That’s a lot of layoffs.

So they got all that money from Uncle Sam’s CHIPS Act only to lay off 10,000 employees and make themselves “lean”. Govt funded unemployment.

  • Tryptaminev@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    4 months ago

    Problem with publicly traded is that there is no personal risk past the price you bought the stocks for. You paid $ 1,000 for some stocks of “evil chemical corp”? Now your financial interest, and thats the only measureable one, would want them to pollute for a damage of $ 10,000 respective to the stock value if that increases your stock price to $ 2,000, as long as the risk of them having to pay for cleaning it up is smaller than 50%. Problem is the same holds true for a damage of $ 100,000 relative to your stock. Or any arbitrarily large amount. Your share in the damage caused could be in the billions, but worst thing the company goes bankrupt and you loose your stocks buying price.

    The only alternative would be holding shareholders responsible with their own money, if a company is forced to pay up for damages they caused, going past its bankruptcy.

    • smb@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      4 months ago

      like i said:

      maybe the root-cause is […] the total lack of any consequences

      but you used much more words ;-)

      “publicly traded” does not imply that consequences would be impossible.

      i see the opposite is true.

      one could make that “public trade” also “very” public as in ownerships could only be changed together with a public note of who that new owner of that share is in person and only like not allow ownership changes more than twice a week per person, making investment more profitable than parasitic high performance trade. also the current lack of consequences could be improved by making the shareholders personally responsible for everything that the company does, including going to jail when the ceo left the country to not go there.

      that could include making those responsible who owned that company at the time of its crime, making trust in the company way more important than that they can cause damage to society in macroscope just to profit in microscopical bits.

      this way the shareholders would have a at least one trigger to actually want to look into who that bullshittalker is they want to let into such a position of “their property”

      society should take care who they let do things with “their property” too.