So, yes. All have deep ties with government through their regulatory apparatus (some would characterize this as "capture"). Also of note: people might be confused by tobacco's inclusion here if they don't realize that North America was essentially settled as a tobacco agribusiness (Spanish gold-hunting and death-trap religious colonies notwithstanding). Tobacco's role in shaping America's socioeconomic nature is massively underrated.
Take a nice drive through the Midwest/south, you'll see all kinds of branded barns used for drying tobacco... assuming they're still standing
I say this more to reminisce than anything. It used the big industry, not anymore. People either adapted or they didn't. Kentucky and Ohio for example used the be Big Tobacco. Now, in large parts - nothing.
There must be a billion corporations out there. What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it?
A tiny number.
And for the ones that can, it’s likely that there are strong ties to the same government that’s supposed to prosecute them. For Boeing, there are significant financial and contractual ties to the US government.
Having a steady stream of ultra-reliable government cash surely reminds you of a state department?
> What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it?
100% of the ones that are at, or near, the top of their domain. As the US and other developed nations move more towards Oligarchy, this describes a vast majority of the economy.
If you pick a domain, any domain, there's typically < 5 companies that represent almost 100% of the value in that domain. There're some exceptions, like tech, but not many.
Losing even just one of those companies therefore has catastrophic economic effects. So you can't lose them, or even really hurt their profit much, because what's good for them is good for you (you being the US economy).
Bayer Pharmaceutical famously gave thousands of people HIV, knowingly, instead of clearing their inventory. Who knows how many of those people went on to unknowingly spread HIV to their future children or partners. We literally can't measure how many people died of AIDS because of them.
But they're one of the most important pharmaceuticals out there. And we need drugs.
The root problem is that the rich and powerful[1] face no consequences for wrongdoing. It's endemic to every part of life, and nothing gets done about it because the rich and powerful make the rules. It really doesn't matter if they happen to be aligned with "Team Corporation" or "Team Government". They are equally unaccountable to justice.
1: Rich and Powerful are both the exact same thing since money is frictionlessly convertible to power and vice versa.
> the rich and powerful[1] face no consequences for wrongdoing.
Bernie Madoff. Jeff Epstein & Ghislane Maxwell. Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Holmes. Harvey Weinstein.
I get that sometimes you'll see things like Hunter Biden's tax issues being allowed to pass the statute of limitations, but a universal "the rich never face consequences" is just plain false.
can you list how many financiers were jailed after 2008 GFC ?
can you find any?
can you list how many people were jailed for engineering SARS-CoV?
heck, government hasn't even acknowledge that it was engineered and still pushes fairy tale about bat infecting pangolin who infected a chain of few other animals and then ended up in wet market - but no signs of viruses in 1000 miles between caves and wet market were ever found
Well, disregarding the bankers - generally we require evidence to be presented in a court of law and then those findings to be found true for people to go to jail - repeating stuff you read on the internet doesn't really rise to that level.
BP and Exxon have killed entire ecosystems including people. They lied for decades about the environmental effects of fossil fuels. Air pollution alone has conservatively killed hundreds of thousands of people. While you can't blame them for air pollution existing, you can blame them for intentionally suppressing the ability of people to mitigate it and improve air quality.
Are you joking? Once a corporation gets large enough, the worst they can get is a fine, which is usually a fraction of their income. This is how the system works.
For example, depending on how you calculate it, Merck killed between 3,000 and 500,000 people with Vioxx, and they knew the risks prior to releasing it. They got a fine. And now, the company is now doing just fine. No one was individually prosecuted.
If you have a corporate charter and billions of dollars, you have a license to kill.
