How Bad Antitrust Enforcers Kill People
So in my younger days I was a full blooded libertarian especially economically, I was 100% against all government regulation. &quot;You don&#x27;t want lead in your meat, well then you do your research and stop buying meat with lead in it&quot;, I took positions that were pretty extreme by most standards, and I would stay I am probably still a little more out there than most people when it comes to opposing government regulation.<p>My reason for this was rooted in a deep and abiding belief in the supreme importance of individual liberty, &quot;the government should only stop me from doing something that directly hurts somebody otherwise all government power leads to tyranny in one form or another at the end of the day&quot; was the train of my thoughts at the time. I extended this to the economy because I viewed the government regulating business as a violation of my right to conduct my business however I want, &quot;I own the business, I own the assets, it is my money that has been used to build up this business and some useless paper pushing bureaucrat can go shove it all for telling me how to run my business, its my property to use how I want.&quot; and I still hold to that to a large extent.<p>However recently I have been reflecting on the situation of powerful corporations recently, especially monopolies (which are more often aided and abated by government involvement than kept in check) and I think that I have discovered a fallacy in my thinking. I agree to live in a society and enjoy the benefits of a society in exchange for choosing to surrender my ability to exercise all possible freedoms I have. Implicit in this agreement however is that if I choose to violate the principles of this agreement by harming someone else for example, I will then be held accountable for that action and whatever comes from it.<p>With corporations that is not the case, when a corporation violates someone&#x27;s enjoyment of life, liberty, or property there is no real accountability on anyone. There is no one to actually take the fall, they may be fined, but there is no one that is directly accountable, not the CEO, no the Board, the closest thing to an accountable group is the shareholders, which really just means random people&#x27;s 401ks held under the trust of one of the three big money managers.<p>Ultimately it all comes back to the idea that a corporation has personhood, should a corporation be given personhood, and as extension the same liberties as a person if they do not also share the same accountability. We could say if a corporation breaks the rules that results in someones death then we &quot;kill&quot; the corporation by forcing it into bankruptcy, but that ends up punishing hundreds of innocent people that had nothing to do with the fact that Bill the VP of Product line X, who bribed regulators to sign off on shampoo that causes cancer.<p>I would welcome some pushback or opinions though on that train of thought, it just seems to me as long as no one faces significant personal risk, there should be no one allowed to exercise the same rights as an individual.