Accountability sinks

I've long thought that that is one of the main functions of corporations. There's a reason they're called limited liability. The fact that you can conjure up new companies at a whim makes it easy to shuffle responsibility into an obscure corner.

This is a strong reason that corporations should not be considered people. People are long-lived entities with accountability and you can't just create or destroy them at will.

Yeah, this dysfunction is not a bug, it's the feature. In some ways, it's useful, because it allows positive risk-taking that could not be taken if anyone was actually held (or even just felt) accountable. But at this point, as a society, we've shifted too far towards enabling accountability-free behavior from corporations.

I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly useful service that often has a positive impact. On the other hand, a private corporation is just polluting our low earth orbit with thousands of satellites.

It's not clear to me where exactly the right balance for something like this should be, but I do think that as of today, we're too far on the lessez-faire side.

> I think a good example of the dichotomy here is Starlink. On one hand, it's an incredibly useful service that often has a positive impact. On the other hand, a private corporation is just polluting our low earth orbit with thousands of satellites.

Seems like a terrible example to me. I'm no fan of Musk, but I don't see how that is "polluting".

They provide an excellent service. They're a minor hindrance for astronomy, true, but I think it would be hard to make a good case for that a few people having a good view of the sky is more important than millions having good communications.

Then there's that there's nothing really special about Starlink. It's merely one of the first users of cheap rocket launches. It could be somebody else, or 1000 different entities launching smaller numbers, in the end the effect on astronomy would be the same.