Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Make Gun Companies Pay Blood Money [View all]Robb
(39,665 posts)Their business model has come to depend upon that unsafe, illegal use of their legal product.
As I've explained, these corporations benefit the most when their products are used illegally. They sell a perfectly legal product that's easy to misuse, and they've taken no steps to mitigate that misuse because they've got zero incentive to do so -- because it would cut into their profits.
They become responsible when they profit from that misuse to such an extent it's clear that, if not intentionally encouraged on their part, the act of omission in discouraging becomes too great to ignore.
Let's move it away from guns, because I know it's difficult to be objective. To widgets!
Imagine Corporation X makes a widget that is perfectly legal, and has two functions: Function 1 and Function 2. Function 1 is legal and everyone agrees it makes society better, Function 2 is illegal and everyone agrees it makes it worse.
But every time Function 2 is performed, an additional 30% profit is added to the bottom line of Corporation X's balance sheet. Corporation X will not take any voluntary steps to discourage Function 2, because it increases sales; quite the contrary, a pure business model would practically require encouraging Function 2, to the extent allowed by law.
But since we know Function 2 makes society worse, we can encourage Corporation X to take its own steps to help mitigate Function 2 by imposing fees that penalize it every time Function 2 is performed.
Corporation X then has a new calculus to consider: can it affect the occurrence of Function 2 by changing its products slightly? And, more importantly, will the cost of those changes be less than the fees imposed by simply continuing business as usual?
This is how we get things like clean air standards, MPG, less toxic waste being dumped in the yard, and employees taking valuable time out of their day to wash hands or learn safety. None of those things improve a corporation's bottom line until regulation makes it so; that's really all this is.