Until CEOs face jailtime even after their departure from the company this will not change. Corporations and LLCs lack social accountability comparable to the accountability private citizens have.
That's a bit too easy, responsibility of a leader shouldn't end at "nobody asked me for permission". (Where exactly to draw the line and how to decide penalties is of course a giant can of worms, it also doesn't really make sense to harshly punish executives for everything that happens downstream of them. I do not want to imply that there is a simple answer to this)
”I didn’t know I was breaking the law” is not a valid excuse for a private person and it shouldn’t be for an executive either. A company big enough that the execs don’t know about day-to-day operations should have processes in place that would notify them if something illegal was going on.
That’s like saying parents should be arrested for their children’s crimes. The only systems in place that can notify CEOs or parents of all illegal events in their organizations exist only in fantasyland.
And ignorance of the law should be an excuse, when the US has so many laws on the books that nearly every adult is guilty of committing at least one felony unknowingly.
Indeed, why do you have such weirdly conflicting opinions? Or are you somehow not "HN", but everyone else is one uniform mass without individual opinions?
it's perfectly consistent. punishment should be proportional to the scale of crime. laundering money is a bigger crime than stealing chewing gum, as it affects way more people. the restitution is harder and the responsibility greater. greater breaches of trust should result in greater punishments. white collar crimes are always bigger and broader than blue collar crimes.
bankrupting an executive means downsizing the house and car and laying low for a bit, not being made homeless with dim prospects for the future as happens with the lower classes.
