Is this more or less than they made from breaking said law.
I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime”
The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
The $150K/song isn't a government fine, but rather statutory damages awarded to the plaintiff (the copyright holder), so it isn't limited by the prohibition on Excessive Fines.
> Where a state antitrust law fixed penalties at $5,000 a day, and, after the verdict is guilty for over 300 days, a defendant corporation was fined over $1,600,000, this Court will not hold that the fine is so excessive as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of law where it appears that the business was extensive and profitable during the period of violation and that the corporation has over $40,000,000 of assets and has declared dividends amounting to several hundred percent
Seems like it would be acceptable to fine Amazon 100x more then
If we (America) can find a way to send someone who shoplifted three golf clubs to prison for 25 years to life and have it not be “cruel and unusual punishments” we are certainly clever enough to find a way to charge companies who view fines as “the cost of doing business” enough so they will at least thing twice about it and have it not be “excessive”.
These fines DO discourage these behaviors. As some who handled fines at a very large bank, a fine would ALWAYS change the bank's procedures. ...and not only fines against us, but fines against ANY bank would alter procedures.
Please don't respond to a bad comment with an attack of your own. Your reply would have been fine with just the second sentence, and better still with just the second clause of the second sentence.
Alright, have the "constructive intelligent debate", things that have already been mentioned in this thread: purpose of fines, proportionality, coercing behavior.
I'll offer my own topic: tyranny, and how it deserves to be stomped out at it's root. But that's not immediately about the subject at all.
What else is there?
Somethings are just shallow, note that no one in this wider thread goes beyond these topics at all and the same concepts keeps getting cited again and again. The longest comments in this thread is two people flinging worse things than what got both of us flagged by dang, and even there you don't get anything more complex than attacking political ideologies.
So what does "constructive intelligent debate" mean to you precisely, as I'm sure we're at the completely different ends of what that term means.
Is there a term similar to “regulatory capture” but where the government becomes dependent on fines?
I suppose that if workers lost out on benefits of approximately the fine amount, the fine becomes a regressive tax since it goes towards general revenue rather than to whom was harmed.
I think you’re being downvoted because the premise of your question would imply that trickle down economics works, it does not.
But I can think of one case where fines create a perverse incentive: really small towns run speed traps that fund their law enforcement. I think most cops have a non trivial amount of their budget based on fines. It’s debatable if this is bad. I feel like it’s morally wrong to set a speed limit to something no one follows so anyone can be cited for breaking the law at any time, but at least (most) judges seem to acknowledge that something like “1 mph over” is a BS ticket.
I’ve seen some knee jerk problems from other regulatory attempts like having healthcare required for full time workers so companies cut everyone’s hours to 39 a week. But to me this isn’t a sign that the regulations are the problem. To me it speaks to how companies will do anything they can that they can get away with and it’s a sign that the regulatory bodies need to be better able to adapt and respond to malicious compliance.
> because the premise of your question would imply that trickle down economics work
I’m not certain how a person could read that from my text. The premise is:
1. Employer does some harm to employees
2. State fines employer the value of employee harm
3. State general fund receives money (minus lawyering costs)
4. Employees receive no remuneration for harm
5. General fund pays for general government activities
Effectively the value from the harm the employee suffered is transferred to general government activities. The employees are not made whole from being mistreated but their mistreatment is a revenue source for the government. It would be interesting to see the actuals but my cynical guess is that the money will go toward lawyers and other people better off than warehouse workers, which is why I call it regressive.
I read your original comment as the company would make less money after being fined therefore take it out of their employees paychecks. Thanks for the clarification that's not what you were talking about.
Regarding the premise: The purpose of the fine is to provide a disincentive to it happening in the first place (in theory). I tend to like restorative justice though.
> The purpose of the fine is to provide a disincentive
Given the root comment's premise that the fine is "more or less than [Amazon] made from breaking said law," that the fine goes to the state rather than the harmed workforce members does not provide a disincentive nor does it right a wrong. For Amazon it is net neutral and the state gets what warehouse workers would have had. The state is the entity taking from people's paychecks in the name of "justice."
This is my comment you're responding to at the root
> [Me:] Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
I wrote that comment. My point was that the fines should be larger to discourage bad behavior.
You're saying that you're wanting things I want (disincentives for companies to harm, restorative justice), but you're showing opposition to my attempt to deliver those things. Or at least you've not shown support.
If that's not the case maybe something like "I 100% agree we should raise the fines until they provide a disincentive. Yes, and [...]" or if you disagree "I like where you're headed, but I disagree on how to get there. I suggest we [...] which will [...]. This is in comparison to your suggestion which will [...]" would really help me clarify your position.
> The state is the entity taking from people's paychecks in the name of "justice."
This reads as someone who would want to get rid of the fines all together (a liberatrian anti-taxation anti-regulation take). Which is the same vibe I got from your first comment. Both seem at odds to your other stated goals (restorative justice). I feel either I'm being gaslit or there's more you're not saying.
I would like you to be more explicit. Could you take one of the templates I tried earlier and see which fits what you're trying to convey and respond with that? If neither template fits, state why.
There is no need for templates.
I will not color by numbers.
Writing does not attempt to deliver anything.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Taking from a taker is not justice.
Your comments read like a totalitarian who wants a world by and for the government, not by and for the people. You are gaslighting yourself if you don't realize this. Listen to your first thought which was "more fine" not "more right."
> I think most cops have a non trivial amount of their budget based on fines.
I think I've seen instances where automated traffic camera fines just go into a city's street/road safety improvement fund, which seems like a good way of handling things.
They’ve been doing this for years. It costs less to pay the fines than the loss in productivity would be, the robots didn’t pan out in the timeframe advertised and driving human labor to subsistence level (“loose labor markets”) is both policy and incidentally the reason why all the polls say “the economy is terrible” and all the pundits say “how do we convince the public that the metrics show they should be happy”.
The pundits say the economy is fine, and that the labor market is still really tight (but slackening gradually). They do note that economic sentiment is really, really bad, and it seems to be for non-economic reasons (residual inflation shock, mostly). Avoiding further inflation is the key reason that policy is leaning on the labor market at all.
There is a general consensus that real wages after accounting for the realities around things like health care have been flat or declined for coming up on 45 years.
It’s a quiet consensus, but few are claiming that Gen Z is just crushing it on home ownership or any other credible proxy for doing as well as the baby boomers.
Cheap consumer electronics are not substantially wealth! High-fructose corn syrup might be cheaper than ever, but anything north of that is rapidly becoming a boutique luxury. A public university education is triple what it was 20 years ago.
Hacker News is in many ways the best thing on the Internet, but people trying to finely parse this and that nitpick under a headline “Amazon Pays The Fines So They Can Continue to Exploit Workers with Impunity” makes me embarrassed to hang out here.
I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime”
The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?