This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people' without the consequences of being a person. How do you send a company to jail?

Its kinda of like that scene in fightclub where Edward Nortons character talks about the cost of doing a recall.

The emissions scandal should have ended VW.

Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.

Corporate personhood is a long standing legal principle stretching back at least 400 years to the first joint stock corporations. The creation of limited liability vehicles for investors to pool resources, govern large cooperatives of individuals, simplify complex transactions, and protect investments and intellectual property has led to unprecedented levels of wealth creation for nations and people, and is arguably the most consequential innovation of the last millennium.

Your issue with VW has nothing to do with corporate personhood, it has to do with a lack of criminal penalties for certain civil regulations. There are, of course, plenty of corporate crimes that do lead to jail time (though I hope you're joking about the guillotine). Call your representatives in congress and ask them to expand the criminal statutes. But don't pass this off on corporate personhood which has likely benefitted you and all of us far more than any perceived harm.

>though I hope you're joking about the guillotine

I read that remark as this: If corporations are people legally, there should be certain crimes that lead to their dissolution. I assumed this was the proposal: If a corporation does something evil enough, its leaders going to prison and paying a fine isn't enough, it should face the corporate guillotine which revokes its incorporation.

What would that gain you? Wouldnt the same capital holders pool their wealth into a newly minted corporation to continue exploiting the resources they have accrued?

Are you going to seize the assets of the corporation and redistribute them? How is your proposed dissolution different from a fine big enough to bankrupt a company?

Just quickly on my phone before I run to grab the train. You dissolve the entity and sell the assests to pay back the costs of damage. The people left high and dry by the loss of investment get the signal that there is more risk in involving yourself in companies that can really stuff people over through negligence or greed

I mean really after the damage that was done, you don't think companies like BP should still exist.

How about all those resource companies walking over the people of the third world. etc etc.

As for cutting peoples heads off...Who knows what this new america will bring :)

> You dissolve the entity and sell the assests to pay back the costs of damage

VW could pay the damages in its particular case without dissolution. What would you do with the extra money after liquidating its assets? It seems like you're simply arguing for even bigger fines.

Not the parent.

If the company can pay for fines, fine. No need to dissolve them, but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge. Just because you're part of a corporation, shouldn't mean you get to walk from crimes.

> but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge

There’s your problem, assuming that there is a way for leadership in a company not be responsible. Managers being ‘responsible’ is the only argument for them being paid disproportionally more than the average worker. In turn, a manager should always be responsible for the actions of their underlings all the way to the top, regardless of personal involvement in or knowledge of those actions.

The idea that the management of a company could not be responsible for something done by that company (which, e.g. could have resulted in considerable savings for the company and its shareholders) is simply ludicrous.

There is several layers of leadership. The CEO might say, we need to make a product in this price range, and meeting the new regulations. Several layers below him, are the managers, that goes into the nitty gritty details of the engine and know what the engineers are doing. Is the CEO reponsible if the manager cheated and deliberately hid facts from the upper management, just to please them and make himself look better?

You could argue that they should have a seperate control instance, but that was what they had, and they cheated it anyway.

> Is the CEO reponsible if the manager cheated and deliberately hid facts from the upper management, just to please them and make himself look better?

Morally, certainly yes, that’s why they’re the CEO. Their only defence against responsibility is incapacity to fulfil their duties, in which case they should resign immediately.

It is naive to believe a CEO can know about everything. The job is to get out of the habit of running the company day to day, and focus on vision, strategy, and culture. It is entirely possible for the management levels below him to ignore orders, and cheat measures out in place to ensure this. As long as the CEO act accordingly when knowledge about this reaches him, he is doing a proper job. It will never be possible to totally control things with an orginazation so large that you need several layers of management. You do put trust into the lower layers, no matter how you do it.

Right, but the CEO needs to instill a culture of not cheating. If the CEO has that culture (and can show it - lots of ethics training and other decisions that reinforce the idea that the company doesn't violate those rules) then you go down the chain to the rouge manager who hid his action.

This isn't just a theory. On of my companies competitors (I do not know which, I was just given it as an example) was caught bribing officials in China. After investigation it was decided that it was a rouge manager and not the CEO: they has a policy of not bribing, everyone was trained in recognizing how something (even a meal) could be seen as a bribe, and when other unethical action had been taken in the past the company took action to stop it and treated the whistle-blowers well. The CEO got off because he did everything in his power to ensure this wouldn't happen.

Exactly. Great example of why not to simply punish all the way to the top because they're "morally responsible".

Exactly! We need to stop questioning if the leaders are responsible. They are! The CEO is responsible for the whole company. If something bad happens, and he doesn't know about it he is still responsible. He is responsible for knowing, and he failed to find out. We need to put the CEO on the side of the law.

Kind of like this? https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-plead-gu...

That link says that VW agreed to pay $2.8 billion in fines for defrauding 590,000 car owners and cheating on emissions tests. $2.8 billion/590K vehicles < $5K/vehicle.

That's a good start on fines. Now make them reimburse 590K owners. Let's see... A Jetta has an MSRP of >$20K. So, how about reimbursing $5K-$10K of every diesel vehicle that was fraudulently sold? Or, force VW to buy them all back at original MSRP. Then they could resell them for whatever they could get for them.

Would you pay $10K for a 2 year old cheater Jetta?

Edit: removed typo

Just like that.

>What would that gain you? Wouldnt the same capital holders pool their wealth into a newly minted corporation to continue exploiting the resources they have accrued?

And the small-timers, with their meagre holdings and pension funds would be wiped out.

Corporations aren't monolithic; they are a collection of people working for and owning stake in. Their dissolution wouldn't be small and contained, it would be large and messy.

>What would that gain you?

This is a deterrent and would be very disruptive to the owners conducting business. It would discourage investors from elevating questionable people to boards of directors.

It could be something like this: 1. Sell/auction assets 2. Pay fines and damages and debts 3. Split remaining proceeds amongst non-legally culpable share holders

Right, but one of the issues is that a corporate "person" isn't the same as an individual person, and they don't overlap completely. They are only treated as persons under the law with regard to certain rights/obligations (sue and be sued, open a bank account, pay taxes, etc). But a corporation isn't a person for purposes of criminal culpability; i.e. you could never arrest a corporation for murder. Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

There's a whole section in the Wikipedia article on corporate personhood that addresses these misconceptions[1].

I guess the real world "corporate guillotine" is for a corporation to be sued/fined out of existence or go bankrupt, all of which can happen due to gross negligence, bad behavior, or criminal behavior (see: Gawker Media, Bear Stearns, etc). But obviously jail is reserved for individuals who commit actual crimes, not corporations who are, after all, merely legal vehicles for pooling resources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood#Misconcep...

In some jurisdictions (e.g. France) corporations can be subjected to criminal prosecution. The penalty can include forced dissolution of the enterprise.

>Though corporations are just groups of individuals who themselves could absolutely be guilty of crimes.

...or completely innocent of crimes.

I think it's important to remember that when there's talk about beheading corporate executives (and this isn't the first time I've read that on these forums): people are more likely to be innocent than not.

Killing off one of the largest employers in the world is a volatile maneuver. Surely there should be consequences, however perhaps a tier-based system for violations is needed. Suddenly closing the door on .... GM for example would be catastrophic for the US(hence the government bailout many economists supported). It may be that to properly punish or deter corporations from malicious decisions, the board of directors and majority stock holders should be punished too.

GM should have been allowed to fail.

Because, of course, no sensible capitalist would have stood by and watched all those assests disappear. Toyota would have bought a factory here, Nissan a factory there. Robots would have been sold off, etc.

Ford and Hyundai would have ramped up production and would have needed additional employees. And somebody would have stepped in to buy what was left of GM for 10 cents on the dollar.

It would have been very disruptive, yes. But within two years or so, the market would have adjusted. And there would be some incentive to not have anyone get too big to fail. As it stands, the incentive is to not let anyone be punished too much no matter how bad they act.

Wells Fargo should have gone out of business when thousands of employees were caught stealing from customers. Every shareholder should have lost everything. Of course the shareholders didn't commit the offence, but it would teach a lesson to be more responsible in investments, and make sure that the companies you invest in play square.

It might give Boards a different set of priorities when they negotiate the contracts of CEOs.

>Corporate personhood is a long standing legal principle stretching back at least 400 years to the first joint stock corporations

Equating modern corporations to the limited government granted corporation (permitted only for a limited and explicitly stated purpose [like building a bridge or railroad] in the public benefit) of 400 years ago and the nearly limitless powers of a corporation leveraged out of the 14th Amendment is a bit dishonest.

"The Corporation" gave a good summary of how the 14th amendment (passed to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves) was hijacked by corporate lawyers to dismantle the traditional limitations on corporations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qNmV4Iv0GE

Limited liability has nothing to do with personhood. Which is very recent and very specific. Personhood is not any of the things you listed, those are features of basic corporation without personhood. Corporations worked fine for several hundred years. Granting them the rights but not the responsibilities of humans was wholly unnecessary and a mistake.

I think you misunderstand corporate personhood. It absolutely includes all the things I mentioned. This article[1] has a good overview of the topic which includes a quote from the US Code: "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise—the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Corporations never existed without personhood; juridical personhood is a key factor was what historically distinguished corporations from earlier forms of business organization which did not create distinct legal persons.

This is one area where you might admire Chinese government then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal#Cont...

If you read the part that talks about criminal prosecutions, many top executives were put to death or received life imprisonment.

It's up for debate whether this is 'good' or 'justice' because the economic causes that led to the problem are complex, but babies were literally being killed because of this.

They found scapegoats for sure, but not many are really confident the real crooks were caught, and more importantly, faith was never restored in the Chinese milk industry.

Not surprised. I'm also saddened that the whistle blower died under suspicious circumstances.

Corporate personhood is not the problem here. You'll find many instances of corporate lawbreaking in countries that lack the legal concept of corporate personhood.

The real problem is that breaking the law and then paying the fine makes corporations better off than obeying the law in the first place.

I'm not sure how to take "The emissions scandal should have ended VW" but assuming you mean financially, I cant agree. As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

The bigger issue is it seems there has been one executive scapegoat and no real punishment for the multitude of people involved.

While a company fine is good, if we were to gaol and heavily fine at a personal level anyone involved to the point of wiping out their net worth, and heavily fine anyone (if we cant show they were involved) who should have been in a position to know/stop this I suspect we would see a better result in these matters in future. IMO the bigger issue is every time we have one of these scandals the perpetrators seem to walk away without any personal punishment or direct consequence of their actions.

If we "end" VW, we're not going to just fire everyone, close all the factories, and throw all their assets in a river somewhere.

Instead VW will be broken up into smaller more manageable companies, with tighter governmental oversight, and if it is done properly we'll have a stronger economy for it---one without the existence of a malignant massive company.

> As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

1. Nationalize part of the company hurting investors. 2. Auction the shares to the market 3. Profit$

This way a "too big to fail" company can continue running its business as usual while punishing the value of the company. That doesn't means that personal responsibilities are forgiven, any one that breaks the law should be prosecuted.

There are probably a lot of other solutions, the problem is that economics is not about economy but about politics.

That is fundamentally not different from a fine, which is ultimately also paid completely by the investors.

It is fundamentally different, because it targets equity, not operating capital.

Fines can be mitigated by raising prices so that equity-holders shift pain to consumers. Stripping equity on the other hand means that you change who profits from sales.

Yes, it is completely different, because the nationalization step strips the original investors from all power.

It only strips them of money, if they're willing to use money to buy the stock again in the auction.

> As a listed company you would be taking away many peoples jobs and savings who are innocent parties in this.

Perhaps we need to require of publicly-listed companies that they have a "registered acquirer" or the like--a company that all the employees would be moved to if the original company were forced out of existence. (Basically turning every Chapter 7 bankruptcy of a public company into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy by default.)

Then we could allow civil suits to kill companies with impunity, knowing their employees would just end up "passed to" another company willing to retain them for the same salaries performing the same duties.

> The emissions scandal should have ended VW.

The question is who such a punishment would have been directed towards. A few decisonmakers make something illegal, and the punishment is given to a hundred thousand employees, not to mention the owners of the cars without emissions cheating (most)?

This is the problem with megacorporations. Punishing them proportionally to the damage they make is unfair, because you are mostly punishing employees and consumers who knew nothing about the wrongdoing. Consequences need to be strong enough to be a deterrent but weak enough to not kill a large employer. That's nearly impossible.

Perhaps the most reasonable thing to do, as has been argued with banks, is to simply not allow megacorps to form, that is, no organization should be to big to fail because we want to allow the bad ones to fail.

Which is one of those pro-free-market, yet anti-corporate ideas that don't seem as popular as they should be as the political incentives are misaligned.

There are a couple of hidden assumption here:

1. It is possible to punish a person for his crimes in a justifiable manner.

2. People are somehow deterred by punishment when the option of winning via cheating is available to them.

It's very hard to argue that 1 is possible considering the ethical dilemmas that it exposes e.g. would capital punishment be a justifiable punishment for a murderer?

If 2 were true, then there wouldn't be doping scandals in sports, would there?

You forgot the premise of the 'outrage'

1) any entity, corporate or otherwise, must act without flaw or be dismantled. Big talk from one whom I doubt is running a top 5 company in arguably the most influential sector of the global market. The fallout of 'ending' VW is the forgotten factor. Try a little tenderness, who don't you?

2) the infrastructure that sustains VW is not a logo, or a brand name, it's thousands upon thousands of individuals, women and men who work hard to sustain that company so that vehicles are provided for a myriad of purposes. 'Ending' something if it has a flaw is like throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Why not change what needs changing and be less vitriolic? Are you shorting VW? Are you invested in Mitsubishi? Are you a Renault shill? Do you like speaking in hyperbole so as to clarify something without having to do the heavy lifting?

Obvy responses to poster above you if that wasn't clear to someone.

Accountability, credibility, and a sense of duty to the greater good must be part of what defines a society. When those are intact, individuals take responsibility and accept consequences. When they are too far eroded, there is no way to force or coerce society back to integrity except perhaps through a concerted effort over many generations.

It's easy to talk about a corporate death penalty, but that's not really in the interest of society.

Take Arthur Andersen. After the Enron scandal, Arthur Andersen was basically split up and absorbed into the other accounting firms, especially Deloitte and EY. Are we really better off having the Big Four accounting firms instead of the Big Five? I'd say we need more competition, not less.

Not to mention the many innocent parties around the world who lost out due to the actions of a few.

I'd be in favour of sanctions that target those responsible and the chain upwards to the top, rather than a business as a whole. Even clawbacks of past bonuses, although that would be logistically very difficult.

Many people look at emissions testing as an annoyance and I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared. And it was diesel car emissions -- a niche of the US market that's almost invisible anyway.

> I doubt that outside of environmental circles that very many people cared.

Do you have any basis for that? I think most people care about clean air and support laws and regulations to protect it. The laws did pass; there are regulatory agencies that are funded.

Most people care, unless it means they drive or fly less.

You'd think the lack of popularity of diesel would have the opposite effect. If, like the EU, there had been a lot of institutional support for diesel then you can imagine them having issues dealing with evidence that it's causing a different kind of pollution. But in America you'd hope they'd not have enough political capital and the truth would be accepted.

Fair enough. 590K diesel vehicles is a niche of the US market that's almost invisible.

So have VW purchase back every one of those cars at MSRP. It's an invisible amount anyway, right? The largest auto maker in the world could do it without blinking, right?

Then fine them a few $billion for damage to the environment, jail a handful of employees, and we can move on.

It isn't their job to care. The job of a citizen is to elect officials to act in his or her (the citizen's) best interest. Another way of looking at it: regulations are a noisy approximation of how much people "care".

So citizens that don't care are supposed to elect people that do. As if somehow, by adding an additional layer of separation and lack of liability, you're somehow going to get a better result. It's no surprise how often that fails.

> This is the logical conclusion when you allow corporations to be 'people'

I like how people almost never understand what they're talking about when they complain about corporate personhood. How, exactly, do you think corporate personhood is responsible for the mentioned instances of "cheating"?

Here's why corporate personhood was created; to create a legal framework under which corporations could be more effectively sued. Corporations don't actually get the same rights as individuals; they can't vote, they don't get 5th amendment rights, etc. Corporate personhood is, in most respects, quite anti-corporate (in the sense that it makes it easier to attack corporations in court).

But of course, to people who never bother to read beyond the headline, it sounds like it gives corporations the same rights as people, so of course it must be some sort of evil robber baron thing!

The problem is that at one point, when you reach a certain size, no matter the intentions you will end up affecting other people negatively.

Googles don't be evil is a good example of the problems with good intentions.

And so while I think it's fair to want the responsible people to be punished it's not as simple as it sound.

You missed the most important aspect of that scene in fight club: "If the profits are larger than the costs of expected settlements and fines". That means you just need to either the chances of being caught or the fines – preferably the first because low chances of being caught just invite delusional thinking ("I'm smarter than others") and people are pretty bad with evaluating probabilities not close to 0 or 1.

To catch more wrongdoing you need more oversight, which means more people checking on companies, which means bigger agencies. This is often frowned upon, because many people want a "lean government".

>Solution: Guillotine for corporate crime.

TBH, HN's BFF Elon Musk thinks regulators were too hard on VW: http://www.takepart.com/open-letter-to-california-air-resour...

But yeah by this logic, Winterkorn was worse than Hitler. Went way more wholesale on the gassing.

I think it says it was pointless, not harsh. The suggestion is not any less harsh.

You'll be happy to know there are ongoing fraud investigations in Germany against several engineers and managers of VW and their contractors. An investigation into the CEO at the time of the cheating (Winterkorn) was launched very recently when they got testimony that he was informed of the cheating a few month before it was publicised.

The laws arent the issue, nor even the punishments. The issue is a lack of enforcement. We have plenty of cops handing out speeding tickets but the number dedicated to "white collar" or "technology crime" in each state might only be a handfull. And dont try suggesting more IRS, EPA or FBI agents. In this political climate those federal agencies are seen more as criminals themselves.

Sometimes I think there needs to be a corporate death penalty where a company that does something truly egregious is liquidated.

The problem, of course, is that would also mean putting a lot of people out of work and would also hurt many who may have not done anything wrong.

What about all the people that work for VW, though? You can't hold all of those people accountable for what happened. It would be better to punish the individuals who encouraged it and those who knew but turned a blind a eye.

You can impose fines, but the trouble is that if the fine imposed is smaller than the profit gained from their misdeeds, (or than the losses actual compliance would cause) then they're still winning.

A corporation that deserves "jail time" should equate to bankruptcy. Simple as that. The fact that these companies get fined for < 1% of their total yearly profit is a joke. If you would send the person to jail, the company should be dead. $50 Million revenue? $50 Million fine. $2 Billion revenue? $2 Billion fine. Even if nobody goes to prison, the company should receive the death sentence - not a slap on the wrist. It should be that simple.

corporations don't commit crimes, people commit crimes. Obama was afraid to prosecute the rich and powerful, and now we have, well, you know.

Or, vote with you awl. How many Volkwagens would be sold if most mornings you came out and the tires were flat? You wouldn't buy one again I suspect.

That is how the world works. If you want to win, you have to be willing to do everything to get there. Not only for companies, but also in sport. Do you think the winners play fair?

You should really read the autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then you get an idea of what it takes to be able to win.

I've not read Arnold's autobiography but out of interest what are you referring to? If you are talking about his use of steroids etc (which I'm assuming is covered in the book?) then that isn't really cheating since in the case of professional bodybuilding since the sport is untested. There are federations that test and in that case using PEDs is cheating but in an untested federation, it's considered fair game.

Obviously, there are legal implications around the use of PEDs since many substances are illegal however I'm separating that out for this purpose.

I'm not referring to that, because at that time it was even legal.

For example what he did was looked at what parties the jury members went, and then go there and socialize with them. So they already knew him personally before going on stage. Or mess mentally with competitors, lie to them etc. Or when he was on stage with another bodybuilder for the final poses, acted as if he was about to leave the stage, the other one left, and then Arnold actually stayed and did a few more poses.

Maybe not all really illegal, but his book has lots of cases where he describes how he mentally messes or lies to people to get an advantage over them. That's how you win. Very good book if you have time to read it.

He even went to a ballet teacher to improve his poses. This guy did everything to get to the top, very inspiring.

It's been on my list to read for while now, I'll take a look.

Some of it, albeit in lighter sense is covered in document Pumping Iron. Great watch, I have more respect and disgust for him at the same time after seeing this.

But yeah, if you want to win at all costs, you start cutting corners, moral and others. Otherwise somebody else with even less moral approach will and will roll over you. Most giants got to the top by being like that (Gates, Jobs, Trump, pick anybody). There are no nice guys in top business, politics or any other power games.

Volkswagen was the first who got caught and fined. There are more car brands with emissions that are too high.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/19/many-car-...

And still, people only think about Volkswagen when we talk about high emissions. It's not even the worst offender.

Another way to look at this: people have endured enough absurd protectionist media circus shows from US auto makers to no longer believe or care. Cry wolf scenario, in other words.

If you own a VW/Seat/Skoda/Audi diesel car in US, you can give your car back and get your money. In EU, VW promises to fix the car by adding a 5cent placebo plastic pipe and a software update which lowers the performance and increases the diesel consumption (physics after all). In US VW has to pay billions, in EU VW has to pay nothing to speak of. Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareholder and probably knew about the cheating and probably the EU laws for diesel were altered some years ago because of this company. One would assume a more strict law enforcement that split that company into separate smaller VW, Sear, Skoda and Audi companies and disallow them to use that old Audi Diesel engine from the 1980s that causes the troubles. And one would assume VW has to be fine and pay to each state were the poisoned the inhabitants with their diesel fume. And oe would assume that TUV or whoever certified and tested the cars get fined as well.

You ignore that emission standards in Europe were less strict when it came to diesel pollution, so that 5cent placebo plastic pipe makes the cars compliant there. Emissions standards in Europe focused on C02 emissions and not so much on the toxic byproducts of diesel combustion. That's why the scandal is not such a big issue for Volkswagen in Europe.

I don't think that GP was ignoring it: "Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareholder and probably knew about the cheating and probably the EU laws for diesel were altered some years ago because of this company" - the point is that the EU car companies big into diesel specifically worked to have this pollution be made less critical in emissions testing...

The thing is diesel was pushed because of its low CO2 emissions and lower cost at the pump. Of course the German government wants to protect German auto companies now, but EU laws are comparatively lax on NOx emissions in part because the focus used to be entirely on CO2 emissions.

the laws are not the same in EU and USA. especially the laws regarding emissions

It reminds me of how trucking companies would knowingly run their trailers heavier than the legal limit. The added profits outweighed the risk of a fine. However, I do not know is this is still in practice.

That's not cheating, it's "growth-hacking". :O

How did Google, Amazon, and Facebook cheat, in your opinion?

Google: copyright infringement. [Crawling sites, taking data at will, then slapping ads on it, not paying the authors a portion of their ads] [4]. Tax evasion. [5--look for google]

Amazon: sales tax avoidance (entire reason they exist) [1] later, federal tax evasion, including the double irish. [7]. Pusher of fake goods. [8] Pusher of fake reviews. Pusher of Chinese goods causing destructive env. practices.

Facebook: selling personal information [2]. tax evasion (double irish) [3]. Enabled zynga (et al) to extort from children [6]

1. http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2016/11/at_amazoncom_s...

2. https://consumerist.com/2014/06/12/facebook-is-now-selling-y...

3. https://www.ft.com/content/ca64f938-5dc0-11e3-95bd-00144feab...

4. https://techcrunch.com/2009/02/11/google-book-settlement-sit...

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

6. https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinku...

7. http://www.businessinsider.com/double-irish-other-corporate-...

8. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-p...

I probably could type all night.

Per your linked article: "Thanks to a decades-old Supreme Court case, e-retailers operating outside of a state’s borders cannot be compelled to collect the sales taxes owed by their customers. For years, Amazon.com took advantage of this provision." Amazon was specifically not cheating; they were following the law. The same law as other e-retailers and catalog retailers before them followed.

Tax avoidance is cheating? I guess I better not max out my 401k this year for the tax advantage! That would be cheating!

No but if you take your 401k money - withdraw it, create Irish shell companies, then have your employer pay the Irish shells , then tell the government you are Irish not a us citizen, liquidate all us holdings -- all to avoid IRS withholdings. Wtf? Please try it let me know how HRBlock goes.

Edit: under "do you have foreign accounts" check "no" as well. (Actually don't do any of this you will end up in federal prison)

It is kind of silly to blame Amazon for not paying sales tax. The legal obligation was on the buyer, not the seller, in out of state purchases. No company in Amazon's situation was paying sales tax.

Facebook did (still does?) shadow profiles, which is illegal in EU, a sizeable part of their business.

I suspect Google collects and keeps personally identifiable information in ways that are illegal in EU too. And of course YouTube directly created and profited from copyright infringement.

And the internet industry as a whole has very effectively sabotaged the EU "cookie law", by implementing it in a way that annoys everyone and benefits nobody, pointing the blame at politicians while making big profits from privacy invasions of unsuspecting people.

It's more effective to beg forgiveness than ask permission, especially when you are a rock star.

You're cherrypicking examples. Plenty of companies went under for cheating, e.g. Enron. Also if you think that these companies offer no consumer benefits but profit only through cheating then you're a fool.

So setting up regulatory capture frameworks through cronies at the government to collect rents from people is not cheating since it happens to fit the definition of 'legal' and therefore fine to do?

Only works if you can raise billions really fast so that you can have the clout/means to get the legislators to bend the rules for you.

Volkswagens cheating was a minor infraction, notable only for the $18B fine that was handed out by the US to throw some weight around, appease the domestic car industry and satisfy protectionist instincts.

Certainly it would be easy to fine Facebook, Google in Europe for privacy/monopoly violations (i.e. things that actually matter) with huge fines?

Asking for forgiveness instead of permission is something I tell work colleagues.

Life isn't a game.

I beg to differ. Life is most definitely a game. It has rules and winning depends on numerous factors such as information, skill, strength, luck, connections, etc. I would argue that all other games which have been created are based on a subset of the rules of the first game: Life.

Every single rule can be broken, it just depends on if/when you get caught. You're still a cheater but as long as you can pay your way out of any hole you've found yourself in by the time you've gotten caught it's perfectly ok. Traditional morals notwithstanding, e.g. Lance Armstrong or any of the above.

You will fit right in here.

You don't become King without stepping on everyone, and everything on your way to the top.

don't forget the biggest cheater of them all: apple