> Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.
I'm guessing that if the American public saw the government actually hold a company and its shareholders accountable for knowingly poisoning their children it'd be massively popular politically. Lobbyists would have it.
Any genuinely terrible idea should be an uphill battle politically.
Do you know how much you, personally, benefit from modern material science? Do you think our nation could even operate with out Bayer, Dupont, 3M and the likes?
We could always keep the company and fry the shareholders and executives responsible. If there ever were a company the nation couldn't do without, the only sane answer is for the government to take it over for national security reasons. Otherwise that company could hold the US hostage, or be bought out/taken over by foreign interests and used to collapse the entire country while we'd be powerless to stop it.
As if that was the one thing that put Venezuela in the position it is in now. Venezuela does a lot of things we already do in the US too, but somehow we aren't identical either. Maybe our situations are more complex than "this one weird trick will salvage/destroy your country"
Would be more just to seize them and auction them off for enough funds to do 1-5% cleanup, but that would probably be an uphill battle politically.