> Confiscate the shares. No compensation
This is better than corporate death penalties but still more complicated than fines. Massive fines are the answer.
> Solves the “too big to fail” problem as the company continues to exist, the ceo ends up in jail and the owners end up broke
So do fines and bankruptcy. CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits. Feed them to the wolves.
> CEO won’t go to jail, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives fighting shareholder lawsuits.
One important lesson to be learned from the past 20 years: if you're sued, don't go to court. If you're dragged to court, say "fuck you, I'm not going and I'm not paying." If you have enough money, they literally will not do anything. They'll just have endless sham court cases that you're free to ignore and there will never be any consequences.
Alex Jones is up to a few billion dollars in settlements against him. He's had court cases against him for, what, over 10 years now? He's still running his show, still getting money, and he's openly mocking the courts. Judges don't care. Whatever people work in the frameworks that allegedly exist to enforce judgments don't care. They're getting their salary either way.
I think you're reading the wrong lesson from this. If someone cares enough to take you down, your strategy isn't just useless, it's actively harming you. It's a "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law" situation.
A better lesson is that you can be "on the radar" but far enough from the central hotspot that you are not a priority. Alternatively you need someone to have your back and be your heatshield while you keep trudging along.
The actual takeaway here is the newly formed Soviet United States of America.
The issue mentioned above around how justice works has always been a problem in the US. Justice isn't blind, or fair. Best justice money can buy. The current administration just went all out for this.
The soviets had better healthcare funding and lower rates of homelessness. We may be collectively richer than the soviets, but our state hates us more, and the people who run most of this privatized country (ie, capitalists—board members, executives, and rich shareholders) have more contempt for us than soviet politicians and apparatchiks ever could muster.
I personally don't understand what makes executives so special that they are exempted from the same sort of criminal proceeding the average Joe is faced with. By all accounts they hold these lofty positions precisely because they can (and should) be held responsible for their company's dirty deeds.
A fine is low stakes because the company more likely than not will have a way to recoup that loss. There is an obvious calculus to that which is practically a cliché to mention. A lawsuit just puts it on the people to succeed in civil proceedings at their own expense, over a potentially lengthy period of time.
Western countries like the UK and US tend to be quite soft on businesses engaging in practices that would land an unremarkable working class person in prison if they were caught doing the same.