get is
| basically cost of doing business and since our attention is
| engineered to be short, the negative PR won't last long enough to
| have a huge impact. Unless we see a "too big to fail" company
| actually fail because something like this, we won't see any
| change in their behvaiour!
| anjel wrote:
| You can execute or incarcerate managerial offenders, but I
| suspect their greatest fear would be the imposition of complete
| and lasting impoverishment for them and their families.
| hulitu wrote:
| > 3M knew its chemicals were harmful decades ago, but didn't tell
| the public
|
| It does not matter. Du Pont was doing it decades ago but they
| showed that they can go forward with a slap on the wrist.
| eximius wrote:
| Put them in jail.
|
| Make the company pay for externalities. If it bankrupts them,
| they deserve it.
| userbinator wrote:
| I'm going to be the controversial one here and point out that
| despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for all
| these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of life
| have been increasing?
|
| From
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid#Global_...
| there is this interesting quote:
|
| _Most industrialized nations have average PFOA blood serum
| levels ranging from 2 to 8 parts per billion;[57] the highest
| consumer sub-population identified was in Korea--with about 60
| parts per billion.[52] In Peru,[58] Vietnam,[59] and
| Afghanistan[60] blood serum levels have been recorded to be below
| one part per billion._
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > despite saying they're "harmful", they've been everywhere for
| all these decades that a lot of other measures of quality of
| life have been increasing?
|
| Might be unrelated (or not), but cancer rates have been
| exploding the last decades. Example via Google-Fu:
|
| > Cancer cases in under-50s worldwide up nearly 80% in three
| decades, study finds
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/05/cancer-cases...
| pid-1 wrote:
| Controlled by age?
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> cancer rates have been exploding the last decades_
|
| For reasons that are really quite well-understood. PFASs are
| not known to be significantly carcinogenic, particularly not
| at the miniscule levels most people are exposed to. We
| willingly fill ourselves with things that are definitely very
| carcinogenic - processed meat, alcohol, tobacco smoke, diesel
| fumes, etc etc ad nauseum.
|
| Exposure to some of these carcinogens has been static or
| declining in some western countries, which has led to static
| or declining age-adjusted cancer incidence rates. They have
| _vastly_ increased in the middle-income countries that are
| home to most of the world 's population. The life of the
| average Chinese or Indian person has been transformed beyond
| all recognition in recent decades (for better and for worse)
| by urbanisation and industrialisation.
|
| There isn't some unseen and unrecognised carcinogen that is
| sweeping the world and wreaking havoc; the global poor are
| just getting rich enough to develop the kind of lifestyle-
| related cancers that we're accustomed to in the west, while
| also getting rich enough to be diagnosed rather than just
| getting sick and dying.
|
| Look at the source cited by that article - the growth in
| cancer rates is completely dominated by rapidly-growing
| economies in the global south.
|
| https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Minnesota Reformer is the best local news source I've seen.
| ThomPete wrote:
| This is a completely disingenuous take on the case. There isn't a
| single explanation of how its dangerous only thats its found in
| many different species and claims its toxic. If this shallow type
| of analysis is enough for otherwise technical people on this
| forum then we have a much bigger problem than 3M.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| People really want to believe these companies are Disney super
| villains. No evidence required. And no accounting for all the
| benefits that derive from these chemicals. Americans are really
| bad at risk assessment and toxicology. I suspect it will be our
| ultimate undoing when the Chinese come along with superior
| weapons that withstand higher heat thresholds or less
| corrosion.
| cbmuser wrote:
| Europeans, especially Germans suffer from the same problem.
|
| Chemical companies like Hoechst gave up on Germany due to its
| anti-scientific, emotional stance on chemistry.
|
| Yet the same people in Germany complains nowadays that the
| country is having issues supplying itself with
| pharmaceuticals.
| cyberax wrote:
| > A 1970 study of fish had to be abandoned "to avoid severe
| stream pollution" and because all the fish died. After being
| exposed to a chemical, the fish couldn't stay upright and kept
| crashing into the fish tank and dying.
|
| "We tested it on animals, and none of them survived. But that's
| OK! 'cause when we wrote the report up, we lied!"
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Purdy was improperly conflating their ability to detect the
| substance with "harm," and the environmental propagandists have
| been running with it for a long time. What "harm" precisely did
| he identify? The article doesn't say. Maybe a carcinogen? Maybe
| not? There's been a concerted effort to make PFOS/PFAS an
| environmental super-villain, but it's hard to substantiate when
| we volitionally ingest many flourinated pharmaceuticals daily
| (e.g., Cipro, Prozac, Flonaze, Pavloxid, etc.). It's been amusing
| watching the alarmist "science" press floundering with the
| "right" definition of PFAS that lets you hang 3M but still keep
| the life-changing drugs that require them.
| https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/is-there-a-right-d...
| leobg wrote:
| Did you read this?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
| paiute wrote:
| Link from article on what purdy talks about bioaccumulation,
| but not at toxic levels, with some concerns that it could
| biomagnify in the food chain. The article blows this up and
| claims they knew all the harms then. Just bullshit.
| https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Cases/3M/docs/PTX/PTX1533....
| ta988 wrote:
| The fact that there is a specific atom in a product doesn't
| have anything to do with its dangers.
|
| Chlorine gas or Phosgene are deadly, your stomach is full of
| HCl.
|
| VX has phosphorus yet your body is full of it and that's part
| of the basis of how it handles energy and genes.
|
| There are perfectly safe compounds that contain F.
|
| The problem here is that we have report over report on the
| effects of those molecules, some coming from the companies
| making them. And yet somehow the people trying to raise
| awareness to those facts would be the propagandists? The
| propagandists are more the ones spreading misinformation,
| misleading others or hiding information.
|
| PFAS are per/poly fluoro alkyl compounds meaning that they have
| many fluorine atoms on an alkyl chain. None of the compounds
| you listed have that which makes me wonder what you are trying
| to achieve commenting on something you know so little about.
|
| ciprofloxacin has one fluorine, on an aromatic ring Prozac has
| three on a single carbon Flonaze has a single fluorine on a
| methyl Paxlovid has a CF3 like Prozac
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Your definition of PFAS is not a universal definition, nor is
| it any indication of toxicity. To alleviate your own
| ignorance, you might read the article I linked.
| ta988 wrote:
| I read it, it just say some ignorant people make up
| definitions. The things produced by 3M are entirely
| different structuraly from the drugs you cited. And I would
| not be surprised if we learn that this bending of
| definitions was pushed by PR firms, that's a perfect way to
| not be held accountable if you make it wide enough.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> The problem here is that we have report over report on the
| effects of those molecules, some coming from the companies
| making them._
|
| And nearly all of those reports have little or no actual
| evidence of harm. Lots of people are making a lot of noise
| about the _potential_ harms of PFASs, but most of it is just
| vague scaremongering with only the most scant basis in
| science.
|
| The issue raised by the parent comment is highly pertinent.
| He isn't the one categorising organofluorine drugs as PFASs -
| it's the definitions proposed by researchers and regulators
| that are. Some reports about PFAS are based on a narrow
| definition, but many others lump together a vast and diverse
| range of substances that happen to have a C-F bond somewhere.
| It's very difficult to have an informed debate about
| something when there is in fact no agreed definition of what
| we're talking about.
| aftbit wrote:
| How much of the rise in cancer cases over the past 100 years can
| be traced back specifically to PFCs? What other harms can chronic
| low-dose exposure cause?
|
| We need some proper unbiased studies of the long term chronic
| effects of PFCs, paid for by the EPA or some other branch of the
| US federal government, without any influence from environmental
| groups or chemical manufacturing companies.
| mianos wrote:
| You have proper studies of cancer increases. No mention of
| PFCs.
|
| This one is particularly readable and as credible as they get:
| https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049
| artursapek wrote:
| Related, recommended documentary:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689910/
| collyw wrote:
| Sounds like Pfizer and mRNA shots. Seems to b a pattern.
| speedylight wrote:
| I agree with other the comments that executives should be
| criminally liable for negligence like this, and anyone else who
| doesn't relay the message to the decision makers.
|
| Knowingly committing crimes against humanity on a grand scale
| should be prosecuted and their fortunes seized.
| frozenport wrote:
| We have the laws and mechanism to "piercing the corporate veil"
| and lock these guys up.
|
| Somehow we seem to be unwilling to do it.
| davvid wrote:
| When I was in university around 2001/2002 my partner's close
| friend was an intern in 3M's legal department. At the time she
| noted that she was helping to ensure that 3M was never legally
| liable for teflon and related products.
| elromulous wrote:
| I'm shocked. /s
|
| I've preached about this in other comments (e.g. boeing 737 max),
| and looks like many folks here agree - we need personal liability
| in order to stop these kinds of things.
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