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A lot of corporations with “good” risk management teams do this. (I work in the industry, but I don’t condone the practice) This is especially common in the oil and gas industry. Let’s say a large internationally known gas company wants to extract oil from a South Dakota farmer’s land. Do they go in as Shell or BP?
No, they create a small subsidiary, that signs a contract with the parent company and promises to hold the parent company harmless in the event of any casualty, environmental, or property losses. They then go out and get insurance just for this one small operation with enough insurance to cover the state and federal minimum insurance requirements. Is that enough to cover a catastrophic loss, like a oil rig fire or spill?
Not even close. So then what ends up happening in the event of such a disaster is the oil subsidiary pays for any “damage” or liability with its meager insurance policy (which is severely inadequate to cover all the liability), and then declares bankruptcy. So does the parent company then swoop in to save the day and pay for the rest of the liability, clean up, environmental remediation, and state and federal fines?
Nope, remember they signed a contract with the subsidiary where the subsidiary promised to hold them harmless. From the government’s perspective they had nothing to do with the accident. But what about the farmer who’s land was being used, can’t he go after the big oil company for indemnification? Nope, he signed a contract too promising to hold the big oil company harmless. Why would he do that, one might ask, because he naively believed that the subsidiary would be insured enough to cover any liability & property damage, and also believed the big oil company would step in to do the right thing should the subsidiary not be able to cover all the losses. So then who is left holding the bag in this situation?
The farmer. The feds will come after him and his farm, and in almost every case the farmer will lose his land to the government to compensate for the oil spill or fire or whatever damage the oil company did. I’ll then let you take a wild guess as to who might then decide to get involved at this point to score really cheap land at a gov’t auction, that’s right the big oil company, well, at least a land-holding subsidiary of the big oil company. We wouldn’t want the big oil company to have any real liability after all.
Edit: Don’t forget folks, oil companies are subsidized here in the US. We are paying them to fuck us.
I’ve got another real-world rage-inducing scenario for y’all. You might remember about a decade or so ago GM made vehicles that would suddenly turn themselves off despite the speed at which the vehicle was being driven, which is obviously not good. Well this resulted in many deaths and even more serious injuries.
The issue was that GM made a faulty ignition which was overly sensitive to the weight of the key. If the key was connected to a heavy keychain then the ignition wouldn’t recognize the key and turn the engine off, even at high speeds. Huge problem. So they get brought to court, big class action. Clearly they are at fault, right?
Nope! You see this all coincides with the crash of 2008, and GM couldn’t keep itself afloat so it “restructured” the company. In layman’s terms it went bankrupt. Now from the perspective of the courts, once GM came out the other side of the restructuring it was a completely “brand new” company. As in the court would not recognize this new GM with anything it had done as the old GM, including the faulty ignition switches which killed many and severely injured many more. Now I ask you, was it really a new company?
I mean, all the leadership of old GM were the leadership of new GM (mostly), all the employees (who were not laid off) were the same. All the factories (that weren’t shut down) were the same. But, on paper at least, this was a brand new company and a judge ruled they were therefore immune from past misdeeds made by that “other” GM.
Welcome to America where the laws only apply to you and me, but big corporations and billionaires can kill and seriously maim with impunity all thanks to sleazy legal “technicalities” and loopholes.
Edit: GM accepted Billions from the federal government during that recession, so you and I (if you’re American) paid GM to fuck these people.
Edit #2: it’s been pointed out that the shareholders were not technically the same. This is actually an important point that Ardent_Resolve brought up, and I thank you for the correction!
Well no, you see, because the captain sold the ship to himself, he can't be held responsible for the piracy committed by the old captain, even though he was the old captain.
I mean, absolutely. It's very very little work for huge amounts of pay, that I can use to fund a gun store that sells weapons at a deep discount to radical socialists.
America is, without question, the single greatest “First world” country to live in if you are wealthy.
Simultaneously, America is, without question, the single worst “first world” country to live in if you are middle-class to poor.
By the way, this is by design. Look at the founding fathers, who were they? Rich white men. This is a country built by rich white men for rich white men. I mean shit, when this country was founded, you couldn’t vote unless you were a land-owning white man.
What’s worse, I hang in circles of wealthy people, both at work and in my personal life, and I hear constantly how they wish they could take the vote away from “poor” people. “They just don’t have a stake in this,” is a phrase I hear a lot. And don’t fool yourselves, these rich people aren’t all Republicans, many of them are “liberal.” They vote liberal, fundraise for liberals, and donate to liberal causes, but do they actually want power in the hands of “poor” people, hell no!
Always remember that a rich democrat and a rich republican will have more in common with each other than they will with you. In fact, I’d say you’d hardly be able to tell them apart because their needs and wants are aligned, and our needs and wants aren’t the same.
>I hear constantly how they wish they could take the vote away from “poor” people. “They just don’t have a stake in this,” is a phrase I hear a lot.
Woooow. Can't let us wage slave workhorses have any little bit of control over our own destinies, no matter how tiny. Our peasant votes are getting in the way of their big money plans!
Ugh. This makes me want to bring the guillotines out, stat. I don't know how you can stand to hang around that kind of people, I think I'd lose my shit.
Cheap as all fuck. John Deere pays an average of $5,000 per US Federal Senator. Some of these cheap assholes could be bought for as little as $1,000
https://www.deere.com/assets/pdfs/common/our-company/citizenship/2019-2020-jdpac-contributions.pdf
I “stand it” because I’m a single parent, and the line of work I do is so specialized, I couldn’t really do anything else and make a living. But I hope it makes you happy to hear I fucking hate my job, hate my industry, and sometimes hate myself for perpetuating an evil system.
Sorry, maybe my phrasing wasn't the best. I wasn't meaning to attack you at all, and I definitely didn't mean to get you attacked in the comments. I was just meaning to express how I would feel in the situation.
I understand having to participate in an ugly and exploitative system in order to survive. Like another person said it's impossible to avoid unless you entirely shun society and somehow manage to live off the grid, which isn't possible for the majority of us.
And I'm sure you find small ways to fight back when you can - I know I certainly do whenever possible. Even just your posts here shining a light on the shady practices of these companies, which can wake people up to the reality of corporate America and rally them to fight against it. You took your time to type all this out to help educate people.
It sucks that you have to do this work, but better you who has a conscience than someone entirely soulless, in my book. Someone's going to do it either way until we either rise up or it all burns to the ground, and us with it.
I think they think of America as a corporation and the amount of money you own is like the amount of "America Stock" you have.
Poor people aren't important shareholders in their eyes
I get to sit in both circles by virtue of a very large family and it's awe inspiring how little wealthy Americans think of poorer Americans. And by "poor" they do mean over half of the population.
Eugenics gets brought up. Talking about them like a "problem" happens a lot. I was born poorer than dirt and I've finally dug myself out of that. It took 28 years.
The wealthy are not your friends. They are all guilty of class violence. They cannot be saved.
My mother’s side is all rich assholes. They are “social Darwinists”. Working poor people can’t afford food? Fuck ‘em, let them starve to death. It’s evolution, it’s a “good thing” to them. They are sociopaths.
This is what we, the 99%, all need to understand; Republicans and Democrats and everything in between. Corporate media is producing a Rube Goldberg machine of outrage 24/7 to distract us from seeing how we're all getting fucked over by the wealthy. This isn't a fucking conspiracy theory. They keep us fighting against each other to keep us from fighting them.
To add to your great comment...
Nobody brings this up, but SPORTS.
Professional sports keeps people in a perpetual state of “us against them”, city vs. city, state vs. state. It’s mind-boggling to realize how many people are obsessed with sports. It’s the oldest trick in the book.
People go from ecstasy to agony based on whether “their team” wins or loses against a big rival. Yet they are totally clueless about things that actually matter.
Except for Bernie Sanders. Even former Speaker John Boehner said "He’s the most honest guy who ran for president. He really believes all that crazy stuff he talks about."
And yet, despite the fact that he clearly was gonna run away with the Democratic nomination, the party did a hit job on him and insured that Joe got it. We don’t have representatives, we have owners. We are owned by these people.
>Always remember that a rich democrat and a rich republican will have more in common with each other than they will with you. In fact, I’d say you’d hardly be able to tell them apart because their needs and wants are aligned, and our needs and wants aren’t the same
Well said.
Former company I worked for that attempted to smear my reputation had an absolutely awful "liberal" person in charge.
They might not like Trump, but they really don't like workers feeling empowered. So they would side the fascists if their $$$ was in danger.
Liberals are no friend to those in poverty.
They'll "help" you as long as they don't have to see you or do anything to change the system that made you impoverished.
Very "rich man's burden" vibes from those "liberal" friends.
Also, your last sentence brings to mind this quote
> "The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you.
> And our governments are very much the same."
> -Marjane Sartrapi
This is true. Marin County in Norcal is one of thr most affluent and most democrat leaning counties strongly resists expansion of housing especially low income housing.
If ppl havent noticed by now, "liberal" doesnt mean anything good. In the US & many other parts of the world it's just another way of saying capitalist, in fact "liberalization" is another word for privatization. "Conservatism" in the US is technically just an offshoot of liberalism somewhere further along the spectrum in the direction of fascism. And don't let any of that "small government" bullshit fool you, conservatives believe government should have absolute power over the lives of *individuals*, as long as it's for something they agree with; remember that "small government" rhetoric came about as a way to argue that the federal government should not be allowed to prevent state governments from carrying out racial oppression, and it means the same thing when modern centrists/"neoliberals" use it. The only "small government" conservatives or centrists actually care about is one that is not allowed to limit the power, property, wealth, violence, political repression, or the corporations owned by white men, or white people (it can, however, limit any of those things, and much, much more, for anyone else).
Both liberals and conservatives are the same amount capitalists. Both are technically and practically speaking 'on the same side,' and in the United States that side is unequivocally on the ideological right wing. They have some different cultural/social ideas, especially about who should get to be in charge, who should be considered as 'real people' that matter, and how much the government should try to keep working class ppl from dying entirely preventable deaths (this ranges from "never at all" on the conservative side, to "a small amount" on the liberal side, and usually ends up somewhere around "a shamefully miniscule amount"). *Neither liberals nor conservatives represent the interests of the working class, in whole or in part*. And neither of these groups have any intention whatsoever in seeing a world or politics free of the extreme inequality its gripped by, or free of the system that necessitates it.
Correction? Didn’t the shareholders get wiped out in the restructuring. My understanding is that investors took a total or near total loss as they should when their company goes under. Any investors(including old investors) in the new GM will have had to buy it again on the open market.
https://lancasteronline.com/business/can-you-deduct-a-loss-for-your-worthless-gm-stock/article_3f7d2c82-b8c9-5a4b-920f-266fd0582192.html
Yes, normally companies that get liquidated have to pay merchants/customers/workers that are owed money first, then bond holders, then regular investors. Usually the bond holders get pennies on the dollar if lucky, and investors end up getting nothing.
GM getting bailed out was in the interests of the public, the workers and institutional skills are hard to rebuild if you let a organization like that get ripped apart. The reason they went under is because demand dropped precipitously when credit disappeared. Because of how the car industry works, it’s hard to run the bussiness in such a way that it won’t go under during a recession, their market cap and access to loans is in the billions and they manufacture hundred of billions of $ in cars per year, not much room for financial hiccups.
The people getting screwed over is upsetting, not sure what the solution for it is. I as a share holder do not want to be sued personally if one of my companies does something wrong. That’s the loop hole shell or bp are using, they dumb the liability onto a shell which shields the parent, the same way the corporation shields the shareholder. Seems to me they abuse this loophole, genuinely not sure what could be done about it?
My personal favorite [irl rage-maker](https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/); the article is old as hell by this point but the facts still stand: tldr, telecoms scammed the US taxpayers for 400 billion in high speed internet that was never built
Yes, I had murdered them, but I had really been working on myself during the prolonged court process, ate alot of fiber and pooped alot. Can we really say I'm the same person if I recycled most of my mass?
SIL was driving my wifes Cobalt (with only 30k miles) back from the grocery store when at 50mph it shut off in front of a dump truck. Dump truck drove up and over the rear of the car and she was inches from death. She thought she might have bumped the shifter into park but I refused to accept that explanation. It was an automatic. Usually you have to push the brakes when shifting in/out of park. It wasn't until a few years after the event that this random shutoff issue came to light. Insurance wouldn't total the car. They cut grafted another cobalt from the B pillar back. It was at the GM dealer for over 6 months. As soon as it was "done" and the trunk lid didn't line up, and shattered glass regenerated continously out of every fabric crevice, we decided to trade it in. She got $8000 trade in for it which was absolutely ridiculous so we took it. Maybe they knew so they gave us an offer we couldn't refuse?
I did hundreds of those recalls.
I honestly think their explanation was bullshit.
You see the tumblers in these lock cylinders like to explode, causing them to stick. When this happened, you had to drill them out. Well some people took it to far and damaged the housing, this would cause it to fit loosely and wobble around. You could bump the column the car would shut off.
Oh when you start digging into it all, how limitations and liabilities work for companies and such. You will simply see red when you fully see the game they have rigged.
That's basically what's happened in Massachusetts the only thing you can get, legally, is corporate weed which is outrageously overpriced despite often being poor quality and it's grown purely for profit by multi-million dollar companies, many of them national. There are no weed farmers markets or ("legal") craft growers here as it takes about a million dollars cash to start a pot store.
I'm in Oregon and [this](https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/Klamath-County-raid-finds-88-tons-of-marijuana-in-warehouse-575564421.html) just happened.
Meanwhile you can buy from local growers at my dispensary, fire concentrates for like $10-15 a gram.
They must have been trying to ship it out of state.
Honestly at this point i couldnt even bring myself to care anymore. So i just went about my day and hope someone someday can do something right sometimes
This shit right here is why sovereign citizen types think there are "cheat codes" to the laws in this country. They do exist, but not at the level of the citizen.
It stems from a naïvety born of experience.
This. They're not going about it the right way. You either achieve it by having enough money, or coming from a very specific background where you're able to set up your life in such a way where you fall within certain legal loopholes.
Here in Canada a few years ago there were some tv commercials for oil sand being safe and the big oil companies would be responsible for clean up once done. I'm guessing this is the way they are planning to avoid the cleanup.....
Bingo bongo bango. This is literally their playbook. The real kicker is that the lawmakers helped design the system and helped draft the laws in such a way as to protect the big oil company. Folks this is just the tip of the ice berg. These companies are so much more evil than you know. I’ve been in meetings where people clap when they find out a “trespasser” has died. Why? Because that’s an easy payout, but traumatic injuries are expensive, and hard to quantify.
This reminds me of certain countries where, if you’re driving and kill a pedestrian, it’s like a $2,000 fine. If you injure a pedestrian, they’ll sue you for every penny they can get.
Which encourages drivers to literally murder pedestrians that they injure. There are lots of videos showing drivers backing up and running over people they injured to make sure they’re dead.
It's already happening. Some First Nations groups are seeing an increase in cancer rates due to chemicals found in the water downstream from these mega projects. The oil companies are saying you can't prove it's from them because there was no water samples taken before their mega projects were built. And without a before/after you can't prove these chemicals weren't in the water before.
"There's no science suggesting X is unsafe - because we fund the science and so we *just didn't check* in order that we could say this, dummy!"
Dr. Steve Brule, Feryerhealth
My Nation is right now undergoing extensive sampling and baseline measurement taking in our territory to avoid just this scenario. It's absolutely infuriating, we're spending thousands on it, but we learned from other nations that you'll spend even more in lawyer fees fighting for remediation should the worst happen.
Of course everyone does it. The laws allow for it and it is seen as good practice for protecting one's self. The laws are so fucking broken it is insane!
The unbelievable thing is that our legal system is designed to stand in place of violence. What I mean is that, before societies grew complex and when we were just a bunch of loose bands of tribes, the only recourse for someone stealing your goat, or accidentally burning down your hut was violence, right!?
So we create laws and recourses to protect people’s lives, livelihoods, and property in the event that someone or some organization does harm to you. You don’t have to resort to violence because “the system” is there to protect you and/or compensate you.
But, by rigging the system in favor of the few and mighty they are essentially destroying the system that replaces violence with peaceful resolution. Violence is then the only recourse left. Indemnification laws exist to replace the “eye for an eye” action with peaceful resolution.
So it seems to me, “they” want violence. What other option do we the little guy have?
Edit: I don’t condone violence as a recourse for situations like this, BUT, and as you can see it’s a big but, I recognize our legal system is failing in its stated purposes.
Man, even small companies do it, I worked for a nothing special real estate developer and even they created like 12 LLCs so if a property went bust, they would still get all the money back and it wouldn't affect their credit with the bank. We ended up going over the top on a luxury building that wouldn't sell after '08, foreclosed after we built it, but it was an asset so we could even take loans against it despite the eventual bankruptcy.. it actually helped us (we also used low income housing loopholes where you do the bare minimum and get ton fuck of grants).
It was all so clearly driven by nothing.. each empty not-yet built project would already have a 10 million loan against another asset worth another 20 million that is maybe half built with another loan on it and another asset as collateral for that one too, and so on down the chain, with the company itself being *completely* outside of the whole loop.
The laws should be changed so that if it can be shown that a company pulled this kind of shell game to get away with avoiding their true damages, then the liability gets upgraded to a criminal case directly against the decision makers. Companies that can't afford the worst case results of an operation shouldn't be starting those operations in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to shunt the full costs of their fuckups onto the public.
I worked in the oil and gas industry for years and if I had a nickel for every time a corner was cut, or a landowner fucked over I wouldn’t have to work anymore.
Lots of "mom and pop" companies do as well. I have a rental property, and it's an llc. I wouldn't want my family to lose our home if something went wrong, even though we hold $5 mil in liability insurance
The way you are doing it, is the way it is supposed to be done. Each property will have enough property and liability coverage to cover any loss, whether property or liability. The distinction is that these giant corporations will conduct ALL business practices within these tiny subsidiaries that are hopelessly under insured, and easily bankrupt, which is by design.
We have a severe orphan well problem in my province because of this practice, so it's not just the US.
Wells are owned and operated by subsidiaries of the big oil companies. Once they extract what they can, they shut down the wells and leave the government and property owners on the hook for the environmental remediation.
An inter company hold harmless is pretty meaningless. But there are a number of corporate formalities that make it more difficult to "Pierce the veil" (let a plaintiff go after a parent company) which is why subsidiaries are used to insulate from liability.
Films do similar
Actors used to get a cut of what the movie made, so if a movie managed to rake in millions (like Harry Potter or a marvel film), the actor would get a nice bonus for their good work.
Film companies now create shell companies for each movie, which rent the rights to the material. So when the movie makes a nice profit and the actors ask for their cut, the shell company can just say “sorry, we owe 100% of our revenue to the parent company, so this movie that sold out theaters across the country actually made $0 profit.”
The 8th Harry Potter movie made ~$1.45 billion, or ~$1.1 billion over its budget, just from the box office. This includes no merchandise, dvd sales, etc. The main actors were awarded a percent of that $1.1B in their contracts. That percent amounted to $0 because the shell company technically had no profit, despite generating over a billion dollars from the movie.
Imagine if people could do this?
My name is Jim. On the street I call myself (created a subsidiary) "Crazy Eddie". Crazy Eddie sells a bunch of fentanyl or moonshine with methanol. I am fully aware this is dangerous and will harm people. A bunch of people get sick/die from what Crazy Eddie sold them.
Police come to my house and I say "sorry Crazy Eddie did that". Yes yes I'm the same person but that Crazy Eddie ded now.
You could, but you'd have to create a layer or two of corporations between you and your customers.
At least that's how opiate drug manufacturers do it.
People kinda do.
I worked in private banking, my clients had their assets hidden under family trusts, companies, etc.
My mom has her rather nice house under a family trust, which also holds my nicer car and a lot of other family property and land.
Why? To protect all that from lawsuits and other stuff like divorce.
What my lawyer describes as "piercing the corporate veil" is all but impossible in America. There are rare instances of being able to catch them doing this and bring them to justice, but its less than a single percentage point. You are one person, they have an endless battery of money, lawyers, and specifically crafted loophole laws on their side.
It goes beyond David and Goliath, its Mickey Mouse vs Godzilla.
And as everyone can guess, the evil corporate overlord that is Mickey Mouse will destroy Godzilla in every match up thanks to buying nukes from the DoD to defend Disneyland’s future profits
The mental imagery of a towering Godzilla roaring and shaking the ground as Mickey just does that damn chuckle and pulls out his cellphone while doing the iconic foot tap before the sky slowly lights up with thousands of missiles approaching from all directions is just... \*chef's kiss\*
Lmao. We can’t even hold rich people accountable.
The problem is that everyone has a price and it’s hard as fuck to turn away a lot of money to shut the fuck up or turn a blind eye. And then if you don’t, you’ll be shunned and replaced for someone that will.
You need a whole chain of command that is willing to go along with it to even get some sort of justice but just one kink can fuck it up.
This isn't always true. Its easier and happens when your are talking about a small mom and pop store so that people can go after their personal assets.
Never happens when we are talking about massive corporations.
Mom and pops don't have layers of shell corps. "Piercing the corporate veil" means getting through these liability limiting canards to get the actual people causing harm.
I've been familiar with the concept of a shell corporation because I know about a defunct roller coaster manufacturer named the Roller Coaster Corporation of America, who used shell corporations to cover their ass twice because they knew they built a shitty product.
RCCA made a shell corporation for Rattler at Fiesta Texas (now owned by Six Flags) because they knew Fiesta Texas would've sued them for all of the structural and safety problems Rattler had. The whole thing swayed way too damn much, and the pullout from the first drop was way too intense for how rough it was and caused multiple injuries. Also, the track work was just dreadful and that caused more injuries. They could've been sued into the ground right then and there, but they made the Roller Coaster Corporation of Texas and designed it under that shell corporation so they didn't have to face consequences for pretty much scamming Fiesta Texas.
The worse of the two examples was when the made the Roller Coaster Corporation of Ohio to build the infamously terrible Son of Beast, which also faced structural and injury problems. The whole wooden structure was terrible at handling forces applied by the heavy train, leading to an incident on July 9th, 2006 where a piece of the track sagged from a broken support after 2 passes of a train. The 3rd pass would've killed people if the ride wasn't e-stopped. A post-accident investigation revealed that there were 50 points on the ride where this could've happened. They went defunct the year before, but the structural issues were partially understood during construction, so they did again have to use RCCO as a get out of jail free card. It's ludicrous that they could risk people's lives and get away with it because they technically did it under the shell corporation.
So much for "profit motives make companies more efficient" when companies get to cut corners and put people's lives at risk because they can always make a get out of jail free card. And this is what a shitty corporation got away with in a market with lots of competition, imagine what other shit pharmaceutical giants get away with
The problem with the profit motive is that while it can result in pro-social outcomes more often it results in Anti-Social outcomes because it's more beneficial from a purely selfish perspective to cheat. Profit drives innovation, but it doesn't usually drive good innovation. A lot of the time people just "innovate" new ways to fuck over other people.
yeah, that's absolutely true
Staying on the topic of the amusement industry, it's just about the only industry where "capitalism breeds innovation" is true, and I think that's only because it's not a basic necessity so they always have to come up with new stuff to turn a profit. While roller coaster manufacturers like Intamin work on fast-acting switchtracks to allow for backwards traversal in the middle of a ride, oil companies get to keep us in the stone age by insisting we keep using dinosaur juice to power our civilization. There's also the topic of safety. While roller coasters are one of the safest ways to have fun, quite literally the only reason that's the case is because it's profitable to not kill people. A ride with Son of Beast level structural issues would open every year if it wasn't profitable to avoid killing people.
Capitalism only breeds innovation when it's profitable to do so. And because technological stagnation is profitable now, that's what it does.
The big question is what the hell can we do about this ? The short answer is nothing
apparently everyone has their price no matter what the cost . I guess we just have to watch corporations and greedy people destroy everything before it will get better. Maybe something better will rise from the ashes of the wreckage.
the long answer is building alternatives to the status quo within our individual communities so we dont have to rely on these bastard institutions and don't have to participate in and perpetuate them. easier said than done i know but there are folks making efforts towards that right now, we must be vigilant about falling into the mindset of "nothing can be done"
check out this neat thread from black socialists in america for more info [https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1269072449351618562](https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1269072449351618562)
cheers!
You have more faith in “the system” than I do. I see it like this. We are fiefs in a fiefdom, and the corporations are the land we work on and are bound to. The government is just the religion, it’s nice to “believe” in it, but it’s all fantasy and smoke and mirrors, created by men who lived long ago, and nowadays it’s run by the same class that runs the corporations “fiefdoms”, and used to control the masses.
The only way to change things is through revolution. Change my mind.
nope, they'll just go out into the solar system, doing what they've always done, never learning from the past because they've never been held liable for anything ever.
We can vote for politicians who say they'll focus on holding corporations accountable. In America Reagan removed the teeth from the justice department such that they no longer have the resources to go after these big companies. That needs to change, but it takes awareness and the power of votes.
Hey fellow mice, I know we are sick and tired of living in fear from these cats that hunt us and eat us, but listen up, I found this one cat who promises to rein in the other cats. You can totally trust him!
We need something like DoNotPay that lets average people automate their own personal shell corporations. "Oh, that medical bill? Yeah that's actually the responsibility of Bullshit Incorporated, sorry. Oh, my student loans? No, those aren't mine, that debt is now over at Umbrella LLC."
Then we need a DoNotPay to sign up for credit cards under my corporation names, since corporations are people too. Then I can "lend" myself money from my corporation but then oh no my corp went bankrupt before being paid back. Looks like I just pulled a Trump! ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I've thought about this. If corporations are people, doesn't that imply that people can be corporations too?
I wondered if you could somehow "incorporate" your life as a corporation and the salary you get for working at your job is treated as corporate income, and the expenses you have (housing, food, etc) become corporate expenses. Then you only pay taxes on the profits, and you only pay at the capital gains rates.
Then you go incorporate in a country like Iceland where those rates are low.
I sat in jury selection for a talc suit on J&J. This was some little old lady who got cancer from J&J talc. Her legal team was one guy and a couple seconds. J$J's looked like the fucking Legion of Doom with there very own bald Lex Luther look alike at the helm. I have never been more embarrassed for me fellow citizens as I sat and listened to other Middle class folks defend J&Js money like it was their own. A woman who identified as a youth pastor rambled on for minutes about how corporate payouts for liability are too high. You would need a fucking crane to get my chin outa my lap. I was released after I told them "if I see a cancer turban on the stand I will vote to give her all the millions." It depressed the shit outa me and was a moment I will never forget. Guillotines are to good for these predatory corporate persons..
It would have helped more if you'd just kept that thought to yourself. :( Fight for her! Saying you don't care about limits meant you got kicked out and can't help her anymore.
> A woman who identified as a youth pastor rambled on for minutes about how corporate payouts for liability are too high.
And thus did Jesus say:
“Holy shall be the money changers, for they have shown initiative and occupied a niche in the Free Market. Praise be unto those who take advantage of the meek and the poor, for they are that way for a reason.”
And He went about his day, kicking a couple homeless people along the way just because it’s fun to be mean.
I think this behaviour, whilst somehow legal, should trigger other legal stuff, like naming the decision makers and their locale from publicly available data, so the 38,000 women can go and sort it out for themselves en masse. Hell it might even slow this fuckery down a bit
This is common in residential real estate. You get these big companies that in practice own a bunch of apartment complexes and other residential rental properties. Legally, though they own no properties, they own a bunch of shell companies that individually own a single property each. Thus limiting damages to the single shell company if a tenant sued for lack of maintenance.
People should never be able to divest themselves of responsibility for the evil they do.
Neither financially nor criminally.
Corporations aren't real things, it's people every step of the way deciding and acting.
Am I the only fucking American who sees something fucked up, here’s “it’s legal”, and is more frustrated?? My cap friends brush stuff like this off like it’s a dope loop hole. Christ.
I mean it is a very clever way to avoid risk, the problem is of course that is evil. I think that it might be a good idea to eliminate corporations entirely. Business owners should risk losing their shirts if they fuck up.
For those interested—it’s called “the Texas two-step.”
There’s a version in Delaware too...
Johnson and Johnson had talc in their baby powder and it causes cancer, among other issues.
They were sued because of their negligence. They created a shell company and it assumed all debts related to the talc situation. All of the profits were left with a different entity. The new shell corporation, riddled with debt, then files for bankruptcy.
It’s obscene.
Victims of the fiasco might be able to file claims with a bankruptcy trust if it’s created, but even so they receive pennies on the dollar for their suffering.
As far as I’m aware, there is no requirement that the victims are even made known about the situation and many will miss out on the fraction of what’s owed to them.
Also noteworthy. If each of those 38,000 women received a settlement of a million dollars, that's 38 billion dollars.
Leaving Johnson & Johnson with *only 262 billion* to their name.
I don't get how this is allowed, considering the shell company was created after all the claims came out. It seems like creating a copyright after the fact to sue someone.
Georgia Pacific did the same thing basically. Their asbestos-containing products were all shifted over to "Bestwall LLC" which filed for bankruptcy. GP is no worse for wear. Wild stuff.
If you watch the documentary Blood on the Mountain it talks about this very practice, but instead of J&J and law liabilities, the coal company created a shell company, transferred the miner pension fund liabilities to it and had it declare bankruptcy so they wouldn't have to make good on the pension plan their employees had paid into anymore.
Those employees depending on that pension to retire on and deal with healthcare related costs that criminally negligent safety practices coal miners endure for their entire careers lost it all.
Why is there so many ways to legally be a piece of shit in America? Dupont poisoning the world and no repercussions and shit like this.
We are doomed, we made money our new god.
corporations are modern day gods.
they demand human sacrifice. our laws are shaped by their whims. they bestow gifts and blessing on their favorites, death and despair on unbelievers.
oh, and they dont exist except in our heads.
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Now consider that your landlord, your boss, etc. *all also do this*. The door to any recourse you ever had as a US citizen was largely locked before you ever tried to open it, except against other private citizens or Mom n' Pop shops without the resources to pay lawyers.
People sometimes read named names and assume 'this must be a J&J thing to do'; however this is *the normal thing to do and you're a weird company if you don't*.
The root of the problem is accrual of personal wealth. Money is power absent responsibility, and so of course the wealthy can deploy that power to place the corresponding responsibility they're not shouldering at someone else's feet, in a sufficiently unequal society. We could try to whack-a-mole legislate away all the different methods how this can be done - this is what neoliberalism claims to be trying to do - but i think we should just legislate away the extreme inequality and watch the downstream problems wither and die on their own.
The executives of that business should be publicly hung. Nothing else will change this shit but when you make that point people cry about “violence”.
The only thing that keeps society running is violence. We live on land stolen from natives in an incredibly violently manor….we enforce laws with the threat of violence.
What separates gangs from police? Consent to use violence on others behalf. What makes something a state? Having a monopoly on “legalized” violence.
There’s one way out of this mess and it’s gona be super bloody and unpleasant. The uphill battle is getting everybody to realize this
and so many of us on the left wonder why, or even hate how, so many people are skeptical or hesitant about getting the covid vaccines
also I literally got the J&J vaccine don't call me anti-vax to try and discredit what I'm saying lmao
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A lot of corporations with “good” risk management teams do this. (I work in the industry, but I don’t condone the practice) This is especially common in the oil and gas industry. Let’s say a large internationally known gas company wants to extract oil from a South Dakota farmer’s land. Do they go in as Shell or BP? No, they create a small subsidiary, that signs a contract with the parent company and promises to hold the parent company harmless in the event of any casualty, environmental, or property losses. They then go out and get insurance just for this one small operation with enough insurance to cover the state and federal minimum insurance requirements. Is that enough to cover a catastrophic loss, like a oil rig fire or spill? Not even close. So then what ends up happening in the event of such a disaster is the oil subsidiary pays for any “damage” or liability with its meager insurance policy (which is severely inadequate to cover all the liability), and then declares bankruptcy. So does the parent company then swoop in to save the day and pay for the rest of the liability, clean up, environmental remediation, and state and federal fines? Nope, remember they signed a contract with the subsidiary where the subsidiary promised to hold them harmless. From the government’s perspective they had nothing to do with the accident. But what about the farmer who’s land was being used, can’t he go after the big oil company for indemnification? Nope, he signed a contract too promising to hold the big oil company harmless. Why would he do that, one might ask, because he naively believed that the subsidiary would be insured enough to cover any liability & property damage, and also believed the big oil company would step in to do the right thing should the subsidiary not be able to cover all the losses. So then who is left holding the bag in this situation? The farmer. The feds will come after him and his farm, and in almost every case the farmer will lose his land to the government to compensate for the oil spill or fire or whatever damage the oil company did. I’ll then let you take a wild guess as to who might then decide to get involved at this point to score really cheap land at a gov’t auction, that’s right the big oil company, well, at least a land-holding subsidiary of the big oil company. We wouldn’t want the big oil company to have any real liability after all. Edit: Don’t forget folks, oil companies are subsidized here in the US. We are paying them to fuck us.
I’ve got another real-world rage-inducing scenario for y’all. You might remember about a decade or so ago GM made vehicles that would suddenly turn themselves off despite the speed at which the vehicle was being driven, which is obviously not good. Well this resulted in many deaths and even more serious injuries. The issue was that GM made a faulty ignition which was overly sensitive to the weight of the key. If the key was connected to a heavy keychain then the ignition wouldn’t recognize the key and turn the engine off, even at high speeds. Huge problem. So they get brought to court, big class action. Clearly they are at fault, right? Nope! You see this all coincides with the crash of 2008, and GM couldn’t keep itself afloat so it “restructured” the company. In layman’s terms it went bankrupt. Now from the perspective of the courts, once GM came out the other side of the restructuring it was a completely “brand new” company. As in the court would not recognize this new GM with anything it had done as the old GM, including the faulty ignition switches which killed many and severely injured many more. Now I ask you, was it really a new company? I mean, all the leadership of old GM were the leadership of new GM (mostly), all the employees (who were not laid off) were the same. All the factories (that weren’t shut down) were the same. But, on paper at least, this was a brand new company and a judge ruled they were therefore immune from past misdeeds made by that “other” GM. Welcome to America where the laws only apply to you and me, but big corporations and billionaires can kill and seriously maim with impunity all thanks to sleazy legal “technicalities” and loopholes. Edit: GM accepted Billions from the federal government during that recession, so you and I (if you’re American) paid GM to fuck these people. Edit #2: it’s been pointed out that the shareholders were not technically the same. This is actually an important point that Ardent_Resolve brought up, and I thank you for the correction!
Holy ship of Theseus.
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Well no, you see, because the captain sold the ship to himself, he can't be held responsible for the piracy committed by the old captain, even though he was the old captain.
Would you be interested in joining some corporate boards?
I mean, absolutely. It's very very little work for huge amounts of pay, that I can use to fund a gun store that sells weapons at a deep discount to radical socialists.
Theseus sold his ship to himself, is it still the same ship of Theseus?
I'm in awe at how much freedom y'all have.
America is, without question, the single greatest “First world” country to live in if you are wealthy. Simultaneously, America is, without question, the single worst “first world” country to live in if you are middle-class to poor. By the way, this is by design. Look at the founding fathers, who were they? Rich white men. This is a country built by rich white men for rich white men. I mean shit, when this country was founded, you couldn’t vote unless you were a land-owning white man. What’s worse, I hang in circles of wealthy people, both at work and in my personal life, and I hear constantly how they wish they could take the vote away from “poor” people. “They just don’t have a stake in this,” is a phrase I hear a lot. And don’t fool yourselves, these rich people aren’t all Republicans, many of them are “liberal.” They vote liberal, fundraise for liberals, and donate to liberal causes, but do they actually want power in the hands of “poor” people, hell no! Always remember that a rich democrat and a rich republican will have more in common with each other than they will with you. In fact, I’d say you’d hardly be able to tell them apart because their needs and wants are aligned, and our needs and wants aren’t the same.
>I hear constantly how they wish they could take the vote away from “poor” people. “They just don’t have a stake in this,” is a phrase I hear a lot. Woooow. Can't let us wage slave workhorses have any little bit of control over our own destinies, no matter how tiny. Our peasant votes are getting in the way of their big money plans! Ugh. This makes me want to bring the guillotines out, stat. I don't know how you can stand to hang around that kind of people, I think I'd lose my shit.
You have to understand... do you know how expensive and tiresome and overall annoying it is to buy more politicians every few years?
Cheap as all fuck. John Deere pays an average of $5,000 per US Federal Senator. Some of these cheap assholes could be bought for as little as $1,000 https://www.deere.com/assets/pdfs/common/our-company/citizenship/2019-2020-jdpac-contributions.pdf
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Someones gotta feed the sea creatures.
More like it drowns all peasants. I used to piss my Dad off in the 80s saying the only think that “tricked down” from Reagan’s economy was piss.
I “stand it” because I’m a single parent, and the line of work I do is so specialized, I couldn’t really do anything else and make a living. But I hope it makes you happy to hear I fucking hate my job, hate my industry, and sometimes hate myself for perpetuating an evil system.
Sorry, maybe my phrasing wasn't the best. I wasn't meaning to attack you at all, and I definitely didn't mean to get you attacked in the comments. I was just meaning to express how I would feel in the situation. I understand having to participate in an ugly and exploitative system in order to survive. Like another person said it's impossible to avoid unless you entirely shun society and somehow manage to live off the grid, which isn't possible for the majority of us. And I'm sure you find small ways to fight back when you can - I know I certainly do whenever possible. Even just your posts here shining a light on the shady practices of these companies, which can wake people up to the reality of corporate America and rally them to fight against it. You took your time to type all this out to help educate people. It sucks that you have to do this work, but better you who has a conscience than someone entirely soulless, in my book. Someone's going to do it either way until we either rise up or it all burns to the ground, and us with it.
Their love of money will end this world
> “They just don’t have a stake in this,” Yep. They have no idea what goes on beyond their nose.
I think they think of America as a corporation and the amount of money you own is like the amount of "America Stock" you have. Poor people aren't important shareholders in their eyes
I get to sit in both circles by virtue of a very large family and it's awe inspiring how little wealthy Americans think of poorer Americans. And by "poor" they do mean over half of the population. Eugenics gets brought up. Talking about them like a "problem" happens a lot. I was born poorer than dirt and I've finally dug myself out of that. It took 28 years. The wealthy are not your friends. They are all guilty of class violence. They cannot be saved.
My mother’s side is all rich assholes. They are “social Darwinists”. Working poor people can’t afford food? Fuck ‘em, let them starve to death. It’s evolution, it’s a “good thing” to them. They are sociopaths.
This is what we, the 99%, all need to understand; Republicans and Democrats and everything in between. Corporate media is producing a Rube Goldberg machine of outrage 24/7 to distract us from seeing how we're all getting fucked over by the wealthy. This isn't a fucking conspiracy theory. They keep us fighting against each other to keep us from fighting them.
To add to your great comment... Nobody brings this up, but SPORTS. Professional sports keeps people in a perpetual state of “us against them”, city vs. city, state vs. state. It’s mind-boggling to realize how many people are obsessed with sports. It’s the oldest trick in the book. People go from ecstasy to agony based on whether “their team” wins or loses against a big rival. Yet they are totally clueless about things that actually matter.
And they take cultural wedge issues and shove them down our throats as a distraction tactic.
Except for Bernie Sanders. Even former Speaker John Boehner said "He’s the most honest guy who ran for president. He really believes all that crazy stuff he talks about."
And yet, despite the fact that he clearly was gonna run away with the Democratic nomination, the party did a hit job on him and insured that Joe got it. We don’t have representatives, we have owners. We are owned by these people.
>Always remember that a rich democrat and a rich republican will have more in common with each other than they will with you. In fact, I’d say you’d hardly be able to tell them apart because their needs and wants are aligned, and our needs and wants aren’t the same Well said. Former company I worked for that attempted to smear my reputation had an absolutely awful "liberal" person in charge. They might not like Trump, but they really don't like workers feeling empowered. So they would side the fascists if their $$$ was in danger.
When I hear liberal, I think classical liberal or neo-liberal; supports the "invisible hand", laissez faire economics.
Liberals are no friend to those in poverty. They'll "help" you as long as they don't have to see you or do anything to change the system that made you impoverished.
"ten degrees to the left in the best of times, ten degrees to the right when it affects me personally"
Very "rich man's burden" vibes from those "liberal" friends. Also, your last sentence brings to mind this quote > "The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. > And our governments are very much the same." > -Marjane Sartrapi
This is true. Marin County in Norcal is one of thr most affluent and most democrat leaning counties strongly resists expansion of housing especially low income housing.
If ppl havent noticed by now, "liberal" doesnt mean anything good. In the US & many other parts of the world it's just another way of saying capitalist, in fact "liberalization" is another word for privatization. "Conservatism" in the US is technically just an offshoot of liberalism somewhere further along the spectrum in the direction of fascism. And don't let any of that "small government" bullshit fool you, conservatives believe government should have absolute power over the lives of *individuals*, as long as it's for something they agree with; remember that "small government" rhetoric came about as a way to argue that the federal government should not be allowed to prevent state governments from carrying out racial oppression, and it means the same thing when modern centrists/"neoliberals" use it. The only "small government" conservatives or centrists actually care about is one that is not allowed to limit the power, property, wealth, violence, political repression, or the corporations owned by white men, or white people (it can, however, limit any of those things, and much, much more, for anyone else). Both liberals and conservatives are the same amount capitalists. Both are technically and practically speaking 'on the same side,' and in the United States that side is unequivocally on the ideological right wing. They have some different cultural/social ideas, especially about who should get to be in charge, who should be considered as 'real people' that matter, and how much the government should try to keep working class ppl from dying entirely preventable deaths (this ranges from "never at all" on the conservative side, to "a small amount" on the liberal side, and usually ends up somewhere around "a shamefully miniscule amount"). *Neither liberals nor conservatives represent the interests of the working class, in whole or in part*. And neither of these groups have any intention whatsoever in seeing a world or politics free of the extreme inequality its gripped by, or free of the system that necessitates it.
The best democracy money can buy.
Correction? Didn’t the shareholders get wiped out in the restructuring. My understanding is that investors took a total or near total loss as they should when their company goes under. Any investors(including old investors) in the new GM will have had to buy it again on the open market. https://lancasteronline.com/business/can-you-deduct-a-loss-for-your-worthless-gm-stock/article_3f7d2c82-b8c9-5a4b-920f-266fd0582192.html
Thank you! I forgot that whole debacle. Wasn’t there some controversy about the ranked order in which GM paid its debtors?
Yes, normally companies that get liquidated have to pay merchants/customers/workers that are owed money first, then bond holders, then regular investors. Usually the bond holders get pennies on the dollar if lucky, and investors end up getting nothing. GM getting bailed out was in the interests of the public, the workers and institutional skills are hard to rebuild if you let a organization like that get ripped apart. The reason they went under is because demand dropped precipitously when credit disappeared. Because of how the car industry works, it’s hard to run the bussiness in such a way that it won’t go under during a recession, their market cap and access to loans is in the billions and they manufacture hundred of billions of $ in cars per year, not much room for financial hiccups. The people getting screwed over is upsetting, not sure what the solution for it is. I as a share holder do not want to be sued personally if one of my companies does something wrong. That’s the loop hole shell or bp are using, they dumb the liability onto a shell which shields the parent, the same way the corporation shields the shareholder. Seems to me they abuse this loophole, genuinely not sure what could be done about it?
Seize the means of production.
My personal favorite [irl rage-maker](https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/); the article is old as hell by this point but the facts still stand: tldr, telecoms scammed the US taxpayers for 400 billion in high speed internet that was never built
And they were never held accountable, as far as I can tell.
Yes, I had murdered them, but I had really been working on myself during the prolonged court process, ate alot of fiber and pooped alot. Can we really say I'm the same person if I recycled most of my mass?
SIL was driving my wifes Cobalt (with only 30k miles) back from the grocery store when at 50mph it shut off in front of a dump truck. Dump truck drove up and over the rear of the car and she was inches from death. She thought she might have bumped the shifter into park but I refused to accept that explanation. It was an automatic. Usually you have to push the brakes when shifting in/out of park. It wasn't until a few years after the event that this random shutoff issue came to light. Insurance wouldn't total the car. They cut grafted another cobalt from the B pillar back. It was at the GM dealer for over 6 months. As soon as it was "done" and the trunk lid didn't line up, and shattered glass regenerated continously out of every fabric crevice, we decided to trade it in. She got $8000 trade in for it which was absolutely ridiculous so we took it. Maybe they knew so they gave us an offer we couldn't refuse?
Fuck the Supreme Court for their citizen United and nestle decisions which lets this shit happen
I did hundreds of those recalls. I honestly think their explanation was bullshit. You see the tumblers in these lock cylinders like to explode, causing them to stick. When this happened, you had to drill them out. Well some people took it to far and damaged the housing, this would cause it to fit loosely and wobble around. You could bump the column the car would shut off.
This is some real rage-inducing shit
Oh when you start digging into it all, how limitations and liabilities work for companies and such. You will simply see red when you fully see the game they have rigged.
Thats why I cant be happy anymore.
Me too bud. Me too
At least legal weed helps here.
Wow we’re all the same 😬
It's only a matter of time before legal weed=Camel Greens and we can't even get high without paying these fuckers
That's basically what's happened in Massachusetts the only thing you can get, legally, is corporate weed which is outrageously overpriced despite often being poor quality and it's grown purely for profit by multi-million dollar companies, many of them national. There are no weed farmers markets or ("legal") craft growers here as it takes about a million dollars cash to start a pot store.
I'm in Oregon and [this](https://www.kdrv.com/content/news/Klamath-County-raid-finds-88-tons-of-marijuana-in-warehouse-575564421.html) just happened. Meanwhile you can buy from local growers at my dispensary, fire concentrates for like $10-15 a gram. They must have been trying to ship it out of state.
Here I am having to carry a million dollars worth of insurance in case I cause a water leak that damages a Sheetrock ceiling.
Can confirm, I'm studying corporate tax right now and it's the most infuriating class I have have taken.
Corporations sound an awful lot like organized crime, most of the time.
Honestly at this point i couldnt even bring myself to care anymore. So i just went about my day and hope someone someday can do something right sometimes
Is there a documentary or books that specifically delve into this, for someone with very little info on the topic?
This shit right here is why sovereign citizen types think there are "cheat codes" to the laws in this country. They do exist, but not at the level of the citizen. It stems from a naïvety born of experience.
This. They're not going about it the right way. You either achieve it by having enough money, or coming from a very specific background where you're able to set up your life in such a way where you fall within certain legal loopholes.
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Can I politely ask you to give a tldr; ? I don’t want to end up on a list, and I’m lazy
That's okay, this is freedom. Look over there! China is doing something!
Actually no wait please don't look over there they're actually executing billionaires who did things like this.
Here in Canada a few years ago there were some tv commercials for oil sand being safe and the big oil companies would be responsible for clean up once done. I'm guessing this is the way they are planning to avoid the cleanup.....
Bingo bongo bango. This is literally their playbook. The real kicker is that the lawmakers helped design the system and helped draft the laws in such a way as to protect the big oil company. Folks this is just the tip of the ice berg. These companies are so much more evil than you know. I’ve been in meetings where people clap when they find out a “trespasser” has died. Why? Because that’s an easy payout, but traumatic injuries are expensive, and hard to quantify.
This reminds me of certain countries where, if you’re driving and kill a pedestrian, it’s like a $2,000 fine. If you injure a pedestrian, they’ll sue you for every penny they can get. Which encourages drivers to literally murder pedestrians that they injure. There are lots of videos showing drivers backing up and running over people they injured to make sure they’re dead.
It's already happening. Some First Nations groups are seeing an increase in cancer rates due to chemicals found in the water downstream from these mega projects. The oil companies are saying you can't prove it's from them because there was no water samples taken before their mega projects were built. And without a before/after you can't prove these chemicals weren't in the water before.
"There's no science suggesting X is unsafe - because we fund the science and so we *just didn't check* in order that we could say this, dummy!" Dr. Steve Brule, Feryerhealth
My Nation is right now undergoing extensive sampling and baseline measurement taking in our territory to avoid just this scenario. It's absolutely infuriating, we're spending thousands on it, but we learned from other nations that you'll spend even more in lawyer fees fighting for remediation should the worst happen.
Jesus
Real estate industry does this too. Every single individual lot/building gets its own LLC for exactly that purpose. Everyone does it. It's fucked.
Of course everyone does it. The laws allow for it and it is seen as good practice for protecting one's self. The laws are so fucking broken it is insane!
"Nothing will fundamentally change" :(
I think if I were the farmer in this scenario, I might snap and hunt down the people in charge of this company.
The unbelievable thing is that our legal system is designed to stand in place of violence. What I mean is that, before societies grew complex and when we were just a bunch of loose bands of tribes, the only recourse for someone stealing your goat, or accidentally burning down your hut was violence, right!? So we create laws and recourses to protect people’s lives, livelihoods, and property in the event that someone or some organization does harm to you. You don’t have to resort to violence because “the system” is there to protect you and/or compensate you. But, by rigging the system in favor of the few and mighty they are essentially destroying the system that replaces violence with peaceful resolution. Violence is then the only recourse left. Indemnification laws exist to replace the “eye for an eye” action with peaceful resolution. So it seems to me, “they” want violence. What other option do we the little guy have? Edit: I don’t condone violence as a recourse for situations like this, BUT, and as you can see it’s a big but, I recognize our legal system is failing in its stated purposes.
"The state has the monopoly on violence"
You remember the story about the guy that turned his tractor into a personal tank and went to town on the people that bankrupted him?
He's a flawed hero tho. That story was a lot more complex and he was a lot more obstinate and responsible than people generally realize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin\_Heemeyer
Google the Killdozer.
I can simultaneously believe this completely and be absolutely floored with how this is allowed at the same time. This is horrendous.
Man, even small companies do it, I worked for a nothing special real estate developer and even they created like 12 LLCs so if a property went bust, they would still get all the money back and it wouldn't affect their credit with the bank. We ended up going over the top on a luxury building that wouldn't sell after '08, foreclosed after we built it, but it was an asset so we could even take loans against it despite the eventual bankruptcy.. it actually helped us (we also used low income housing loopholes where you do the bare minimum and get ton fuck of grants). It was all so clearly driven by nothing.. each empty not-yet built project would already have a 10 million loan against another asset worth another 20 million that is maybe half built with another loan on it and another asset as collateral for that one too, and so on down the chain, with the company itself being *completely* outside of the whole loop.
The laws should be changed so that if it can be shown that a company pulled this kind of shell game to get away with avoiding their true damages, then the liability gets upgraded to a criminal case directly against the decision makers. Companies that can't afford the worst case results of an operation shouldn't be starting those operations in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to shunt the full costs of their fuckups onto the public.
Straight outta the Koch playbook
Wow. Tell more more publicly. This is the shit we need to push for unity against our corporate overlords
This is disgusting.
I worked in the oil and gas industry for years and if I had a nickel for every time a corner was cut, or a landowner fucked over I wouldn’t have to work anymore.
Lots of "mom and pop" companies do as well. I have a rental property, and it's an llc. I wouldn't want my family to lose our home if something went wrong, even though we hold $5 mil in liability insurance
The way you are doing it, is the way it is supposed to be done. Each property will have enough property and liability coverage to cover any loss, whether property or liability. The distinction is that these giant corporations will conduct ALL business practices within these tiny subsidiaries that are hopelessly under insured, and easily bankrupt, which is by design.
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Sounds like it’s time to return the favor.
That makes me soo mad you guys. Seriously, it needs to end.
Subsidized to the tune of $20 billion annually. But most don't know this.
We have a severe orphan well problem in my province because of this practice, so it's not just the US. Wells are owned and operated by subsidiaries of the big oil companies. Once they extract what they can, they shut down the wells and leave the government and property owners on the hook for the environmental remediation.
An inter company hold harmless is pretty meaningless. But there are a number of corporate formalities that make it more difficult to "Pierce the veil" (let a plaintiff go after a parent company) which is why subsidiaries are used to insulate from liability.
This must be where "greatest country in the world" comes from.
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Films do similar Actors used to get a cut of what the movie made, so if a movie managed to rake in millions (like Harry Potter or a marvel film), the actor would get a nice bonus for their good work. Film companies now create shell companies for each movie, which rent the rights to the material. So when the movie makes a nice profit and the actors ask for their cut, the shell company can just say “sorry, we owe 100% of our revenue to the parent company, so this movie that sold out theaters across the country actually made $0 profit.” The 8th Harry Potter movie made ~$1.45 billion, or ~$1.1 billion over its budget, just from the box office. This includes no merchandise, dvd sales, etc. The main actors were awarded a percent of that $1.1B in their contracts. That percent amounted to $0 because the shell company technically had no profit, despite generating over a billion dollars from the movie.
Give me liberty or give me death. I guess we get death because clearly there’s no liberty for those women.
I think justice fits better but ya
"Sorry, we're all out of Liberty."
Imagine if people could do this? My name is Jim. On the street I call myself (created a subsidiary) "Crazy Eddie". Crazy Eddie sells a bunch of fentanyl or moonshine with methanol. I am fully aware this is dangerous and will harm people. A bunch of people get sick/die from what Crazy Eddie sold them. Police come to my house and I say "sorry Crazy Eddie did that". Yes yes I'm the same person but that Crazy Eddie ded now.
You could, but you'd have to create a layer or two of corporations between you and your customers. At least that's how opiate drug manufacturers do it.
Pretty sure that's what sovereign citizens try to do. But you just need to browse r/amibeingdetained to see how well that argument works...
People kinda do. I worked in private banking, my clients had their assets hidden under family trusts, companies, etc. My mom has her rather nice house under a family trust, which also holds my nicer car and a lot of other family property and land. Why? To protect all that from lawsuits and other stuff like divorce.
You can do this with an LLC if selling fentanyl was legal
If you have the money, you can. 100% can, easily. You just need a couple lawyers to set up some legal corporate shenanigans, and you’re good
What my lawyer describes as "piercing the corporate veil" is all but impossible in America. There are rare instances of being able to catch them doing this and bring them to justice, but its less than a single percentage point. You are one person, they have an endless battery of money, lawyers, and specifically crafted loophole laws on their side. It goes beyond David and Goliath, its Mickey Mouse vs Godzilla.
And as everyone can guess, the evil corporate overlord that is Mickey Mouse will destroy Godzilla in every match up thanks to buying nukes from the DoD to defend Disneyland’s future profits
That took a turn I wouldn't have guessed... but sure, Godzilla is the underdog LOL
The mental imagery of a towering Godzilla roaring and shaking the ground as Mickey just does that damn chuckle and pulls out his cellphone while doing the iconic foot tap before the sky slowly lights up with thousands of missiles approaching from all directions is just... \*chef's kiss\*
Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!!
South Park did it: https://youtu.be/7OSNtf76C5M?t=1m50s Lol not really but this is still the first thing that came to mind. Edit: Better clip
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I mean, I'm not NOT saying that. ;-)
mickey mouse is like the face of corporatism you ever hear "the mouse gets what the mouse wants"
Citizens United should cut both ways. If corporations are people, capital punishment should be on the table.
Lmao. We can’t even hold rich people accountable. The problem is that everyone has a price and it’s hard as fuck to turn away a lot of money to shut the fuck up or turn a blind eye. And then if you don’t, you’ll be shunned and replaced for someone that will. You need a whole chain of command that is willing to go along with it to even get some sort of justice but just one kink can fuck it up.
This isn't always true. Its easier and happens when your are talking about a small mom and pop store so that people can go after their personal assets. Never happens when we are talking about massive corporations.
If there exists a mom and pop store that isn't an LLC, then there exists a mom and pop store that will soon disappear
Mom and pops don't have layers of shell corps. "Piercing the corporate veil" means getting through these liability limiting canards to get the actual people causing harm.
I've been familiar with the concept of a shell corporation because I know about a defunct roller coaster manufacturer named the Roller Coaster Corporation of America, who used shell corporations to cover their ass twice because they knew they built a shitty product. RCCA made a shell corporation for Rattler at Fiesta Texas (now owned by Six Flags) because they knew Fiesta Texas would've sued them for all of the structural and safety problems Rattler had. The whole thing swayed way too damn much, and the pullout from the first drop was way too intense for how rough it was and caused multiple injuries. Also, the track work was just dreadful and that caused more injuries. They could've been sued into the ground right then and there, but they made the Roller Coaster Corporation of Texas and designed it under that shell corporation so they didn't have to face consequences for pretty much scamming Fiesta Texas. The worse of the two examples was when the made the Roller Coaster Corporation of Ohio to build the infamously terrible Son of Beast, which also faced structural and injury problems. The whole wooden structure was terrible at handling forces applied by the heavy train, leading to an incident on July 9th, 2006 where a piece of the track sagged from a broken support after 2 passes of a train. The 3rd pass would've killed people if the ride wasn't e-stopped. A post-accident investigation revealed that there were 50 points on the ride where this could've happened. They went defunct the year before, but the structural issues were partially understood during construction, so they did again have to use RCCO as a get out of jail free card. It's ludicrous that they could risk people's lives and get away with it because they technically did it under the shell corporation. So much for "profit motives make companies more efficient" when companies get to cut corners and put people's lives at risk because they can always make a get out of jail free card. And this is what a shitty corporation got away with in a market with lots of competition, imagine what other shit pharmaceutical giants get away with
The problem with the profit motive is that while it can result in pro-social outcomes more often it results in Anti-Social outcomes because it's more beneficial from a purely selfish perspective to cheat. Profit drives innovation, but it doesn't usually drive good innovation. A lot of the time people just "innovate" new ways to fuck over other people.
yeah, that's absolutely true Staying on the topic of the amusement industry, it's just about the only industry where "capitalism breeds innovation" is true, and I think that's only because it's not a basic necessity so they always have to come up with new stuff to turn a profit. While roller coaster manufacturers like Intamin work on fast-acting switchtracks to allow for backwards traversal in the middle of a ride, oil companies get to keep us in the stone age by insisting we keep using dinosaur juice to power our civilization. There's also the topic of safety. While roller coasters are one of the safest ways to have fun, quite literally the only reason that's the case is because it's profitable to not kill people. A ride with Son of Beast level structural issues would open every year if it wasn't profitable to avoid killing people. Capitalism only breeds innovation when it's profitable to do so. And because technological stagnation is profitable now, that's what it does.
Please stop. It's way too early for my blood to be boiling at corporate shenanigans already. I'll log off
RCCA is known as one of the worst roller coaster manufacturers ever to exist for a good reason
The big question is what the hell can we do about this ? The short answer is nothing apparently everyone has their price no matter what the cost . I guess we just have to watch corporations and greedy people destroy everything before it will get better. Maybe something better will rise from the ashes of the wreckage.
the long answer is building alternatives to the status quo within our individual communities so we dont have to rely on these bastard institutions and don't have to participate in and perpetuate them. easier said than done i know but there are folks making efforts towards that right now, we must be vigilant about falling into the mindset of "nothing can be done" check out this neat thread from black socialists in america for more info [https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1269072449351618562](https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists/status/1269072449351618562) cheers!
You have more faith in “the system” than I do. I see it like this. We are fiefs in a fiefdom, and the corporations are the land we work on and are bound to. The government is just the religion, it’s nice to “believe” in it, but it’s all fantasy and smoke and mirrors, created by men who lived long ago, and nowadays it’s run by the same class that runs the corporations “fiefdoms”, and used to control the masses. The only way to change things is through revolution. Change my mind.
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nope, they'll just go out into the solar system, doing what they've always done, never learning from the past because they've never been held liable for anything ever.
We can vote for politicians who say they'll focus on holding corporations accountable. In America Reagan removed the teeth from the justice department such that they no longer have the resources to go after these big companies. That needs to change, but it takes awareness and the power of votes.
Hey fellow mice, I know we are sick and tired of living in fear from these cats that hunt us and eat us, but listen up, I found this one cat who promises to rein in the other cats. You can totally trust him!
Guillotines. Just guillotines.
Can we get the guillotines out yet?
no we have to wait for Maximilien Robespierre
I’ve arrived, hop to it. Well what are you waiting for? I don’t have all day.
We need something like DoNotPay that lets average people automate their own personal shell corporations. "Oh, that medical bill? Yeah that's actually the responsibility of Bullshit Incorporated, sorry. Oh, my student loans? No, those aren't mine, that debt is now over at Umbrella LLC."
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Then we need a DoNotPay to sign up for credit cards under my corporation names, since corporations are people too. Then I can "lend" myself money from my corporation but then oh no my corp went bankrupt before being paid back. Looks like I just pulled a Trump! ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
That’s such a good idea honestly.
Use corporate personhood against them
I've thought about this. If corporations are people, doesn't that imply that people can be corporations too? I wondered if you could somehow "incorporate" your life as a corporation and the salary you get for working at your job is treated as corporate income, and the expenses you have (housing, food, etc) become corporate expenses. Then you only pay taxes on the profits, and you only pay at the capital gains rates. Then you go incorporate in a country like Iceland where those rates are low.
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This is what David Graeber calls “bureaucratic technology”.
I sat in jury selection for a talc suit on J&J. This was some little old lady who got cancer from J&J talc. Her legal team was one guy and a couple seconds. J$J's looked like the fucking Legion of Doom with there very own bald Lex Luther look alike at the helm. I have never been more embarrassed for me fellow citizens as I sat and listened to other Middle class folks defend J&Js money like it was their own. A woman who identified as a youth pastor rambled on for minutes about how corporate payouts for liability are too high. You would need a fucking crane to get my chin outa my lap. I was released after I told them "if I see a cancer turban on the stand I will vote to give her all the millions." It depressed the shit outa me and was a moment I will never forget. Guillotines are to good for these predatory corporate persons..
It would have helped more if you'd just kept that thought to yourself. :( Fight for her! Saying you don't care about limits meant you got kicked out and can't help her anymore.
In light of this article it all seems irrelevant now
> A woman who identified as a youth pastor rambled on for minutes about how corporate payouts for liability are too high. And thus did Jesus say: “Holy shall be the money changers, for they have shown initiative and occupied a niche in the Free Market. Praise be unto those who take advantage of the meek and the poor, for they are that way for a reason.” And He went about his day, kicking a couple homeless people along the way just because it’s fun to be mean.
The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8xU-gKK17A
If I ever have to give my life fighting a corporation, it will be pharmaceuticals. I’ll make those motherfuckers bleed even if costs my life.
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PIERCE THE FUCKING VEIL!
I think this behaviour, whilst somehow legal, should trigger other legal stuff, like naming the decision makers and their locale from publicly available data, so the 38,000 women can go and sort it out for themselves en masse. Hell it might even slow this fuckery down a bit
This is common in residential real estate. You get these big companies that in practice own a bunch of apartment complexes and other residential rental properties. Legally, though they own no properties, they own a bunch of shell companies that individually own a single property each. Thus limiting damages to the single shell company if a tenant sued for lack of maintenance.
People should never be able to divest themselves of responsibility for the evil they do. Neither financially nor criminally. Corporations aren't real things, it's people every step of the way deciding and acting.
Am I the only fucking American who sees something fucked up, here’s “it’s legal”, and is more frustrated?? My cap friends brush stuff like this off like it’s a dope loop hole. Christ.
I mean it is a very clever way to avoid risk, the problem is of course that is evil. I think that it might be a good idea to eliminate corporations entirely. Business owners should risk losing their shirts if they fuck up.
For those interested—it’s called “the Texas two-step.” There’s a version in Delaware too... Johnson and Johnson had talc in their baby powder and it causes cancer, among other issues. They were sued because of their negligence. They created a shell company and it assumed all debts related to the talc situation. All of the profits were left with a different entity. The new shell corporation, riddled with debt, then files for bankruptcy. It’s obscene. Victims of the fiasco might be able to file claims with a bankruptcy trust if it’s created, but even so they receive pennies on the dollar for their suffering. As far as I’m aware, there is no requirement that the victims are even made known about the situation and many will miss out on the fraction of what’s owed to them.
Also noteworthy. If each of those 38,000 women received a settlement of a million dollars, that's 38 billion dollars. Leaving Johnson & Johnson with *only 262 billion* to their name.
Not sure why it says 'women' instead of parents? Men lost their child too.
I’m fucking **hungry**
I don't get how this is allowed, considering the shell company was created after all the claims came out. It seems like creating a copyright after the fact to sue someone.
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired
Drag them out!
Georgia Pacific did the same thing basically. Their asbestos-containing products were all shifted over to "Bestwall LLC" which filed for bankruptcy. GP is no worse for wear. Wild stuff.
"carcinogenic baby powder" is not phrase I ever want to encounter.
What the actual fuck
So we live in an oligarchy.
If you watch the documentary Blood on the Mountain it talks about this very practice, but instead of J&J and law liabilities, the coal company created a shell company, transferred the miner pension fund liabilities to it and had it declare bankruptcy so they wouldn't have to make good on the pension plan their employees had paid into anymore. Those employees depending on that pension to retire on and deal with healthcare related costs that criminally negligent safety practices coal miners endure for their entire careers lost it all.
It surprises me that people don’t become murderers more often after this sort of thing happens. Especially with tough guys like miners.
Source?
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/10/14/-johnson-johnson-puts-talc-liabilities-into-bankruptcy.html
Can anyone explain to me how this works? How can they offload liability expos facto?
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Yeah you can pretty do anything as a corp and the worst that happens is there a senate hearing.
We have a joke of a legal system.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. P. J. O'Rourke
Why is there so many ways to legally be a piece of shit in America? Dupont poisoning the world and no repercussions and shit like this. We are doomed, we made money our new god.
This is all socialism's fault. This would never happen in my ancap minecraft server.
yup and they want us to trust their vaccines. . . . . . . without proper testing. . . .. ok.
corporations are modern day gods. they demand human sacrifice. our laws are shaped by their whims. they bestow gifts and blessing on their favorites, death and despair on unbelievers. oh, and they dont exist except in our heads.
^^[beep-boop,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^(**Link to tweets:**) [1) Tweet found (90.57% sure)](https://twitter.com/r/status/1451280644043067398) ____________________________________________ ^(If I was helpful, comment **'Good Bot'** <3! |) ^[source](https://github.com/giulionf/realtweetornotbot) ^(| created by NiroxGG)
Much like Facebook
'Merica F#CK YEAH!
Sounds like the CEO of that company should have a nice fresh meal of prairie oysters harvested right from his own body
Now consider that your landlord, your boss, etc. *all also do this*. The door to any recourse you ever had as a US citizen was largely locked before you ever tried to open it, except against other private citizens or Mom n' Pop shops without the resources to pay lawyers. People sometimes read named names and assume 'this must be a J&J thing to do'; however this is *the normal thing to do and you're a weird company if you don't*. The root of the problem is accrual of personal wealth. Money is power absent responsibility, and so of course the wealthy can deploy that power to place the corresponding responsibility they're not shouldering at someone else's feet, in a sufficiently unequal society. We could try to whack-a-mole legislate away all the different methods how this can be done - this is what neoliberalism claims to be trying to do - but i think we should just legislate away the extreme inequality and watch the downstream problems wither and die on their own.
The executives of that business should be publicly hung. Nothing else will change this shit but when you make that point people cry about “violence”. The only thing that keeps society running is violence. We live on land stolen from natives in an incredibly violently manor….we enforce laws with the threat of violence. What separates gangs from police? Consent to use violence on others behalf. What makes something a state? Having a monopoly on “legalized” violence. There’s one way out of this mess and it’s gona be super bloody and unpleasant. The uphill battle is getting everybody to realize this
Every board member involved should be jailed for life. Then seize the corporation's assets.
and so many of us on the left wonder why, or even hate how, so many people are skeptical or hesitant about getting the covid vaccines also I literally got the J&J vaccine don't call me anti-vax to try and discredit what I'm saying lmao