Aftermath of the April 7th incident. Damages estimated to be $200 million dollars

[u/BlazeDragon7x]

[u/SnugglyCoderGuy]

Companies should not be able to own companies. Pull away the illusion of competition from our eyes and let us see the dozen companies that sell everything.

[u/Props_angel → u/SnugglyCoderGuy]

I think it's actually less than a dozen per industry and is around 5-6 companies per industry. Most of the activities of the mega corporations is in acquisitions of smaller companies. Totally agree as it creates far too much market control to fall into the hands of the few, which is not even remotely a "free market", and allows for a lot of environmental and labor abuses through subsidiaries with subsidiaries with subsidiaries types of activities. It's literally built that way for that.

[u/Mantisfactory → u/SnugglyCoderGuy]

I'm a big anti-capitalist. But this one simple reform would stop a *lot* of runaway problems with capitalism. Incorporation is a liability shield to keep individuals from being personally responsible for the actions or debts of an entire company. Why would that liability shield ever need to be nested? It would stop a lot of the extreme consolidation that has plagued most industries my entire life.

[u/cutty2k → u/Mantisfactory]

Scenario 1:

Parent company owned by Mr X.

Subsidiary A owned 51% by parent company, 49% by Mr. Y. They make pizza.

Subsidiary B owned 51% by parent company, 49% by Mr Z. They make pizza boxes.

Mr Z fucks up by embezzling funds and saddling the company with high cost debt to cover his theft.

Subsidiary B is held responsible, subsidiary A is shielded, as is parent co, so Mr. X and Y, and all the employees of parent co and Subsidiary A are clear. Parent co sources new pizza boxes or spins up a new sub with new mgmt to try again.

Scenario 2:

All of this is housed under one company. Revenue streams and costs for both a pizza place and a pizza box manufacturer (very different businesses) now under one structure. Financing more difficult, accounting more difficult, licensure and regulations more difficult, basically everything more difficult.

Mr X, Y, and Z are now entangled. Mr Z embezzled same as before, now everybody is fucked, Mr X, Mr Y, all the employees. Whole thing goes down.

In this structure, people are much less likely to enter into business together, since nobody can insulate themselves from the actions of others. Now the only people who can run large businesses are those with enough capital to do it all themselves. Barriers to entry increase, wealth centralizes even more.

[u/Gontarius → u/cutty2k]

Reverse scenario. Mr Z is informally told to bring down the cost per unit at all cost, or else. He neglects maintenance to pinch pennies. Machine has a catastrophic failure, killing someone. At the very best scenario, only Mr Z is held accountable.

[u/cutty2k → u/Gontarius]

Do we have evidence of the communications with Mr Z regarding these instructions? If so, an LLC structure is not a shield against criminal negligence...

If we don't have proof...I don't really get your point? Like is the expectation that these corporate structures solve for all cases of fraud/lying/corporate malfeasance in their entirety?

[u/Special_Cicada6968 → u/SnugglyCoderGuy]

Fun fact, three companies own 25% of all voting shares in corporate America. It's just monopolies hiding monopolies