I am a citizen of the United States of America, although I don’t believe that means anything special; so, I address you more as citizen of the world. I must say that I am impressed by your ability to amass such large quantities of wealth under yourselves, like a dragon in an old fantasy tale. I also must say that it is not an easy skill to ignore the damage that your companies have done to our society and planet. So Bravo! for being able to learn it so well. You’ve even found ways to not give away any of your wealth to us paupers as we would spend it extravagantly mad luxuries such as…food.

I have also seen the wildly outrageous punishments you receive when you break the law, a percentage of a percentage of your wealth in fines, absurd! In case you weren’t able to tell that entire paragraph was sarcastic. The actual way I feel about CEOs and other executives can’t be said in a single word but if it could I doubt I’d be legally allowed to write said word down.
I was born in the late 2010’s and as a result, I have seen what societies look like when we regulate corporations in such negligible ways. When one of your corporations actively makes the planet a worse place to live, whether it be by releasing smog, or poisoning the water, or any number of other abhorrent actions; we don’t truly punish the people behind them (that’s you!). There is seldom a criminal trial and even then, the company is usually only given a fine! A fine that is most likely a drop in the bucket that you will make again within 6 months. Even when a company actively kills or maims
someone the same consequences will be applied. If a company were to, I don’t know, get a few million people addicted to opioids, they and the families behind them will only have to pay a few million compared to the damage they’ve done. Am I right Sackler family?
I know the reason the world has allowed you to do this to society and it’s pretty clear to anyone who decides to investigate it for about 5 minutes. You and by extension your companies give millions of dollars to politicians so that they won’t do anything to you. In my eyes that feels like a good tell as to what you stand for; you would give away millions to continue the status quo, rather than letting us get any of your gold coin swimming pool. I hope that you the CEOs reading this decide to change and become a charitable person that tries to help society in a way that isn’t a veiled form of tax fraud. I
know that the chances of that are slim, but I hope that the world no longer has to suffer at the expense of your greed.

Sincerely,

Noah Daley