I was just reading about a violation of the Canadian fisheries act that has a maximum penalty of $200k, and realized the absurdity of there ever being a maximum fine.
There should be no maximum fine on any corporate penalty given that we do not cap the size of corporations or their bank accounts.
It would be like having maximum jail terms of 25 years for immortal beings that can live to 10,000.
Corporate fines should be in % of the company income.
I would also argue that personal fines should be like that too.
All fines should be a percentage of income. Otherwise we have what we call a poor tax on people who can’t afford it, and “the price of doing business” for people who can. And I’m not referring to just companies.
A friend shared a memory of his drug dealer dad, when they were in vegas, lost a ton of money gambling and flipped the fuck out. Started smashing vases.
Security approached. He threw hundred dollar bills at them. They started handing him more vases.
It has to be worth, not just income. There’s too many loopholes around “I don’t have income I just have stock I use as collateral for a loan” or “I don’t have income but my LLC happens to pay for all of my daily expenses”.
But yes, all fines need to scale with the perpetrator. The more dollars you have, the less each dollar means.
A $100 ticket for parking on a crosswalk means nothing to a millionaire, but is potentially ruinous for someone living in poverty. It needs to hurt the same for everyone. The millionaire should have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. They need to feel pain.
A lot of people are really shitty and operate at a very basic level of moral reasoning. It’s just “did I get punished?”.
That’s income. Not according to tax laws, but that’s also why we shouldn’t base monetary penalties on tax law. These fuckers have been exploiting the loopholes to have the most money and power and also pay almost nothing. But they still eat! And grocery stores don’t accept leveraged loans, securities, Bitcoin, or percentages of annuities… At some point, they touch money. So let’s tax (and penalize) them so they can’t avoid paying their fair share.
Good luck getting that to happen anywhere but Scandinavian countires.
We Bad a millionaire jerk in germany that printed bis own license plate so he didnt need to drill holes in bis Porsche. The fee was 30000€ iirc. Because traffic fees are mostly income based here
Steve Jobs would exploit a California loophole that says new cars didn’t require a license plate, so he would lease a new car every 6 months to avoid license plates.
Not income, global revenue of the parent company, like GDPR does it
So if Google fucks up, it’s the full revenue of Alphabet Inc that determines the fine.
That way you can’t found GDPR Violation Incorporated and do your shady stuff there risk free.
Has anyone actually got hit with big gdpr fines?
Meanwhile, Google is illegally chopping down a forest to make space for a data centre. Those fines should be proportional to revenue too. That would teach them not to mess around with trees.
trees are different. malicious removal of them for profits is even worse. the fine should also be recurring, and paid-in-full annually until that forest is restored to its former condition.
Operate fines should be a % of income + the amount of illegal gains. Most times the fines today are much lower than the amount of profit they make from committing the crimw
*Networth
You fuck up badly, better be ready to liquidate some assets.
Hmm. That’s a very good point. And if corporations are “people”, they should be the only people subjected to capital punishment.
Cause serious enough harm? Fuck you, you’re ALL getting fired. Or at least everyone in management; the ones who actually do the work rarely have any agency in the situation, so yeah maybe don’t punish them. At least minimize harm, maybe nationalize resources and break it up.
Isn’t that what European laws are now doing?