from the somebody-should-invent-a-cleaner-world dept.
Ever more the light seems to be shining in dark spots, and the cockroaches scatter. The Huffington Post reveals today that DuPont has knowingly been poisoning a small farm and community for decades, desperately trying to dump and hide the environmental, social, and medical fallout of their chemical C8. Despite their efforts, the scandal behind C8 cannot be so easily pushed down inside a landfill and forgotten like a painfully produced Atari video game. From the TFA:
That May, a group of DuPont executives gathered at the company's Wilmington headquarters to discuss the C8 issue. According to the minutes, attendees discussed recently adopted plans to cut C8 emissions at Washington Works, such as adding scrubbers to vents that spewed the chemical into the air. But they decided to scrap these initiatives. The additional expense was not "justified," the executives concluded, since it wouldn't substantially reduce the company's liability. "Liability was further defined as the incremental liability from this point on if we do nothing as we are already liable for the past 32 years of operation," the minutes read. "From a broader corporate viewpoint the costs are small."
One might think we would have learned our lessons from poisoning the world with lead, but clearly these executives never got the memo. Quite strange, given they're from the same company. I'm almost speechless at the scope of the harm and damage, knowingly and premeditatively, performed against all of humanity worldwide. The Chinese government announced today the arrests, and more than likely inevitable executions, of a score of executives and officials responsible for the Tianjin port explosions.
At what point does the harm that executives, in companies such as DuPont, meet thresholds high enough to discuss special prosecutions and the death penalty? When even China, who lacks a strong history of supporting human rights and consumer protections, recognizes that some executives and officials need to be "criminally detained" and ultimately dealt with, when can we in the so-called civilized Western societies perform the same? We've yet to even slow DuPont down.
[More after the Break]
DSM-IV Definition. Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Individuals with this disorder are sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths.
From the quote in the article (emphasis mine), can any reasonable person conclude that these executives do not need to be handed life sentences in prison at a minimum? It's not hyperbole to say that I could walk into a church, make racists statements, kill a half a dozen people, and receive a much harsher sentence than a group of executives that knowingly caused birth defects, miscarriages, cancers, among a myriad of other serious health conditions, up to and including grisly and pointless deaths. More maddeningly, to be commensurate, I would need to have children and begin a multi-generational attack on my fellow citizens to come close to what DuPont executives have done against a single community, much less the world.
It may be time to seriously, and a civilized manner, begin discussing how to bring these executives up on criminal charges, and even executing them. Especially helpful to remember in these discussions, that it is now TWICE that DuPont has knowingly poisoned the world and harmed MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of our fellow human beings . Forget about our reputation in the world now; We're the country that has deliberately been destroying the world for profit, and all of the documents and science exist to prove it.
So.... do we need a third time from the same company before we can start talking about preventative measures and justice?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Translation Error on Friday August 28 2015, @04:26PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @06:05PM
I see this sentiment occasionally on SN, and the answer hinges on what users want SN to be. Readers who want SN to be "news" or a place of "journalistic integrity" are sort of missing the central lesson Slashdot refugees discovered during the great Slashdot-beta exodus, namely that the central value proposition of the site, the community, was not the news but the discussion about the news generated by the tech-savvy, nerdy participants. It's the difference between Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News and Fred Friendly's Ethics in America.
Anyone who wants the former will be sorely disappointed, because that standard of journalism has vanished from the world (at least, the English-speaking world). Even articles from the venerable BBC are rife with clickbait titles, typos, and grammatical errors. As a site that sources articles from other news sites, it's not really possible for Soylent to do better than they without significant re-processing by the volunteer submitters and editors. Even that, I can say from experience, is not worth the effort because no matter how careful you are, many readers are so conditioned by, and accustomed to, the "gotcha" journalism that passes for "news" these days that they savage any attempt, no matter how careful; and the grief you get as a non-subject matter expert across the many subject areas SN comprises if you should make a mistake in terminology is discouraging, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, for people who want to chase that goal, SN is not the right outlet for them. RSS is.
People who accept the Fred Friendly premise accept and grant SN greater latitude in subject matter. They can have rich, spirited, and informed discussions about tech, science, pop culture, and all things that matter. As such, this article and others like it seem fair game to me. That is particularly true in this case, because of the unbridled influence that corporations have on our world and each and every one of us. We all know it. If we don't talk about it on this forum and elsewhere, then we won't figure out what to do about it. We must figure out what to do about it, because it's the one, the only, the central power dynamic of our age.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 28 2015, @07:17PM
I see this sentiment occasionally on SN, and the answer hinges on what users want SN to be.
I feel like we have already decided and documented what we want SN to be here [soylentnews.org]. The very first item in the Submission Guidelines is "Be neutral and factual in both Subject and Summary."
To that end I feel that name-calling and biased articles actually discourage fruitful conversation because people don't talk about the subject at hand and just align themselves to whatever side their identity politics require.
I really think the opinion should be saved for the comments.
And yes, that goes double for the SJW Hugos story the other day as well.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @08:28PM
Do they? Or do we see fruitful discussion arise from difference of opinion? What I see are people to the left of me, and to the right of me, none of whom are timid wusses, who chime in with reasoned, confident discussion. There are users who feel to me like thorns in my side and in the side of the site, who make damn good points. I mod them such. I trust that in a site like this, right/left echo chambers that prevail elsewhere can be short-circuited and productive discussion can occur. Learned, informed men & women can maturely contend in the Agora.
Now that we're in the post-Post-Modernist age, it's safe to call BS on that. There's no such thing. Better to wear your heart on your sleeve, and be prepared to defend it. Everything else is a ruse.
No, the answer is for you and those who feel this way to step up and contribute in the form of submissions and turns as editors. If you don't like the tenor and tone of what's on offer now, then add your take. If you think you can do a better job submitting and OK-ing (as editor) articles that are "neutral in tone," then do; but, *spoiler alert*, no matter how hard you try to do that, you'll still have the peanut gallery ragging on you for bias.
Please do submit articles, and take a turn as an editor. Please also refrain from too sharply disparaging those who have stepped up in your stead. If you don't, those who make the machinery of the site work stop, and then the site and the community die with it. Be constructive.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 28 2015, @09:40PM
No, the answer is for you and those who feel this way to step up and contribute in the form of submissions...
I submit quite frequently, thank you.
I'm responsible for about 95% of the polls as well. So, I'm intimately familiar with getting shat on for making the effort!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:43AM
Sir,
Do you really think an entirely objective summary of a festering turd could ever eloquently convey the standard impression heaved upon the senses, or unfortunate sole of a typical person? It is true, but not exactly obvious or exciting that a turd fixed to a soiled and static surface is in motion in accordance with planetary and galactic trajectories; but a freely moving heap is something to behold indeed. Though the difference between the freely moving and apparently stationary heap is infinitesimal, the cognitive effect is notable, yet very subjective. An apparently stationary turd is generally taken for granted, though duly avoided; while one in apparent motion is almost always formidably recognized as a spectacle, even when moving away from the observer. My point, however shitty it appears, is that humanity is not entirely rational and requires a little artistic finesse here and there to put things in perspective. News without opinion / a world without turds; there would be no fun in that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday August 29 2015, @04:57AM
I think griping about the tone of a submission detracts far more from the possible discussion than anything.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:05AM
Because being respectful and deferential to people who would kill you to save a nickel is ever so effective.
Pitchforks man. And shovels.
(Score: 0, Troll) by frojack on Friday August 28 2015, @06:58PM
Could submissions that start with lines like "Ever more the light seems to be shining in dark spots, and the cockroaches scatter," please be automatically rejected? Or at least edited into something that looks a bit more like, you know, news?
I agree, the thing reads like a political screed or SJW manifesto rather than an informative article.
The first sentence does server the purpose of warning the reader that there will be exactly one side of the issue explored. However, it also serves as a quality indicator that should have triggered editorial review.
Even some of the links (to Kettering) took 5 long ranting paragraphs to get to the point. Even the linked C8 Wiki article leads off with a huge quality warning.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:13AM
Fuck off (have that peer reviewed, if you please) with your lofty standards. This site isn't supposed to be pure journalism. Look and you'll observe opinions in many articles that work just fine, but would be awkward without them - take this for example. [soylentnews.org]. Do the the subjective descriptions of "earthy" and "delicious" qualify as biased bullshit journalism? Hardly. But your ilk would refine such writings to the barest and most boring objective form, all for the glory of something you probably don't really understand anyway. Maybe take some creatine and caffeine if you really find it that exhausting reading over the occasional opinion in short summaries. Dupont sucks and begs for much vitriol. Maybe someday you can find a nice AI bot to worship and play indifference with. For now, a few humans remain, along with the occasional sentiment or two.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 28 2015, @04:33PM
How many here believe that the war in Vietnam was fought to contain communism? Who would think me crazy to claim that we were fighting DuPont's war for France? Oh - no history book is going to make that claim, but I'll offer a couple of links from which you can draw your own conclusions. And, I'll state that if DuPont weren't involved in the rubber trade, then France wouldn't have fought in Vietnam, and the US wouldn't have been coerced into taking over the war that France lost.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400983.html [encyclopedia.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Rubber_Plantation [wikipedia.org]
Vietnam wasn't the only rubber producer in the world, but it was the largest, and most important of DuPont's suppliers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by redneckmother on Friday August 28 2015, @05:36PM
Good points. Let's not forget the incredible profits DuPont reaped as a munitions / war material supplier.
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2015, @08:06PM
Well, that's the best explanation of that mess I've heard yet. It never made any sense to me. I was certain it had to be about *some* resource, but rubber never occurred to me.
OTOH, unless that explains the US contravening the Geneva Accord ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Agreements [wikipedia.org] ), then further explanation is needed.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:11AM
I think that the DuPont thing was the core reason behind our government wanting to go into Vietnam. But, things never stay simple. The fear of communism played a role, in that representatives who might not have agreed to support DuPont felt like they had to go along because of the Red Threat.
And, there were further pressures from the military industrial complex. It has often been pointed out that the US used Indochina to test weapons systems and tactics. Combat helicopters and highly mobile airborne infantry came of age in Vietnam, among other things.
There were many motivations, none of them admirable, IMHO. Almost always, money played the deciding role in decision making. Rubber was the catalyst that led to all the rest of the decision making.
Wasn't it Eisenhower who warned us about the military industrial complex? We permit that complex to push us into conflicts which would be better avoided.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @07:01PM
no history book
In "A People's History of the United States", Howard ZInn looks into the motivations besides defeating communism. He quotes a June 1952 National Security Council memo:
Zinn also quotes a speech by the US Undersecretary of State in 1963 to the Economic Club of Detroit:
(Score: 4, Informative) by K_benzoate on Friday August 28 2015, @05:03PM
The additional expense was not "justified," the executives concluded, since it wouldn't substantially reduce the company's liability. "Liability was further defined as the incremental liability from this point on if we do nothing as we are already liable for the past 32 years of operation,"
Unrestricted capitalism, ladies and gentlemen. In a more rational, technocratic, system, a chemist/biologist/engineer who discovers something is toxic and finds a way to fix it would be celebrated and rewarded, and the company wouldn't be punished for implementing the new cleaner industrial process. Instead we have the pernicious synergy of CYA-spinelessness and sociopathic profit-seeking combining to poison our bodies and our environment. When someone makes a mistake or discovers a dangerous practice, their first reaction shouldn't be to hide it or cover it up for fear of punishment. Then nothing gets fixed. We don't learn anything. Yet that's exactly what they are incentivized to do under our current paradigm. The most disheartening aspect of the entire C8/DuPont affair is that the primary bad-actors were acting completely rationally within our current legal and economic systems.
There has to be a way to encourage companies to do the right thing, be forthcoming even with bad news, and still retain the dynamism of a market economy. I'm not sure what that is, but I am as sure as I can be that anyone saying this is the best we can do is wrong--and probably disingenuously so.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by schad on Friday August 28 2015, @05:28PM
The only true fix is to change our culture. Just because a thing isn't illegal, that doesn't mean it's good. Just because you can get away with something, that doesn't mean you should. From the left, the problem is usually described as "the pursuit of profit at all costs." From the right, it's "a lack of personal responsibility." They're both talking about the same problem, just using different words.
This mentality is why companies like DuPont paint themselves into a corner where the only rational decision is the one that's worst for everybody. Including, eventually, DuPont itself.
(Score: 5, Informative) by K_benzoate on Friday August 28 2015, @05:47PM
the only rational decision is the one that's worst for everybody. Including, eventually, DuPont itself.
This has yet to be seen. In fact, I'll make the prediction that even after litigation and settlements, clean up, and damages awarded to the poisoned families, they'll still come out ahead for their decades of profiting off this chemical and related products. DuPont is too far removed from end-consumers to have to worry about public perception. If you can literally poison children and not go bankrupt, I'm not impressed with the innate corrective power of the market. And this is just a case of gross negligence and criminal indifference. Coca-Cola deliberately hires death-squads to murder union organizers [colombiajournal.org] in South America and people don't seem to care even if they've heard about it. Coke is still around, and profitable. DuPont isn't going anywhere, either.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:26PM
You know you're doing things wrong when even China has higher accountability than you have. Sure their enforcement is crap and likely corrupt, but even 100% enforcement is useless if the companies merely get fines.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @06:33PM
Gay marriage?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 28 2015, @08:26PM
Legal/Illegal and Good/Evil are entirely orthogonal. Some things are good but illegal, such as certain extracts of cannabis sativa/indica for medical purposes. Some things are legal but bad, such as cigarettes. Some things are good and legal, such as water purifiers. Some things are bad and illegal, such as mass murder.
See how easy that is?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2015, @08:33PM
No, they usually aren't, actually, because when conservatives are talking about a lack of personal responsibility they are usually referring to the irresponsibility of poor people, whereas when liberals are complaining about the "the pursuit of profit at all costs" they are usually referring to the irresponsibility of rich people.
There are important differences between the two, as well: Irresponsible rich people usually do more damage and are punished much less for their crimes than irresponsible poor people. For example, this kid [time.com] ran over and killed 4 people while driving drunk at age 16 and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
No, it isn't. These crimes, because they were committed a long time ago, and were committed behind the corporate veil, means that the individuals who made those decisions probably profited handsomely from them in the form of raises and promotions for cutting costs. That's a big reason I'm not a fan of the corporate veil in criminal cases: If a business commits a crime, that means somebody who worked there decided to commit it, and fining the business (which will have minimal consequences for the perp, who might not even work there anymore) is far less of a deterrent than jailing the person or people who made the decision to commit the crime.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @10:39PM
This is exactly how I feel. There are some valid business cases why you might want to limit liability. I can fully appreciate the distinction that I *cannot* go after Mr. Smith personally for liabilities of the company, and that the company must handle its liabilities. That's appropriate for certain situations and markets. No problem.
That only applies though when are talking about abstract concepts like money, contracts, etc. It never applies when we are no longer talking about the minutia of capitalism, but the socopathic results of premeditated crimes against fellow citizens. The corporate veil should be instantly pierced for anything that falls within criminal statutes. Knowledge that your activities are deliberately introducing toxins that can cause cancer at best, and painful bleeding until you die at worst, is most certainly an issue for the criminal courts and not government regulators. This I feel is absolutely obvious; That they acted criminally.
Of course the argument is that if we ever threatened not just regulations with only weak financial penalties at best, and actually threatened them, that businesses and the economy would somehow suffer. Intelligent and rational businessmen would conclude to simply not enter markets in which they could go to prison or be executed for matters best relegated to consumer protection divisions and lawyers. That's so offensively ridiculous that it borders on insane. That position is saying that we can't have a safer world free of known toxins because our economy couldn't function as a result of the executives being incompatible with accountability.
What's unable to function properly are the executives moral compasses. Not the rest of us.
Well this is the price we pay for *not* being able to take a page out of China's book, and criminally detain all of the senior executives for DuPont in the last 30 years (including any on their death beds). This is the price we pay when corporations are granted personhood, but not *enough* personhood to actually fit inside a prison cell or the execution chamber. We give up when the corporation can't "fit" inside the jail cell, instead of pulling our heads out of our butts, and saying, "Well yeah. However, 17 executives *do* fit in 17 individual cells. We most certainly can put the entire corporation in jail if we want".
China takes it a little further. 17 bullets can kill 17 executives, and killing a corporation is a rather trivial thing. I'm beside myself that in my country a corporation is effectively immortal, untouchable, and unaccountable to the laws, morals, and ethics that the rest of us are bound by equally. Not a fan of the death penalty at all. In this case, my vote as one of their peers, is death.
I don't hear anyone vilifying China yet for how they handled the executions of the executives that poisoned baby milk. In fact, maybe we should just see if China has been damaged by C8, and just agree to extradition? So far we are assuming that the US is the only country and people that might want to bring DuPont to task.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday September 23 2015, @09:53AM
Just a late quick thank you for the submission (and the editor for accepting it). While there might be points about tone etc. I think SN should have plenty of room for submissions like this with a possibly controversial tone and/or opinion.
I hadn't heard of this specific news anywhere else although I knew about other Dupont evils/crimes. Even so this and the comments gave me a lot to think about.
By the way on the topic of the death penalty I'm conflicted but if I let reason prevail then I think Ian Hislop's¹ argument is (unfortunately) correct: historically there has just been far too many incorrect judgements and executions (at least in Britain where he lives but likely anywhere/everywhere) and since it's not a judgement that can be undone after execution it becomes unjustifiable for that reason alone even though plenty of crimes certainly merit it. In my case I guess I should add I'm not at all a pacifist.
¹ He probably wasn't the first to make it or anything like that but he's the one I saw and heard make it that did it convincingly enough to sway me (I think it's on YouTube somewhere if you're interested). Not to keen on him as a political person or the whole Private Eye magazine thing he's in charge of but I guess that's sort of beside the point.
Anyway sorry for rambling (late/tired) and thank you :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday August 28 2015, @11:24PM
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tripstah on Friday August 28 2015, @05:34PM
I worked for years as a toxic torts attorney attempting to punish companies like this. In the end, despite gaining awards totaling, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars, little to no change came from the lawsuits.
The problem with the current system is that we boil down torts by companies to monetary terms and allow the actual bad actors to sit behind the protection of the corporate veil. If you committed these atrocities as a private (or poor) citizen, you'd be subject to dozens of years in jail, if not, the death penalty. As a corporate employee, however, your actions boil down into a quantifiable number that can be handled by insurance and structured settlements. Worse yet, with the recent clamping down on punitive damages the number is almost calculable to an exact range and there is no possibility of a company being bankrupted for bad acts. There's really no repercussions for these types of detestable actions anymore.
Yes, there could be criminal prosecutions for the bad actions, but they're extremely rare. But, yes, the higher up the corporate / political ladder you are, the less likely those criminal prosecutions become. This is the American system, and, yes, it's terribly broken.
If I'm a corporation with enough resources, I have nearly free reign to intentionally (or negligently) destroy your home, property, family, and anything else I desire while reaping huge profits and facing little to no punishment in the end. In fact, I'll probably be celebrated and given awards for doing so as long as I make a good return for my investors.
Ponder that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @06:19PM
Thank you for writing this. It's a very important post. Without individual, personal legal culpability for the officers of corporations and board members, corporations will continue to run amok to the ruin of all, of the whole world and everything in it.
My experience as a long-time activist and student of the social sciences tells me we won't get anything close to that with our current systems of government--they're all too compromised by the status quo. They are paid to defend the status quo, not to seek the common good. The best people can now hope for is an occasional sacrificial lamb from that system, offered by the system, to keep the rabble at bay with weak comfort, "Sometimes the system does work..." But nothing systematic will change.
In the 21st century human society needs a revolution, in the broad sense of the word, to address all this. But we need a better model for revolution. The traditional varieties of bloody turnover have almost invariably re-created tyranny in different form, because people willing to kill and countenance slaughter to overturn power structures nearly always afterward say to themselves, "To the victor go the spoils..." But we also can't count on a system to reform itself, because we have seen that even within a system like America's with its Checks & Balances, that corruption and regulatory capture can defeat all systemic channels for redress.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @11:30PM
I feel thankful to a couple of people for their writings here, you included.
These revelations, among others in the last few years, have been quite shocking to me. It's not lost on me that I passionately argued for executions here. I'm a pacifist dude.
I agree that we can't have a bloody revolution. The hard truth is that I sincerely want to punch Obama in the face, but I would never wish him death or real harm (Doubt I could actually punch him anyways). Same goes for several senators that are amazingly passionate about the surveillance state and abridging our rights. Still doesn't justify any kind of harm coming to their persons. I will argue to the very bitter end that they are wrong, but I would afford them every kindness and human dignity in real life that I could. I think I could actually have a beer with McCain and be sincere when I thank him for his military service.
With these executives of DuPont? I would have them shot like dogs in the street, because that pragmatism is how you deal with monsters like ISIS/ISIL. Some men you can't negotiate with, nor rehabilitate. Some men literally will want to watch the world burn for their selfish pleasures, and only killing them stops them completely. That or a cement box to keep them in.
Some men (and women) are just monsters. Not assholes, but real life monsters walking amongst us that have no regard for human life.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:34AM
I can't disagree with that. Sociopaths who rationalize murder and poisoning societies have consciously committed their crimes. They deserve no sympathy from the community of man.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2015, @08:10PM
It's my understanding that officially the corporate veil only protects the stockholders in the corporation. Not the employees, and certainly not the executives. And that it doesn't always even protect the directors.
OTOH, getting a prosecution against any of these "non protected" groups never seems to happen.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:38AM
"Unrestricted Capitalism", eh? I dare you to change it to "Unrestricted Communism" and see if it still holds. Start with Lake Baikal.
Prior to this, I skimmed a story about Canadian kids going to join ISIS/ISIL. When those in charge at IS told the parents about their kids, they acted like it wasn't a big deal. The mothers were shocked. I am not shocked about that, about DuPont, or about the endless other messes around the world.
Humans are evil. There, I said it. The Stanford Prison Experiment and the other follow-ons like the electrocution experiment prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Even Mother Theresa had a dark side. I just watched a movie the other day that worships a bunch of murderers that went on to made a shitload of money making rap albums. NONE OF THIS SURPRISES ME ANYMORE!
This has less to do with money than with power and the will to abuse it. These people think they're gods and above any laws. Capitalism is just a convenient scapegoat for those who can't handle the truth: that they would do the exact same things if they were in that position. You say you won't, sure, but you don't fool me. There are NO good guys when you reach that level.
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:19AM
I'm not sure what that is...
I'd say the answer is in your earlier statement:
In a more rational, technocratic, system,
Have you heard of Technocracy [technocracy.ca] as an actual economic system? You're one of the rare people I've seen use the term in a positive way, but didn't seem to know about this. If not you may be interested. It would certainly fix stuff like this mess.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 28 2015, @05:19PM
DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception [firstlook.org]
The Case Against DuPont [firstlook.org]
How DuPont Slipped Past the EPA [firstlook.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @05:25PM
In China, the government is in total control. In America, the corporations are in total control. That's why you never see US company execs face any serious penalties no matter what they've done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:42PM
Jeff Skilling of Enron is in prison. It simply isn't the case that they 'never' face any serious penalties; they just don't face them as often as perhaps they should.
(Score: 3, Touché) by hemocyanin on Saturday August 29 2015, @06:16AM
He must have missed a payment to someone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday August 28 2015, @05:32PM
This message may contain bullshit.
I honestly don't know much about this, but I believe that in the richer European countries, corporations are governed in a two-tier model: You have the management, who take almost all the decisions and make the corporation perform, and then you have the board of directors, a separate group of people (more about them next paragraph) who have a yearly, fully-paid chat with the management, where they listen to what the management says it has done, and give general broad advice (based on their own experience, usually) on what to do next year, for the benefit of the corporation and its shareholders (instead of the benefit of the management).
Now I know that the members of the board of directors are usually recruited from a small clique of people, whom you might as well generalize and call "the Upper Class". People who descend from people who married other rich and/or powerful people. This probably has some advantages and disadvantages that are vague and social-psychological and probably never uttered on the paper of the yearly report of the board of directors. Because the members of the board have no interest in the corporation except continuation of the yearly L&D (Lunches&Dinners), and the wrath of their peers if they didn't spot that the management is running the corporation into the ground, they might function as a very light "oversight function", dealing out such harsh punishments as frowning, coughing, or saying to the management: "our kind of people doesn't do that kind of thing, don't you want your company to still be viable in 3 years?"
The obvious disadvantage to this system is that the board can be easily hoodwinked into thinking: "manager Roderick-Engelbert III is our brother, he helped me to the bus when I passed out from too much beer 26 years ago when we exited our student society, so I can't believe that he has really been poisoning that village. Maybe there's something wrong with the villagers, instead."
I just read the wiki page on Corporate Governance [wikipedia.org], which more than doubled my knowledge on this topic (shows what I know, heh..), and I spotted one obvious flaw:
The wiki article said that in the USA, the
So, that's obviously wrong. Fix it. The two layers cannot function as an executive- and an oversight-layer, if they are merged into one layer. That's self-oversight, and everyone knows where that leads to! Every psycho in your country knows, that as soon as they worm their way up to executive level in a corporation, they've got it made for life. And if board members complain, get them slandered/whatever, removed from the board, replaced by your own minions. Muhahaha! <bring_pinky_to_mouth/>
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday August 28 2015, @05:34PM
China can dispense with such things as statutes and independent trials.
Here we'd probably have to pass new laws, which then wouldn't and couldn't retroactively apply to this set of executives.
Moving from the ethics of the story to the practicalities, here's an unpleasant thought I haven't seen elsewhere.
One widespread use of Teflon is lubricating and sealing threaded connections on water supply pipes. There's Teflon tape all through our drinking water plumbing. Unless it was made with a PFOA-free process ...
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday August 28 2015, @06:39PM
Hmm.. you're probably right about the "independent trials" part.
However, I disagree strongly with your "China can dispense with such things as statutes" part.
I don't think they can have a society of 1350 million people without Rule of Law.
Maybe they just have environmental and safety laws that say (paraphrased): "If you fuck up like those managers, corporate oversight people, and environmental inspectors in Tianjin or Shijiazhuang [wikipedia.org], you die. You get hanged in public, shamed(*), and your family can pay for the rope."
(*) maybe this is the worst punishment of the two, I'm not familiar with Han cultural norms.
For psychopaths and sociopaths in leading rôles in Chinese corporations, this means an additional risk cost factor to calculate with, in their decision process to poison villages for profit, or refrain from it.
How else to improve corporate responsibility??
I once read an anecdote of a director of Otis the elevator company, who ordered a public demonstration of their modern elevator's brakes; he and other important people of the company invited the press, boarded a lift, and ordered somebody upstairs to cut the lift cable. Better advertisement for your product there is not.
I bet you'd run a fireworks factory or a sausage factory much more "cleanly", if you were forced to live nextdoor to it. Then, if new scientific facts are discovered pertinent to your factory, like the carcinogenity of asbestos or benzene, it's suddenly your own children's lives on the line.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2015, @08:13PM
I believe that proper enforcement of existing laws would find them guilty of murder for gain. Certainly if the records say what the summary says they say.
This doesn't mean I expect proper enforcement, but don't call for new laws when existing laws are already specifically apt.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday August 28 2015, @08:17PM
Good point. BUT...
Water pipe seldom uses teflon tape. You would most likely find teflon tape on threaded joints like spigots for garden hoses and washing machines or speedy valves (industry term used in NY), the valves that connect plumbing fixtures like toilets and sinks to the piping using compression fittings. Most copper piping systems use all sweated joints with only a few, if any, threaded joints. Modern homes use either PEX, PVC or copper with sweated joint using lead free solder. Though, there is still plenty of leaded solder joints in copper pipes. And many people still have lead water mains running into their homes. I'd be much more worried about the lead.
(Score: 1) by Marco2G on Friday August 28 2015, @05:59PM
One needn't go as far as the death penalty. It would be more than enough to make the guilty company pay, say, thrice the amount of money they gained from their unlawful actions as a fine (meaning on top of damages) and make the responsible executives liable with all their personal wealth until that number is met or the wealth runs out. The rest is then paid by the company.
As it stands, way too often companies get away with fines that a fraction of their gains. As long as being an asshole still leaves you with profit, these things will never change.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @06:24PM
But that really doesn't go far enough, because the most important asset any of those evildoers have is their social network, aka "The Old Boys Club." You must utterly break that, too, to truly punish white collar criminals of that order. Exiling them to the Antarctic peninsula to clean up penguin crap with their tongues might help.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @10:58PM
This may sound extreme:
I propose, complete emasculation. Removal not only of the testicles but also the penis. Just leave them with a small stump to piss from. Without a penis what are they? Not alpha males. The physiological trauma caused by that will last a lifetime without disabling the individual. The driving force behind the alpha male status is their projection of power to attract the opposite sex. Everyone who desires power will be able to much more easily bed women. Without that ability, the ability to please women, they are nothing in their own minds. All that money and they can't do anything with the pussy it attracts. They also can't create any progeny. Plus everyone will ridicule them for being a dickless loser.
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:58AM
Sounds like an interesting cure for being a dick.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @11:03PM
I strongly disagree. Do wish for this because of maintaining the corporate veil, or is because executives cannot somehow be liable for manslaughter charges?
My agreement with fines as a punishment only extends to those situations in which the harm that has occurred is a financial one. This case doesn't meet the definition of manslaughter since those executives fully knew their actions would lead towards very serious medical complications that easily involve great physical harm including death.
This is case is different because it specifically deals with actions that lead to deaths, and that sophisticated knowledge of the consequences was possessed by the executives beforehand.
Perhaps the suggested fines *are* more than enough to stop the behavior. However, when you fully consider the actions, intents, and premeditated aspects of these executive decisions do you really feel that justice for the victims is provided by only monetary fines? Even if the executive is homeless at the end and sleeping on the streets, justice was not served.
Respectfully, everything you're saying only applies when the context remains one of a civil dispute and violations of consumer protections. DuPont took it to a criminal level, and therefore, the response must be different.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @06:26PM
They'd nationalize all their assets and then become their direct competitors. You want DuPont to bleed? A bit of cash is nothing. A few middle-management lives are nothing.
Stab them in their assets and make them bleed customers.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday August 28 2015, @06:40PM
Maybe that is why I am not an Editor
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:11PM
Please do volunteer to be an editor. More editors means any given editor can spend more time on a given article that's prepped for publishing to the front page.
It's a community site that gets better the more members of the community pitch in to build it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @10:52PM
I kind of wish you were. I'm not a journalist, or a writer.
I appreciate the help and the suggestions.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday August 31 2015, @04:17PM
Most of all I am glad you didn't take my comments the wrong way.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Friday August 28 2015, @07:30PM
If you think this is bad, just look at what food industry and sugar industry have done in the last 70 years. Do you know the recommended Daily Value for sugar? In the 1950s, the FDA concluded that 3 to 5 grams is the maximum recommended Daily Value for sugar. Take a look at the Nutrition Facts on some food and you will notice sugar is missing a percentage because lobbyist convinced/bribed our leaders to suppress it. They even managed to get the World Health Organization to say 25 grams of sugar a day was fine!
A lot of people are dying early because food companies put sugar in everything because it makes people eat more and has similar effect on the brain as cocaine. Poisoning millions of people inadvertently pales in comparison to intentionally and actively poisoning the food supply for billions of people.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2015, @08:18PM
I'm sorry, but most people have a choice of whether or not to eat how much sugar. It's not a free choice, but it's still less bad than being poisoned for profit in secret.
I agree that the companies should fall on the same side of the "this is criminal behavior" evaluation, I just disagree as to how far past the barrier each is. And I speak as someone who ate sugar excessively for years, and who has a nephew who is diabetic.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday August 28 2015, @09:45PM
I'm sorry
no, you aren't, so don't say that you are because it just cheapens the words.
It's not a free choice, but it's still less bad than being poisoned for profit in secret.
really? so who is telling everyone? do they teach in school that sugar is a drug similar to cocaine? do they explain what if you are getting fat that the cause the sugar in your foods? do they explain that the average lifespan is dropping because sugar is in your foods? do they tell them that despite all this information, it's being served in the cafeteria? i would like to point out that to eat sugar excessively, you need only to eat regular foods. you can think you are eating healthy and very easily go waaay over the daily amount of sugar. you can think, "oh a granola bar [brucebradley.com] is a healthy snack" and it has several days worth of sugar in a single serving! or maybe wake up and have some Low Fat Whole Grain Granola Cereal [sunbeltbakery.com] which has 3 to 5 days worth of sugar!
when "healthy food" is killing people, it's a sign that people don't know a vital piece of information.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:59AM
Whoever thinks granola bars are a healthy snack..... never read the ingredients list/never thought about what goes in and how it's made.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @10:47PM
I disagree with your flamebait moderation on your comment. You do have a point you're trying to make.
Sugar is something that is discussed somewhat openly (Gravis has a point about that), while C8 had deliberate lies.
What about mercury? The safe levels that the EPA determined (which is that there really is no safe exposure level for mercury) we could be exposed to were half that the FDA decided on allowing. This was directly as a result of complaints that should the value be raised, that we would see that the fisheries *only* have access to unsafe fish.
Talk about an inconvenient fact. California tried to do something about it, but got overruled on their zeal to inform the public about the dangers of overeating fish products. So in mercury's case, there is a deliberate hiding of information and disingenuous arguments about whether eating fish is dangerous (it most certainly is). Tuna fish is by far the worst, with nearly every can on every shelf being at toxic levels. Only toxic though if you speak with the EPA... you speak with the FDA and they might give you healthy recipe ideas for a nice Tuna melt.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday August 28 2015, @10:49PM
I like your point, but just want to make one point in return:
You can eat a spoonful of sugar and not die. Your lifespan will not be that affected. You eat a spoonful of C8, and you will need immediate medical attention.
Sugar isn't regulated in parts per billion, and is not inherently and immediately toxic.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @12:55PM
Would it have been too much to ask for a little background on DuPont, like say, mentioning its a chemical company with a CFCs history?
Because this is what I was thinking while reading TFS:
DuPont? Who?
Oh, some company.
What does this have to do with the Tianjin explosion?
Some generic talk about executives being psychopaths.
DuPont poisoned the world twice? What?
(Score: 2, Informative) by gOnZo on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:14PM
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:13AM
There have been some recent stories indicating that Sociopathic behaviour may actually HELP one rise to the highest ranks of corporations.
Ever see The Corporation [thecorporation.com]? It's a documentary, and one of the points they make is that corporations themselves qualify as psychopaths, according to official psychological definitions.
As long as corporations are primarily/exclusively 'profit-seeking', this problem will remain unfixable.
It's worse than that. Even as long as we use money, even non-profit organizations (albeit not nearly as bad as for-profit ones) will still need to compete for money, and that means some will perish. This means that they'll have a similar "survival instinct" as for-profit corporations, forcing them to use unethical behaviours. Only the rich ones will be able to "afford" to be ethical. But at least getting rid of for-profits would be a step in the right direction.