gian

I will preface this comment with a change in my opinion when it comes to semantics, I think my 2-5% range is too low after researching a bit more, I would be much more in favor of 5-15%, but the remainder of my point stays the same.

I don’t think so. It’s not that the massive fines committed to Apple and Google make them change the CEO.>

Which fines are you referring to, in my opinion the biggest problem that we currently have is that there are realistically no penalties for breaking the law.

The one’s for GDPR violations.

Just doing a quick Google search, apple made about 400b in revenue last year, and apple just had a 2b fine from an antitrust lawsuit. Applying the 5% fine, that 2b would become 20b which equates to 20% of their annual earnings for that year.

If we applied the 50% penalty that started this thread, that becomes a fine of 200b which means, using the apple example, that the company loses 100b when they get down to their earnings.

Which is the whole point. If the fine is too low to be threatening, it could be write off as just “cost of business” there is no incentive to stay on the right side of the law.
In your example the only thing that would happen is that apple would pay less dividend to the shareholders which, while I admit is something that could be a problem for them, in my opinion is not enough, considering the number of people affected.

I could care less if apple, after a due process, go bankrups because it break the law: if your only way to stay afloat is breaking the law, then you can fail, be you apple or Jim’s little forniture shop. And that because while you break the law and survive you are fucking all your clients and all the other companies that follow the law.

Obviously the law must be simple enough to follow so that for Jim’s furniture shop is not a problem nor a too high cost to respect it, but it must be clear that if you break it you can cease to exist as company.

This is the reason why I feel like 50% is too much, if one privacy court case in one country is enough to bankrupt a company, no company would ever attempt to provide a service that is remotely adjacent to that law: in my mind, some of the services that would cease to exist would include search engines, payment processors, and email newsletters.

No, the companies will simply follow the rules of the country they operated in.
Even now the payment processors are subjected to regulations that if applied to apple, google or facebook would make them close their business, for example.

All in all, I think that the penalty should be a fine, because realistically this is a civil matter, and I am not a big proponent of jail time without a criminal conviction.

I do not want jail time for the CEO by default but he need to know that he will pay personally if the company break the law, it is the only way to make him run the company being sure that it follow the laws.

And that because in the end the CEO is the ultimate decision maker in the company and I don’t really think that he must be able to hide behind the “I don’t know” facade. I don’t belive the situation where something being a big liability for the company is not approved by him.
(I used the CEO, but it could be the board members or any other entity that run the company).

This also means that on the high end bankruptcy will loom over any company that has 2-3 privacy issues in any given year.

The question then is: why a company should have 2-3 privacy issue a year ? I can get the first one, but the second ? Or the third ?
I mean, you get caugth one time, why you as a company think that you can continue that way ?
And I am not speaking about a perfect nobody that cite apple for privacy violation and the judge automatically apply the fine, a due process is required, but big violations of laws like the GDPR or equivalent. And even if it is the perfect nobody, why after the first time you got caught you do not change your way ? Why a company that break the law should be able to continue the break the law just because if it even caught it is the next fiscal year if not later (at the end of the process and various appeals) ? More specifically, why a company that cannot survive without breaking the law should be able to continue to operate ?

Addendum: if you were wondering, about the numbers for 15%, the earnings in 2024 for apple would be 35b or a 37% decrease, and for Google it is 47.5b or a 48% decrease.

Which is a good start but nothing that cannot considered when doing a budget, so no real danger here.

When NASA was developing the rocket to go to the moon (the Apollo V) they had their large shares of failures, exactly like SpaceX is having now while developing Starship (and before it, the Falcon 9) which is even more complex and bigger than the Apollo V.

this is a specious comparison. NASA was racing the soviets using 1950 and 60’s tech, and it cost lives, but there was a driving motivation for the tempo (kennedy’s goal of humans on the moon first). There’s no contemporary equivalent. And no NASA director was EVER ON HORSE DRUGS. Period.

Your comparison is invalid.

Only if you could link the fact that Musk is on horse drugs with the fact that Starship explodes.
The starting point was that I dismissed the point that Musk is ruining SpaceX (since Starship’s test are not that good) and the fact that he is on drugs.

Nor did any NASA director ever try to manage multiple fortune 500 companies WHILE on ketamine while DANCING AROUND WITH A CHAINSAW and fucking with our government.

I don’t see the problem: NASA was a state agency, SpaceX is private.
What I can see from here is that Musk is doing the right thing (trying to make the government more efficient and cheaper) using a completely wrong method, to which I agree.

Wait, do you really think that Musk is the one that is doing all the jobs at Tesla and SpaceX ?

No, I think he’s distorting the work of thousands of talented people (Shotwell down) for EGO. If he truly cared he’d step down.

I don’t think it could do it anymore, at least not to the level you think.

Musk represents a larger threat to SpaceX and NASA and the US than any potential benefit to those same parties.

I am not sure. What I think from here (Europe) is that, as I said, Musk is doing the right thing in the wrong (very wrong) way if we speak about DOGE. If we speak about SpaceX and Tesla, well, it don’t seems to do that bad after all.

Which is the whole point of the enormous fine and jail time.
If the penalty could be treated as a simple “cost of doing busineess” there is no incentive to stay in the right because if you ever got caught it is not that big problem.

And I don’t see a problem if a company doing illegal things to survive will bankrupt once they get caught while doing it.

but realistically with 2-5% fines, any ceo will be removed from their company after the first or second offense, and the company will bankrupt if they sustain more than a couple fines in a year.

I don’t think so. It’s not that the massive fines committed to Apple and Google make them change the CEO.

is not that NASA when developed the rocket that culminated with the Apollo V did not even had a rocket exploding

dude english, wtf is this sentence even supposed to say? are you an LLM?

Nope, just a regular guy that do not speak English as first language.

But let me rephrase it, even if i am sure you understand what I mean.
When NASA was developing the rocket to go to the moon (the Apollo V) they had their large shares of failures, exactly like SpaceX is having now while developing Starship (and before it, the Falcon 9) which is even more complex and bigger than the Apollo V.

Then that Musk is sometime a little too borderline is true, but I suppose that now he cannot really ruin any of his companies, for whatever you can think about him I really doubt that he is that stupid.

again with the word salad. english better be your third or 4th language.

You are right. But again, I am sure you understand what I mean, but ok, let me rephrase also this.
Musk is sometime too borderline but I suppose that actually he really don’t want to ruin his companies because, for bad as you can think about him, I think is not that stupid.

if you doubt his stupidity, then evaluate the logic of doing large amounts OF HORSE TRANQUALIZER WHILE MANAGING MULTIPLE COMPANIES AND LAUNCHING ROCKETS.

Come on, make that one make sense word salad llm

Wait, do you really think that Musk is the one that is doing all the jobs at Tesla and SpaceX ?
Again, you can think what you want about Musk himself, but the track record for SpaceX (over 250 launch in 2024) and Tesla (it demostrated something that every other car manufacturer deemed impossible) does not seems too bad.
And I would like to have an estimate about the “large amounts”

But feel free to attack my grammar and hate Musk.

The issue I have with the “just don’t do anything illegal” argument is that depending on how the illegality is defined, it can be used as a tool for bad actors. Take for instance something like the afformentioned 50% penalty with mandatory jail time for repeat offenders, if I decided that jim’s furniture store shouldn’t exist anymore, I would only need to find some tiny thing wrong with their data handling, like for instance, assuming this specific hole exists, that they asked for contact info before it’s needed for purchase verification. Now they may lose on this minor infraction, and pretty much any small business will die a horrible death without half their revenue.

Got your point, unluckyly every law can be abused if not based on hard evidences (and even in this case it is not bulletproof). And of course it is not automatic so a due process is obviously necessary where you need to prove that Jim is in the wrong.
But we already have similar laws here and they seems to work pretty well.

Meanwhile the mega corps will likely find some workaround do to their high priced lawyers, but even assuming we make a rock solid definition, they still just cycle the ceo immediately,

For the mega corps the real threat is the fine, the mandatory jail time for the CEO (or the board members or whoever is in real control) is only a way to have the people who need to control to make their work. A company, big as you want, is not some abstract entity where things where done by some abstract figure. In the end there is always someone who approve everything and the CEO (or the board) is the ultimately responsible.

Just imagine how much control the shareholdes would make on Zuckemberg if they know they are one lost court case from losing half their money.

And no, rotating the CEO is useless, criminal charges are personal so if you as CEO make something illegal and then quit, your charges do not trasfer to the new CEO.

because no one will want to be an active ceo when they are one court case from jail.

Then he will check what the company do. He want the big buck, it is right it also has the accountabilty.

2. Yes, a law can define whatever fine you want and timeframe to pay.
3. Fine, not the CEO but the executive board members, it does not matter. The point is that who has the control and the benefit should also carry the risk. You get big buck from the company ? Fine, if your company do something illegal you pay the price.

Simple:

1. make “no” the default answer when asking
2. massive fine, in the order of 50% of total revenue, the first time you get caught to be paid before the eventual appeal, which if lost raise the fine by 50%. If not paid in 90 days, the CEO goes to jail until it is paid. From now on for 2 years the company must show that it follow the law.
3. mandatory jail time for the CEO the second time you get caught with no option for parole or any other alternative sentence like a fine or whatever.

Or any other solution where the eventual punishment cannot be considered just business cost.

I know, almost impossible… :-(

Stop cutting their funding

Stop electing stupid people and maybe you will get something.

and saying the earth is flat

Stop treating every opinion as worth of discussion even if it is clearly stupid.

and that global warming is a myth.

Start to propose some reasonable solutions and start to pass over the NIMBY syndrome.
(and no, only stopping to use ICE cars or fossil fuel is not a reasonable solution until you propose a sustainable alternative solution)

Wait a minute. It is not that NASA when developed the rocket that culminated with the Apollo V did not even had a rocket exploding, they had their fair share of failures (and some even letal).

But the main difference is that SpaceX and NASA have different approaches: NASA cannot, for various polical reasons, tolerate a rocket exploding during a test, SpaceX can.
I would argue that NASA, in its current incarnation and political situation, would never be able to design, build and manage something like the Falcon 9.

So Musk is not ruining SpaceX with the Starship failures in my opinion, since it is inherent to SpaceX that way to work.

Then that Musk is sometime a little too borderline is true, but I suppose that now he cannot really ruin any of his companies, for whatever you can think about him I really doubt that he is that stupid.

Just for the record, even in Italy the winter tires are required for the season (but we can just have chains on board and we are good).

Double checking and it doesn’t seem like it? Then again I don’t live in Italy. Here in Sweden you’ll face a fine of ~2000kr (roughly 200€) per tire on your vehicle that is out of spec. https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/travelling-motor-vehicles/motor-vehicles/winter-tyres-in-europe.html

Well, I live in Italy and they are required at least in all the northern regions and over a certain altitude in all the others from 15th November to 15th April. Then in some regions these limits are differents as you have seen.

So we in Italy already have a law that consider a different situation for the same rule.

Granted that you need to write a more complex law, but in the end it is nothing impossible.

…and thus it is much simpler to handle these kinds of regulations at a lower level. No need for everyone everywhere to agree, people can have rules that work for them where they live, folks are happier and don’t have to struggle against a system run by bureaucrats so far away they have no idea what reality on the ground is (and they can’t, it’s impossible to account for every scenario centrally). Even on a municipal level certain regulations differ, and that’s completely ok!

So it is not that difficult, just write a directive that say: “All the member states should make laws that require winter tires in every place it is deemed necessary”.

I don’t really think that making EU more integrated is impossibile

It is not that living in EU remove our right to criticize what we think is not working.

And currently there is a lot that not work in EU, or that can work way better.

Member states are forced to comply with legislation passed by the EU, even if a majority of the citizens of a state do not want to implement it. Technically there are two other options - sufferimg massive fines and punitive actions by the EU, or leaving. I’d rather not have to endure either of those, so instead I complain, loudly, online, to politicians, MPs and MEPs.

Member states are forced to comply with legislation passed by the EU writing their own laws. An EU directive has no effect in Italy unless a law that acknowledges it is enacted. True, we must write a law that implement the directive but it is not an automatism.

It includes “compliance with EU regulations” which in this case is soon going to involve redirecting and tracking visitors to sites such as thepiratebay.

Which are already required, in a form or another, for every EU member, so ?

That depends on what you mean by integrate. There are many clear examples where it makes no sense to enforce homogenous legislation. Europe is a big place, and it makes sense to have different systems in different places.

No, there are no place where it make no sense. Granted that you need to write a more complex law, but in the end it is nothing impossible.

Take tires for instance - in the Scandinavian countries we require winter tires for the season, something which would make no sense in Italy for instance.

Just for the record, even in Italy the winter tires are required for the season (but we can just have chains on board and we are good).

you just defend his right to run spacex on specialK.

Is not the US “the land of the free” ?
Obviously he has the right to run SpaceX, like you have the right to try to build another one.

But obviously you seems to not understand what are the implication of setting this kind of precedent and all the implications that will arise. But that’s ok, after all the only important thing is to hate Musk.

I strongly suspect NASA can manage spaceX better than the ketamine kid. Why don’t you give a fuck about those astronauts who have to put their faith in his hardware? why don’t you give a fuck about the kids who are growing up in an age where that drug addled prick is put up as an icon of success?

ROTFL, SpaceX managed 259 launch in 2024, show me how many launch managed NASA, if they are more than maybe you are right, else…

The only reason SpaceX exists is because Boeing and Lockheed managed to compete so badly the only solution was to merge their launch businesses.

To compete even worse

Then make it work.

What people seem to be missing is the precedent this would set. It’s all well and good when we empower the office of the president to seize a private company we don’t like, but after we give them that power what’s to stop them from seizing other businesses?

XYZ company refuses to get rid of their DEI policy because the shareholders voted to keep it? Well now the orange man can seize it.

The problem they don’t see is that once a precedent is set, also the other party can do it. What you point out is valid also like “XYZ company refuses to establish a DEI policy because the shareholders voted agains ? Well not the democratic president can seize it”.

Let’s not forget that previously it took 2/3rd majority to confirm presidential appointments, but the Senate under Obama decided to change that rule to 50% to get past Republican objections. The result of this is all these shit appointments Trump has passed with 51% of the Senate, none of them would have gotten by if the Democrats hadn’t made a precedent for changing the rules.

Tipical case of not looking beyond one’s nose

Right. Now go back to live in a cave.