Corporations aren't people--they can't make the decision to do unethical things. Yes, I understand the law, I'm saying the law is incorrect. People do unethical things, and people should be held responsible for their actions.
Fining decision-makers might be an acceptable alternative to jail time, as long as the minimum fine is some sort of multiple of profits gained, to prevent criminals from just figuring a slap on the wrist fine into their decision-making math.
No they don't, they get passed on to shareholders. The market cap of the company decreases by the amount of the fine (plus any predicted future effect of the lost money) and the stock price goes down to reflect that.
If the company could get away with paying workers less or decreasing its workforce in order to boost profitability, it already would have. It's not waiting for a fine to justify doing so.
Ehh, if they have to, but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders.
Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Are you arguing that we have to fine corporations instead of holding the decision makers responsible? What do you have against people taking responsibility for their own actions?
> If the company could get away with paying workers less or decreasing its workforce in order to boost profitability, it already would have. It's not waiting for a fine to justify doing so.
But they couldn't pay workers less or decrease workforce, because they needed those workers to execute the unethical business plan. They weren't waiting for a fine to cut workers, they were waiting for the cash cow to stop producing milk to cut workers who were necessary to keep the cash cow going.
But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done.
> Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome?
Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.
this is the KEY thing that is always missed.
shareholder happiness level: monitored at all times, a KPI of utmost significance at the most senior levels.
worker/employee happiness level: monitored at the Q{1-4} level at best, a KPI of least significance at all levels.
A 0.33L can would’ve been too little, but a 1L bottle too much, and a 1.5L bottle far too much. 0.50L was the perfect size.
The pricing?
0.33L - €0.66 (€2.00 per L)
0.50L - €1.48 (€2.96 per L)
1.00L - €1.93 (€1.93 per L)
1.50L - €2.09 (€1.39 per L)
Initially this made me angry, as it is very clear they figured out that the 0.5L bottle is the most convenient size, and put a huge premium on that, as people that need that size (for say, in a backpack) will pay it for lack of alternative. In other words, the price the market will bear.
But then I reminded myself, modern companies will always try to give you the least amount of value for the highest price the market will bear.
This is also why you should never feel bad if you can get one over on a company. Pricing error that gets you expensive shoes for €1? Screw ‘em. Contractual obligation that effectively gives you lifetime for €1? Screw ‘em. They’ll do the same to you whenever they can.
I wish businesses believed in being synergistic with their customers and nurturing loyalty, but alas. Not the times we live in.
Also pretty much everyone: Wait, the decisions businesses make that affect me absolutely suck!
I recently saw a £700 bicycle carbon fork on sale for £70, new, the shop just forgot a zero. I didnt buy it out of feeling bad :(
Modern consumers will always try to pay as little as possible for the highest amount of value they can.
The proper term for this is The Law of Supply and Demand. It's how markets work.
BTW, your anecdote illustrates why making the effort to learn some math while in grade school is worthwhile.
Purely in theory in a vacuum, yes. In practice, you'll have a very hard time finding examples where that actually happened. At best, the stock takes a momentary dip and next ~week it's back to where it was.
But so what if the stock is back up the following week? More things happened over the following week. You're missing the fact that it would have been up even higher if it weren't for the fine. (Alternatively, the stock also might go down even further the following week. But similarly, it wouldn't have gone down as much if not for the fine.)
This is not theory, this is how stocks actually work in the aggregate. If they didn't, you'd be able to make a lot of easy money off the stock market otherwise.
Also, they _are_ cutting employees. There have been a lot of layoffs recently, and some of them have explicitly stated it'd not because they can't afford those employees.
Yes HP is laying off employees just like pretty much every other large tech company right now. Which shows you it has nothing to do with fines, and rather everything to do with industry-wide overexpansion during COVID and high interest rates now.
- Layoffs - Demotion - Canceling of raises - Canceling of promotions - Reduction in perks and other business benefits - etc
This is like "if you raise the minimum wage we'll only have to lay people off" which is equally self serving and utterly, completely wrong.
Employees dont pay. Shareholders pay. If they could have fired 1 employee and collected a bit of extra profit they would already have done so.
But they couldn't pay workers less or decrease workforce, because they needed those workers to execute the unethical business plan. They weren't waiting for a fine to cut workers, they were waiting for the cash cow to stop producing milk to cut workers who were necessary to keep the cash cow going.
A business needs a certain number of workers for a certain output. Those workers need to be paid a market amount for their skillset, for the amount of output. If the company does not have the funds to pay them - due to fines or competition or any other reason, the company lays off workers and reduces output and revenue - giving those sales to competitors, or goes out of business.
Yes, if the solution to "we broke printers" is to refund every single affected sale, the company will lay off workers, reduce output, and close down if that happens enough. Their competition will increase output to fill the unmet demand, and hire workers.
That literally is the point of the fine, and is a good thing, not a bad thing.
