Jobs versus Death Toll: Calculating Corporate Death Penalties

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2019/february/jobs-versus-death-toll-calculating-corporate-death-penalties.html

Jobs versus Death Toll: Calculating Corporate Death Penalties

By Allison Mills | Published 4:59 p.m., February 18, 2019

Is there a threshold an entire industry crosses when it does more harm than good? Michigan Technological University researchers set out to examine the question with numbers.

A new paper published in the journal Social Sciences (DOI:10.3390/socsci8020062) explores two case studies focused on industries that kill more people than they employ. The study lays out the rationale for establishing an actionable threshold and offers insights into solutions. Using case studies, it calculates the number of deaths attributed to the coal and tobacco industries and finds surprising results.

The Value of Life and Employment
Joshua Pearce led the study and is the Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering as well as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech. He explains that he first became interested in the idea of “corporate death penalties” — disbanding or eliminating companies following judgement by governmental justice systems — during a study that determined the number of American lives saved from converting from coal-fired electricity to solar. Pearce wondered at what point do the number of deaths caused by an industry become too many for society to tolerate.

“The unwritten rule with industry is you get to make money if you’re a benefit to society,” Pearce said. He adds that most industries are primarily good. However, numerous studies have documented increasing corporate corruption and the externalized costs of environmental and health impacts that can lead to human mortality. For industries that do cause extensive harm, and perhaps warrant an industry-wide corporate death penalty, identifying that threshold requires an apolitical, clear and concise metric based on public data.

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[eppur_se_muova]

1. "Corporate Death Penalty" is one of my favorite phrases.

If Uglicans can say that corporations are people too, and are all gung-ho about the Death Penalty, then they can't be allowed to argue against a corporate version of the same.