controversial opinion that shouldn’t be controversial:
ceos of corporations who willingly let people die, along with anyone else involved in the process, should be jailed, not fined.
a preventable industrial disaster that kills workers while the company is aware of the possible damage beforehand should result in prison.
that is murder, plain and simple. a cost-benefit analysis calculating murder. a crime against humanity.
there’s no reason someone stealing food should be jailed while a wealthy individual knowingly killing people is let off the hook with a fine that hardly affects profits at all.
first post i’ve made where everyone agrees.
I disagree. Employers are people and all people should be able to take calculated risks on their own without the government intervening in the even the most mundane tasks to ensure safety.
“mundane tasks” like building a factory designed to collapse because it was less expensive to let thousands of innocent people die than use basic safety standards.
did you just not read half the post or do you genuinely think people should get away with this?
If you want to read about what people do when it comes to profit, take a look at the Sampoong Department Store Collapse
To sum it up, the completed building was a flat-slab structure, without crossbeams or a steel skeleton, which effectively meant that there was no way to transfer the load across the floors. To maximise the floor space, Lee Joon ordered the floor columns to be reduced to be 24 inches (61 cm) thick, instead of the minimum of 31 inches (79 cm) in the original blueprint that was required for the building to stand safely. In addition, columns were spaced 36 feet (11 m) apart to maximize retail space, a decision that also meant that there was more load on each column than there would have been if the columns were closer together.
In April 1995, cracks began to appear in the ceiling of the south wing’s fifth floor. The only response by Lee and his management staff involved moving merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement.
On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the area increased dramatically, prompting managers to close the top floor and shut the air conditioning off. The store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders,[2][3] as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and it did not want to lose the day’s revenue. However, the executives themselves left the premises as a precaution.
When civil engineering experts were invited to inspect the structure, a cursory check revealed that the building was at risk of collapse; the National Geographic Channel documentary programme Seconds From Disaster indicates that the facility’s manager was examining the slab in one of the restaurants on the fifth floor only hours before the collapse, when, unknown to him, vibration from air conditioning was radiating through the cracks in the concrete columns, and the floor opened up.
Five hours before the collapse, the first of several loud bangs was heard emanating from the top floors, as the vibration of the air conditioning caused the cracks in the slabs to widen further. Amid customer reports of vibration, the air conditioning was turned off, but the cracks in the floors had already grown to 10 cm wide. Around then, it was realized that collapse of the building was inevitable, and an emergency board meeting was held. The directors suggested to Lee that all customers should be evacuated, but Lee angrily refused to do so for fear of revenue losses. However, Lee himself left the building safely before the collapse occurred. Lee did not even inform his own daughter-in-law, Chu Kyung Young, who was one of the employees in the building, of the imminent danger. She became trapped in the rubble and was rescued only days later.