Counter-hypothesis: This is a systemic issue. Decisionmakers and shareholders that cause harm face very little consequences if their behavior does not violate the letter of the law.
Compare the leaded gas debacle: US lead industry suppressed knowledge about harmful effects, and even directly targeted researchers with smear-campaigns and lawfare for decades, but faced no real legal consequences once everything came to light.
It is plausible to me that the public is "close to correct" in its current stance, and I would at least not dismiss that notion out of hand!
Let them burn, and salt the earth where they fall. These fuckers don’t deserve a second chance.
How could they have done it better? Acknowledge the science when the problem was discovered in the 70s, publish the findings, let the scientific community study the problem and let people make informed decisions about the dangers. Had they done that PFAs might still be in use in very controlled circumstances. They certainly wouldn’t be used as waterproofing on our paper plates.
Who is "them"? The scientists at the time? The managers at the time? The managers now? The stockholders who have already sold and made their profits?
Just because we don't have a great framework for something today doesn't mean we should not have it, just that incentives have been against it up to this point.
Purdue owns a huge piece of the responsibility for the opioid epidemic. They created OxyContin and lied about it's addictiveness. They are probably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people at this point. The Sacklers were heavily involved in all aspects of this and became billionaires because of it.
Nobody has been criminally charged. The government tried to give them a Jeffrey Epstein level pass by essentially allowing them to pay a few billion dollars over 20 years, which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains. Last I heard an appeals court said no, you can't do that and release liability. This really was a slap on the wrist.
Now compare this to what China does [1][2][3].
Remember how all those people went to jail for mortgage fraud after 2008? Oh wait... And now? We just sell pardons [4]. This sort of thing used to cause a scandal (eg [5]).
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/nx-s1-5308604/alibaba-founder...
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45728459
[4]: https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-flurry-pardons-include-camp...
[5]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-shadow-of-marc-rich
Doesn't that settlement only cover civil claims? It doesn't grant them immunity over any criminal claims. It's more correct to say that they didn't bother prosecuting them criminally (possibly because it's hard to do so), and got a civil settlement instead because the evidentiary standards are lower.
> which essentially amounted to interest off their ill-gotten gains.
They offered to pay $6B of $11B gains. Maybe you think they should have been fined $100 trillion or whatever for all the harm they caused, but that money doesn't exist, and moreover it's unclear whether a long drawn out legal battle would result in more money than the settlement they offered.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-06-27/purdue...
I don't agree with companies wantonly externalizing their costs onto the environment or the populace such as Dow or 3M poisoning the entire planet. Criminal liability never goes away for serious crimes, whether sole-proprietership, LLC, or Corp. We need to actually start jailing people though
Another thing we should flush down the drain to begin with
It'll be great if some solemn elder-statesmen step up and read the writing on the wall instead of throwing more tantrums, but I think it's beyond obvious now that the internet will not abide copyright.
A small business, which practically is comprised of - in the US in most cases 1 employee, or maybe 1-3 employees, most likely related.
That person, who you say did a copyright issues, but maybe I say, accidentally used a chopsaw on someones hand... they're liable.
some fake paper does not reduce liability.
would Enron have been Enron if it wasn't an LLC?
Whether criminal liability needs to flow to individual owners I don't know, but I'm sure someone has done the thinking here about how to make this less insane.
it's in the snow, ground, and water-supply
forever
but most that shit doesn't survive the journey intact, being out in the elements and bombarded by the sun isn't kind to most things
hence the focus on "forever chemicals"
PFAS are a problem, co2 is a problem, but we have dozens of other very big problems that are partially, if not entirely, obscured
https://usrtk.org/healthwire/banned-pesticides-found-in-clou...
forever
nakamoto_damacy•1h ago