I've just had a strange thought that I am mentally playing with and I want to shoot it out to the community and see what comes back.
According to currently held law structure (as dictated by decisions like Citizens United) corporations are people. They have the same functional rights as people whether they are for profit or not. As much as this idea galls me, what is worse is that while a person (a human being) may be punished for crimes there is no structure for the punishment of a group which parallels the possible punishments of persons.
What if we applied the 3-stikes laws to corporations? People breaking the law as part of corporations are given 3 chances with gradually escalating punishments but whereas the punishment for a person whose third strike has come and gone is dis-association from their fellow man (effectively putting them away forever), the third strike for a company would be losing the freedom of association within. Every asset of a company which has broken the law three times must be sold immediately or some other equally draconian under-taking. I can see this as the only functional method for controlling corporate persons.
According to currently held law structure (as dictated by decisions like Citizens United) corporations are people. They have the same functional rights as people whether they are for profit or not. As much as this idea galls me, what is worse is that while a person (a human being) may be punished for crimes there is no structure for the punishment of a group which parallels the possible punishments of persons.
What if we applied the 3-stikes laws to corporations? People breaking the law as part of corporations are given 3 chances with gradually escalating punishments but whereas the punishment for a person whose third strike has come and gone is dis-association from their fellow man (effectively putting them away forever), the third strike for a company would be losing the freedom of association within. Every asset of a company which has broken the law three times must be sold immediately or some other equally draconian under-taking. I can see this as the only functional method for controlling corporate persons.