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http://www.corporatecrimerepor...

Fines or imprisoning CEOs do little to change the pattern of relationships and values and policies that make an organization what it is, any more than a human body loosing some skill cells or even brain cells usually changes how a person behaves very much.

Seriously, why should any corporate communications have any expectation of privacy? Corporations with "limited liability" are chartered for the public interest. 150 years ago, US Americans put such creatures on very short leashes because they had seen what trouble resulted from big British corporations in the American colonies. Individuals have now lost pretty much all informational privacy due to large corporations and the current internet. Why should bigger more powerful creatures than humans like corporation have more privacy in practice than humans? See also David Brin's "The Transparent Society". Any argument that corporations need privacy (like for salaries or payments for services) for some sort of commercial advantage is trumped by the public interest in understanding what corporations are doing and also that if all corporations were transparent there would be a level playing field. Granted, it would require new ways of doing business, but books like "Honest Business" also extol the value of "open books". Or perhaps corporations should be forced to choose -- if they want limited liability for shareholders then they need to be transparent; if every shareholder accepts full responsibility for all actions of the organization, then they can have privacy?

And see also my comments from 2000, the relevant section copied below (sadly a lot of links there have rotted):
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...

========= machine intelligence is already here =========

I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope
for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like
the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces
can destroy it. [Well, I now in 2014 think there are also other options, like symbiosis, maybe friendly AI, and in general trying to be nicer to each other like with a basic income in hopes that leads to a happier singularity...]

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component --
in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate
machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense
of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous
Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/
You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing
case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt"
their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival.

These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better
machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more
resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely
revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that
corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that
decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the
political/social process of its own ends).
http://www.adbusters.org/magaz...
Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is
in the best interest of *society* for corporations to exist.

But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug
on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it
will get harder when corporations don't ne

1) Just to be clear: There are NO 80 year old reactors. If Chicago-Pile 1 was still operating, it would turn 70 this year. The oldest currently operating nuclear reactor is the Oyster Creek facility. This reactor came online December 23rd 1969 making it 42 years old curerntly. This is according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Creek_Nuclear_Generating_Station

2) All NRC regulated reactors have maintenance performed on the systems every outage, to the point that much of the facility is newer than the day it turned on. This is due to maintenance and repair activity, as well as upgrades to improve efficiency. The article calls this "midlife refurbishment". The industry does this because it is easier and less costly than a new reactor. The thought process of the industry is that it is easier to tear down and rebuild under the existing license than it is to get approval for a new license. If the industry could feasibly replace a reactor vessel, I would bet they would.

3) ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section 3 is a good code. Creep, Fatigue, Corrosion, and many other issues are addressed in this code that the non-nuclear codes for B&PV only tough upon exotic need, and then refer the engineer to the section 3 code. I encourage you to read it.

4) Some reactor operators send material samples to the Advanced Test Reactor at the INL for accelerated radiation age testing. This information is sought by the reactor operators to gain a better understanding for themselves about their own equipment.

5) Reactors are designed for a much longer life than 40 years, but the NRC set the 40 year license to force a mid-life review. Reactors get far better treatment than any car or plane that most people have ever have ridden in. In this context, a 40 year old reactor properly maintained is very possibly not a safety concern.

6) The Davis-Besse RPV head mentioned by the article was a case of criminal conduct in the eyes of some people, and is not considered normal operating behavior by people I have met from the industry. Whatever the facts are, the indictment can be found here. http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/documents/indictment.pdf

7) Reactors designed to operated under the NRC have a "defense in depth" safety approach. The reactor and facilities are given a design basis accident that is a conservative forecasting of potential accident scenarios.

8) The NRC has a glossary available to you http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary.html note the term "meltdown" is not there. Many people associated with the nuclear field feel that it is a poor term that does not adequately describe a problem's behavior or severity. This is borne out of the use of the term for several reactor failures that all had different designs, behaviors, and severity of failure.

9) New reactor designs offer some stimulating improvements. The Generation 4 reactor effort can be found at http://www.gen-4.org/ currently the US is operating Gen 2 reactors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/business/in-shift-federal-prosecutors-are-lenient-as-companies-break-the-law.html
http://corporatecrimereporter.com/deferredreport.htm

Because in reality, the people composing a corporation are charged in cases of gross criminal conduct.

Here's your assertion. Back it up. And no, providing two examples of it happening does not indicate happening in all cases, as you assert.

And I notice you're still avoiding the main issue. Nit-picking much?

Wow. BSR. A corporate propaganda organization. Socially responsible business is a pipe dream in capitalist society. History of BSR.

Sigh, and said directors are the ones who are charged, not the company.

The idea that you would charge a company with a criminal act was absurd to me.

*Sigh* yerself...

Corporations CAN in fact be criminally charged. Directors MAY be culpable in the chargable actions, but they are not necessarily held criminally liable. Just ask RC Bottling in CA - the company was held criminally liable in the action, and fined over 1/2 million dollars, just a week ago. No directors or employees, or any individual within the company was charged. THE CORPORATION WAS CONVICTED OF CRIMINAL ACTS, AND FINED.

It may be 'absurd' to you, but it's the law.

But you don't get that, 'cause you won't let facts get in the way of the (false) opinions you hold.

The internet is your friend. You should think about using it. You know, for research. Just sayin' is all.

After all, if you want a low rate, why not prove it?

Imagine a world where a corporate CEO is required to wear a black box-like device. One that records their movements. Add mandatory tapping capabilities for their auditory system, vocal system, visual system, etc. The potential for a reduction of commonly unprosecuted crime and fraud is very attractive!

Rates would go down for more than simple insurance, 99% of the planet would enjoy a greatly improved life.

The incredible unlikelyhood of such a world is truly sad.

More profitable, sure. Less ethical? Give me a break. Are you actually claiming that a business operating by the principle of voluntary association (a law-abiding one) is less ethical than a business operating by the principle of force (the mafia)? How is that logically possible?

As for force, I will argue that the typical megacorporation uses force quite frequently. Take SCO, for example, offering no proof they are demanding money from users of Linux. They are using their superior lawyers to force people with inferior lawyers (or no lawyers at all) to give them money. How, exactly, is it different for a corporation to say "If you don't give us $699 Jones, Smith, Brown & Jones will sue you until you bleed from the eyeballs" than it is for a mobster to say "If you don't give us $699, Vinnie here is going to break your kneecaps"?
I have no more chance of standing off SCO's lawyers than I would have a chance of stopping Vinnie. In terms of legal power I'm completely helpless and they exploit that helplessness ruthlessly. Force is force, getting your life broken in court is really no different from getting your kneecaps broken in a back alley somewhere. Our US legal system offers very little help to the victim in either case... Again, thanks to rented politicians carefully removing all the legal protection they can from the average (non-billionare) citizen.

I would like you to expand on the "voluntary association" point you made earlier, I'm afraid I can't follow your meaning there.

He gives the Free software community a bad name, and with him on the forefront, Free software will never be part of corporate america (which is becoming more and more synonymous with America itself.)

You say that like it's both true and a bad thing. It is neither.

It's clearly untrue because some of the largest corporations in the world run free software and work hard to change the licenses to their software to become free software licenses.

It's a good thing that corporations are working with us as equals, rather than masters, because it means we can work with them or compete against them as we choose. This is one of the big differences between the open source movement and the free software movement--the open source movement was formed specifically to speak to businesses whereas the free software movement was formed to give computer users software freedom. As a citizen and computer user, I know which movement is more aimed at my interests and those of society as a whole.

I would not want more situations where corporations dominate over and exploit citizens and small investors (Among US corporations the list of corporate abusers, most of which are apparently insufficiently punished so as to deter future wrongdoing, includes Wal-Mart, MCI/Worldcom, Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco). But don't take my word for it.

A corporation is a legal fiction What does this mean?

My corporation owns my store. If a person slips on the pavement outside my store, they may sue.

They can sue the corporation. They can't sue the stockholders. You, as an individual, are absolved of responsibility by the state; all you can lose is your investment in the company, even if you were woefully negligent.

(And yes, we do live in an overly litigous society, that's certainly not debatable! But it's irrelevant to the point at hand.)

Corporations do a lot of good for individuals that you probably overlook.

Some do. Some commit horrible crimes. Corporate crime kills more people than street crime, but you can't arrest a fiction. Of course incorporation doen't create evil; but it creates a means and an environment that is condusive to it.

The stock options provided by my former employer (The Home Depot, a huge satanic babykilling corporation, right?) paid for our store and the adoption of our son.

You got paid by your former employer. Great. I'm supposed to be impressed that part of that payment was in the form of lottery tickets that happened to pay off for you??? (As stock prices have become more and more divorced from the actual value of a company, stocks have ceased having much to do with investing.)

It's very nice and all - I make a nice win for myself when a former employer went public, then got bought out. Doesn't mean that Trusted Information Systems or Network Associates is an ethically commendible organization, or that the legal concept of a corporation isn't badly flawed, just because stock went up and we got paid. There's no more altruism in a stock option than in a regular paycheck - oftentimes less. ("Rather than pay you $10 an hour, I'll pay you $8, and you can buy a $1 lottery tickey from me for 50 cents.")