I think actually liquidating isn't so bad. Now and again nature strikes down a giant and a lot of other creatures benefit from it.

It's actually a bit odd that when we invented corporations we didn't have some sort of catastrophe mechanism in there just to shake hands up now and again.

I think society would find ways to become more resilient if we lived with possible corporate sudden death.

The corporate death penalty. It's reasonable that nobody came up with it at the invention of the corporation, but America should absolutely have implemented one along with Citizens United.

> liquidating isn't so bad

You're guaranteeing either consolidation in an already oligopolistic sector, or a recession from the output drop caused by an inexperienced operator learning to scale to a major.

> we didn't have some sort of catastrophe mechanism

We do. They're fines and license revocations. Companies that can't afford their fines go bankrupt. Government gets cash; the stakeholders' clean up the mess. "Corporate death penalty" and related talking points are almost all about dismissing talk about bigger fines.

You're also guaranteeing that people will be able to try new things where the giant once stood.

The real challenge is how to regulate the death rate.

We do, but corporations which are rich enough just bribe the government and gets bailouts or special treatments.

If it was the people vs Exxon with private judges in private courts (judges which compete with one another on who's the best, not government officials with a comfy chair and a guaranteed lifetime of administering "justice"), it would be way harder to corrupt.

That's why we need to decentralise our government power.

Maybe not dissolved but fines aren't enough: if they're not big enough or likely enough, companies may take their chances and if they don't apply personally to the C-level some fraction of people will try to see if they can get rich and leave before the fine arrives.

Perhaps that's something along the lines of turning them into highly-regulated public utilities. The big thing I'd focus on is basically real auditing & accountability: serious environmental assessments with full public disclosure, a blanket ban on political involvement so you avoid the case we have currently where someone [not inaccurately] thinks it's cheaper to give lobbyists $10M to avoid regulation which will cost them $100M, and criminal liability for anyone who knowingly tries to hide information or mislead the public.

Without defending their wording, I think the absolute best case for nationalizing a firm is one where the industry is based off of natural resources, vital to the public in the short term, and detrimental to the public in the long term.

"all of its resources taken" would seem to require liquidation or putting those resources under a different management structure, possibly government directly or government appointed.

What would Exxon be able to do once all of its resources have been repurposed? The company would be effectively dissolved even if not explicitly dissolved.

Without oil things would be pretty bad around here, to say the least.