Yes it does get messy, but profit should not over ride public safety or accountability, nor should it just be a fine with no payments to the affected/afflicted. Even in the case of the Tobacco industry we still have sales of a product that causes untold harm, they have been fined, sued and yet the product still is legally available. Now Govts are again going to perhaps seek the billions it costs their health systems back from Tobacco Inc., and I hope they, the Govts win. I also think they, the Tobacco industry should be made to bear the entire cost of the health campaigns that seek to rid us of the product.
I see many times that a product is recalled and/or a fine is imposed for false claims yet the people who relied on those claims are not compensated for the failure. Making potential customers aware I think is more important than profit, and I donât mean for vexatious actions but for cases with solid or good evidence, or perhaps hold back from stocking those particular items on shelves.
We as has been noted above have gone too far with business before ethics and moral principles. Fines are many times these days seen as a normal/expected cost of business and either they need to be vastly increased or perhaps a system whereby not only is the fine imposed but a further levy/cost be imposed to compensate victims (not only for the cost but the inconvenience caused). The cost has to be unbearable enough that even if they, the businesses donât have a conscience the potential cost to their bottom line is too significant to ignore.
Itâs complicated. Who should be punished when a corporation does The Wrong Thing? I would assume you want to punish the people who made the decision to do The Wrong Thing - and in some cases the people who donât question orders but go ahead and blindly do it (although these are generally the ones who pay most for any corporate crime while having the least culpability - the ones who need to keep working to support themselves and their family).
Who actually gets punished when a corporation does The Wrong Thing? Well, the CEO may be dumped - a few years before the end of their contract, and with a very comfortable settlement. A few other C-suites may need to be cleaned out, but those people will almost certainly find their feet with another company - or perhaps in politics. The company gets hit with a great big fine. Who does that really hurt in most instances? The shareholder, who had absolutely nothing to do with any malfeasance and may have profited slightly from it but now loses massively! Is that the way to punish companies?
The only recent case in which this wasnât the case that I can recall was Arthur Andersen. Why not? It was a partnership, and so the people who ran the firm owned the firm. Of course, this still resulted in many innocent victims - I think there were partners in Australia, and they were on the hook for the misdeeds of their US colleagues who looked after Enronâs books.
There is no simple solution to large scale corporate crime. I agree that it is poorly handled now; I am not sure exactly how it could be better handled - youâll have to wait for me to write that book. It may ultimately require a decision that companies should not ever be so big as they now are - but I donât know how you unwind todayâs corporate world from the political world.
I have a Banana Boat lotion that has worked pretty well, but today prior to buying another I thought to check the expiration date and noticed the date is in black on a very dark blue background. It was all but invisible, and well into 2020, but. BB is not alone, nor is sunscreen as a product unique in this regard.
A more cynical person might think companies do everything in their power to hide or obfuscate best buy or expiration dates.
