The average joe would be in jail or face a heavy fine if they are caught doing illegal activities like tax evasion or stealing. Corporations on the other hand perform illegal activities like tax evasion, fraud, wage theft or price fixing on a MUCH larger scale, MUCH higher impact to the society, and higher frequency, yet they almost always get away with barely a slap on the wrist (i.e. a laughably small fine which is less than pocket change, and zero consequences for the c-suite). Is it because it’s easier to prosecute individual average joe’s as opposed to multiple billionaires who probably has connections with the justice system and government?
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Unless the corporation or executives *really* screw up, there will be a level of disconnect, and thus plausible deniability, between the actions and the executives. That is, the executive will make unreasonable demands, such as budget constraints, on their subordinates, which eventually get translated to illegal actions to meet the demands. The executive, however, never actually ordered anybody to commit a crime, but its a natural fallout of the orders given. As such, you cannot really prove that the executives actually committed a crime – there is nothing illegal about demanding increasing profits on a reducing budget. Oddly enough, they is pretty much the same reason why mob bosses are hard to prosecute.
Combine that with corporations and the executives having enough resources to hire good lawyers to legally fight back against penalties that might be accessed, and its often cost prohibitive to get any real punishments dealt out. This generally leads to even easy cases getting settled for smaller amounts as its not worth spending years fighting it out in the courts.
Lobbying often leads to fixed value penalties, which may be severe for a small business or individual but trivial for a large corporation.
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