It sucks that it is this way, but society seems to have largely accepted it
For individuals: arrest, jail, prison, and horrifically crippling fines are normal.
An individual kills 1 person, and its 15y to life. But if youre an 'insurance company' and make policies in abeyance of insurance and arbitrarily deny 30% of claims getting many killed (Luigi says hi), thats perfectly fine. Youre a business leader making lots of money.
You steal $100 from the till at $shitretailjob and company calls cops and has you arrested. BUT if they fraudulently change timesheets and steal $100 from you, wellllll thats a civil matter.
Or, a company made 1B dollars but spent $990M, they only owe taxes on 10M$. But if I make $100k and spent $90k, I still pay taxes on 100k, not 10K.
This country should be called the Corporate States of America. That fiction has more rights than I or any other non-billionaire average human will ever have.
Who knows a country in which is different, let me know, please, honestly.
> Or, a company made 1B dollars but spent $990M, they only owe taxes on 10M$. But if I make $100k and spent $90k, I still pay taxes on 100k, not 10K.
First, if the hidden ask from you is to tax on revenue and not profit, that would be one of the fastest policies to kill almost every business in less than a year. Your mom and pop grocery store has razor thin margins just like the huge corporate ones.
Second, if you run your own sole proprietorship, you absolutely can deduct expenses related to your business.
> That fiction has more rights than I or any other non-billionaire average human will ever have.
I recommend spending some more time researching this and less on Reddit or wherever you’re getting your current information. A corporation isn’t some exalted thing and even if corporation execs are good at minimizing the corp taxes, they still can’t use that money for personal gain until they pay themselves. At that point they are subject to the same income taxes employees pay.
Don’t mix up billionaires with corporations. I think your issue might be with billionaires but you’ve just been describing regular business tax rules so far. Billionaires have an entirely different set of tricks to avoid ever realizing income.
In another world, there could have been NO impact at all to human beings and PFAS could be just another random chemical the body doesn't clear but doesn't actually do anything and sits there inert.
I know everyone's pissed about this but the thyroid/other connections stuff happens 10 years later as a result and these are idiot business people playing in waters they don't understand (and neither did medicine at that time). You could say, "you can't take the risk." For me these questions are maybe we need to take a deeper/closer look at what are permissible risks and at what point.
But you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever. No antibiotics because it will cause resistence. No chemo because it will cause damage and death. People want there to be a Dr. Eggman or Hitler in this story because it's turned out to be so impactful. Like Aesbestos which solved for fire, just poorly - carpet was solving for comfort, sound deadening, and emotional well being. We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.
It's fantastic that science continually grows in understanding and can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems. "How evil children playing with matches" are though, is asking the wrong question. These people were stupid enough to say - "there's cancer in rats, lets just keep going".
I understand the argument you are making, and I'm no fan of govt/regulations, but you will notice that often basic testing of toxicity/side effects is missing or the system is gamed.
One example I recently came across: antidepressant drugs are tested on people for around 12 weeks and then labeled safe if there are no side effects or reversible side effects. To summarize: profits overrides and safety concerns.
True, but if you contaminate water, and people, with chemicals not supposed to be there; I feel the burden should be on you to prove the chemicals are not harmful.
> you could use the same logic to not make any advancement ever
No you couldn't - the measures taken to prevent contamination were inadequate, they could've innovated while also following the rules. And if not, no business is owed a viable business model, certainly a random strangers heath isn't worth the price of profiting from easy-to-clean carpets.
> We just can't necessarily quantify that as easily.
Quantify what?
> can attribute once thought "inert" chemicals to problems
we (or America) have a whole system of classifying chemicals as safe for human consumption or not. Whatever was thought about PFAS, I don't believe they had been proven safe enough to dump into drinking water?
Which is everyone, since everyone has their pension invested in a giant pool made of of unethical companies that we can't fine, ban or let fail because it would destroy people's retirements who will then vote in an angry way to reverse this, or it will destroy some upstream national important industries that are very well regulated, or lobby very well, like Purdue pharma.
It's a collective fault, not that of only a handful of people.
Or I guess you could get there by abolishing the stock market as it exists, which seems more likely.
It's the banality of evil over and over again. Can't really blame the individual, with some extreme exceptions, otherwise by calling people out as you are doing you are participating in perpetuating the problem without contributing with anything new.
Do people really speak like that?
