Ive often seen individuals on the left talking about how billionares shouldnt exist etc., but when probed on how that could be accomplished the answer is usually just taxes or guillotines. I dont think either is great.

What if instead, corporations were made to be unable to be sold or owned. Initially theyre made to default to popular election for their board, and after that they can set up a charter or adopt a standard one, ratified by majority vote of their employees.

Bank collapse would probably follow, how could that be remedied? Maybe match the banks invalidated stocks with bonds?

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    23 hours ago

    I’ve got a better idea: Make stockholders criminally liable and eligible for prison/execution for the crimes committed by the companies they invest in.

    Oh, PharmaCorp knowingly put a medication in to production that causes baby’s brains to catch fire? Every single investor in PharmaCorp is gonna serve three consecutive life sentences in Rapesburg-Asspain penitentiary.

    Wipe out a few generations of the upper class by getting a couple mass first degree murder convictions to stick and the problem will sort itself out.

    • teamevil@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Mutual funds…you probably own some and definitely someone you know also has mutual funds that probably own those stocks too…but I like the thought and see potential.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        23 hours ago

        I don’t, I have no stock portfolio at all. You’re probably right there’s a lot of bullshit that goes on in the financial world that I would put a pretty swift end to. Hell, “money market” bank accounts and such are probably somehow attached to the stock market.

        If I understand correctly, a mutual fund is basically a bunch of people invest in a bunch of stocks managed by a professional stock guesser such that it’s almost certainly going to do at least kind of okay. Yeah I’d either outright end that practice or heap a LOT of liability on the stock guesser and a bit on the members.

        You invested in a mutual fund, and one of the 60 stocks in the portfolio was Locktheon, and Locktheon just released a chemical weapon killing an entire small town? Your stock broker is now a slave of the state and will die in the mines, you and everyone else who is a member of that mutual fund owe 1000 hours community service each. We’re going to have a highway system so clean you can eat off it.

        • turmacar@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          You’d need to rollback the last 70 years of pensions being replaced by 401k plans and/or limit responsibility to the brokers. If you hire a licensed plumber that ends up flooding your neighbor’s place, the plumber is the one getting sued.

          It would probably also be good to restructure retirement incentives away from the stock market, but that’s not going to happen overnight either.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            22 hours ago

            Frankly there are probably a lot of people who need to see their retirements go away and they need to spend their golden years in the mines. They need to have their elderly assholes penised apart for voting for this shit for decades.

    • 18107@aussie.zone
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      23 hours ago

      I think a more effective idea would be to remove all profits (and maybe executive income and bonuses) from the company for a fixed period of time instead of a fixed fine that’s less than the profit from doing the illegal activity.

      Investors won’t be happy if they’re getting nothing, so they’ll be more careful with their investments, and no-one will have to pay to house thousands of unwitting investors in prisons.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        22 hours ago

        No I think it’s going to have to involve large numbers of perforated colons. Consequences should be physical.

        Who said we’re paying to house prisoners? The US constitution permits enslaving convicted felons. They’re all going to the mines. They will WORK or be mutilated.