Irilyth has started an interesting conversation on esuvee, the spokesmammoth for SUV safety. As he has locked me out of commenting on his site, I’ll just add that when I heard about the ad on Morning Edition yesterday, I had the same reaction, that is, that I was sure without looking that the ads were for SUVs, rather than (or at least in addition to) for SUV safety. And, as I said to my Best Reader, if Ford’s executives have been telling people that their deathtraps are safe, why aren’t they in jail?
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.
Your title Crime, punishment, profit at least starts to answer the question “I know step 3 is profit, what’s step 2?” But I’m still not sure it’s a complete answer.
The reason executives of large companies don’t go to jail is part of a much larger societal problem of why companies do not act more responsibly. The answer lies in an odd combination of not requiring a modicum of responsibility from top executives and not providing any safe harbor. It’s very hard to convict an executive when a rock-solid defense (really, the only one available under the laws they’re accused of breaking) is to say “I had no idea what was going on.” Plausible deniability has transferred from the world of politics to the corporate world, with the consequence being that it can only hurt an executive to be provably well-informed. But while we might come up with a list of ways that executives of a company could act responsibly (beyond SEC filing requirements which don’t help anyone all that much), we don’t tell executives that there’s any benefit for them in doing so.
An insurance company in the corporate arena will put together a set of followable best practices, tell you to follow them, and guarantee to insure you if you do. It’s a model that most people learn when they are small children: here are the rules, follow the rules and you won’t get in trouble. You may get hurt, because accidents still happen. But as long as you were wearing your helmet and riding carefully on the sidewalk, your parents won’t yell at you. It’s a model that we are unwilling to apply to companies, and that hurts all of us.
Hey, I haven’t locked you out of posting in my journal; you just need an LJ account. You don’t have to use it for anything other than posting my journal if you don’t want to. :^)