I have been reading up about the BP gulf oil spill and the sheer amount of cover ups they were involved in, thousands of people became ill with permanent ailments due to bp lying about side effects and refusing to give out the proper safety manuals.
Billions of dollars in damages to the local industries.
Incalculable damage to the ecosystem.

But this was all pretty much certain to happen under the current system where corporations have no real responsibility to do anything that does not benefit shareholders and where doing the right thing can actually be illegal.
I find corporatism to be worse than evil, an evil man has some defect that causes him to do bad things, a corporation does it because they are encouraged to do pretty much anything they can get away with that makes money.
If the fine is less than the potential profits most corporations have zero problems with breaking the law, often they do not get caught at all but when they do they quite likely get a slap on the wrist over it.
We had one of the australian too big to fail banks recently caught giving investment advice that was great for the bottom line of the bank but terrible for the people it was advising, they got a ~$1.6 million fine and potential profits are estimated to be over 300 million.

These days the biggest evil in the world to me is an entity that does not see itself as evil but one that is capable of doing evil but not culpable for doing evil.

Corporate personhood is probably the biggest issue here, a corporation has a voice but that voice is not liable for literally any damage done by the entity, often there are zero repercussions whatsoever for ceo's and executives who break the law, they just hide behind the company.

i mostly agree, but there is another side here
weak states that let this happen, controlled by bought politicians and the people that vote for them again and again

Most western nations are now oligarchies ruled by the rich.

?? When was western civilization ruled by the poor ??

They are now, and they always have been.

The poor's votes used to matter a lot more, these days politicians do not care what their electorates want.

I guess things are going wild when the political power is full of millionaires & billionaires, and when the law have lobby flaws that never got fixed...

Blame the government, not the corporations. A business's #1 goal is to create growth and profit for their shareholders. It is the government who is supposed to look after its people and ensure businesses don't do anything to harm their people, which includes allowing businesses to function and make money to generate tax revenue, etc.

Corporations will drink the alcohol that the government pours. No alcohol to drink, no alcohol to spill, so to speak. I could give hundreds of examples, but here are a few:

1. The US permits Enron to use Mark to Market accounting, which allows them to book future revenue today and report it to their shareholders before it's in the bank. You'll see similar types used today such as VSOE among others, but Mark to Market is essentially what allowed the Enron scheme to ramble on for 2-3 years longer than it should have.
2. The US permits banks to put relatively unsafe low credit score mortgage loans into double and triple A rated bonds, far different than the ones in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, they allow these banks to overleverage to the point that if loans default, they'll never be able to pay them back. THEN they allow AIG to insure these for far beyond what AIG would be willing to pay back in the event of a crisis. Thus, 2008 happened.
3. The Icelandic government permits Glitnir Bank (now Íslandsbanki I think) and Kaupthing Bank and others to overextend themselves far beyond the cash cow they were already, similar to what happened in the US in some ways, resulting in the 2008 crisis.

Again, you can blame the corporations/banks if you really want to I guess, but it isn't fair in my opinion. Banks and businesses will find loopholes if they exist, and go as far to the edge of laws as they can. The government has to create these "cliffs" that businesses cannot go beyond.

tl;dr - don't blame the corporation, blame the government who allowed them to operate that way, knowingly.

The main difference is that CEO's in Iceland were being held responsible, for creating a too risky corporation, failing its business and clients.

We should indeed blame a government to act stricter to what you call "wall street", like they did in Iceland. And keep ppl in corporations responsible for what they do.

This post was edited by Knaapie on Jun 12 2017 07:12am

Defrauding investors and continuing a zero sum game to line up your pockets , you can't just stay there's no blame for them.

The sheer fact nobody was prosecuted for the fraud committed that lead to the 2008 crash is just so depressing.

Also when these corporations have former CEO's become Secretary of the Treasury , how can you expect the government to protect its citizens.

It's just so depressing that a very small amount of people are responsible for billions of dollars and by extension untold damage that causes to the population resulting in higher suicide rates and lives being torn apart just from the risk taking of a small group and crippling the entire world economy.

But our government not only bailed out the banks while the common citizen gets fucked and instead of the people who caused the crisis being prosecuted for fraud , they get bonuses and cash out when they basically were responsible for economic ruin and even death.