Thousands of children and adults were automatically terminated from Medicaid and disability benefits programs by a computer system that was supposed to make applying for and receiving health coverage easier.
I wish the law got rewritten for companies so that it's more of revenue + assets of the top level execs personally + the company as well. I know it isn't going to happen, but I could dream.
Honestly executives and board members who receive performance bonuses and golden parachutes should carry extra liability, such that these perks can be denied or even clawed back (and used to help the damages) when their decisions have these sort of outcomes. Nothing wrong with making more when things go well, but if you're going to take a larger piece of the pie, then you need to be prepared to take a smaller piece when things go wrong (aka, cut executive pay before layoffs, etc.).
I've always said that I won't believe corporations are people until the state of Texas executes one, and the state of Alabama forces one to go through with an unviable business venture.
TBF fines do more than that, they tank stock value if the company is publicly traded. That makes stockholders mad at the corporate leadership and threatens their jobs.
That's like saying "putting a murderer to death doesn't bring the victim back".
Like, okay. And? Restitution is not the point of penalties like these, it's to punish the perpetrators and deter others from doing the same in the future.
That seems like a pretty weak consequence, and not an intended one. Worse, it's one likely to be least impactful for the worst offenders - a megacorp isn't going to care much about fines, and the market won't see any danger to their investment in them.
If Mark Zuckerberg keeps breaking the law and gets Meta constantly fined, tanking the stockholder value, heck yeah he's gonna be out of a job. That's a relatively big consequence as far as consequences go.
I certainly hope that happens. But it's not a reliable enough consequence to justify the currently low level of fines, which was how I read your earlier comment.