Proves again that fines aren't the answer, jail time is. Fines only matter for the poor, the rich just see fines as a cost of business, and the truly rich and powerful just call their friends and problems just magically go away.

Screw this. OSHA and other safety violations should, by default, pierce the corporate veil. Particularly ones where those that help others in need get injured.

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sillysaurusx 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The vast majority of violations that lead to loss of life result in charges that are dropped or acquitted. In the US it’s very, very hard to get anyone in jail for gross negligence in construction projects. Look up Plainly Difficult on YouTube, pick one of his hundreds of videos about negligent construction, and there is roughly 99% probability that all the charges were dropped, especially if it was in the US. (It seems to be a bit easier to get people in jail overseas.)

I don’t know why this is, only that it is. And it’s unclear how to change it. You could lobby for new laws, but those tend to be lobbied by the very companies that would stand to lose from those new laws.

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alksdjf89243 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Laws don't protect the people, they protect wealth. It's easier to create wealth if you sacrifice life and limb. Look up how many people were buried inside the Hoover Dam -- alive.

The delusion of recompense for damages incurred is a placation of known risk. By that, I mean, if you think you can sue your employer for doing you dirty, then you feel safe to work there.

But it almost never works in the favor of the harmed unless it's a violation of a protected class and that's not really harmful.

What's harmful is dying or losing limbs or the ability to work and employers don't pay much for cases like that.

Get groped by your boss and you'll get millions tho.

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themafia 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The delusion of recompense for damages incurred is a placation of known risk.

Negligence is separate from known and unavoidable risk.

> By that, I mean, if you think you can sue your employer for doing you dirty, then you feel safe to work there.

Maybe I just assume they're following relevant safety laws?

> But it almost never works in the favor of the harmed unless it's a violation of a protected class and that's not really harmful.

A settlement is separate from criminal charges. Settlements happen all the time. The state even provides it's own injury compensation plan.

> Get groped by your boss and you'll get millions tho.

The point of that is to prevent the company from blithely creating more victims in the same way it did the first. That's what _true_ wealth actually is.

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YZF 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"No people were intentionally buried inside the Hoover Dam's concrete. While 96 deaths were officially recorded during construction, the belief that bodies were entombed is a myth. The dam was built in interlocking blocks, and workers who died were recovered or accounted for"

	▲	Supermancho 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I believe that is incorrect. My grand-uncle worked on the Hoover Dam. The safety precautions were limited, to be charitable. Suspending manned Bobcat (equivalent) excavators from ropes, lowered down to the sides of the dam was witnessed. The reason the 96 names are not on the memorial plaque, is because they literally couldn't keep track and aren't exactly sure. IDs and IDing not required at that time. Conveniently, everyone who worked on the Hoover Dam project is now dead. There were thousands of workers, tens swapped out daily (which is why there are fewer deaths than you would expect). If you weren't a top performer because you were the lowest on the near-manual boring machine with mud/water and stone dumping on you from above, you were replaced. This was built during the Great Depression where there were crowds appearing at the gates everyday looking for the opportunity to work. My great-grandfather, grandfather and granduncle all worked it as Foreman, Carpenter, and Shift Supervisor, respectively. These were at different times in the project. My extended family all know a different version where there certainly are bodies. I think they are more credible dead, than the official numbers for a highly controversial project back then. Peck wasn't an outlier, but it had the problem of accounting for the people lost. The Hoover project did not.

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Animats 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Proves again that fines aren't the answer, jail time is.

Correct. In terms of cost-effectiveness in preventing crime, 30 days in jail for an executive is much more useful than 3 years for a shoplifter. Courts should routinely be handing out short sentences, rather than fines, to suits.

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ChadNauseam 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> the rich just see fines as a cost of business

They will only do the business so long as it is profitable. If the fines are high enough that they internalize the negative consequences of the business's behavior, you should get a good outcome. For example, there should be a very large fine if a waymo hits and kills someone. It should not be an infinitely large fine or result in jail time for waymo executives. To operate self-driving cars, they should have to put enough money in escrow to prove they can pay the fine.

You don't want an infinite punishment and you don't want no punishment. You want to align the incentives. Fines are probably the best way to do that for rational actors

	▲	bigfudge 41 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		But people and corporates are demonstrably not rational actors. There are thousands of studies documenting our inability to properly track and think about risks. Plus, as this story shows, if the fines are large enough they just phone up their friends to have the fines quashed. Naming culpable individuals inside corporations and regularly holding them accountable is the only way to make this stop.
	▲	Draiken 21 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Fines are probably the best way to do that for rational actors How can you say that after not only this instance but also all the other instances that showed how ineffective they are? That also has the huge assumption that companies are rational actors. They're not. They're merely profit machines that'll do anything to achieve their goal. It simply does not work.
	▲	mschuster91 13 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> For example, there should be a very large fine if a waymo hits and kills someone. It should not be an infinitely large fine or result in jail time for waymo executives. The way this is done is by certification and testing. Mercedes Benz for example? They got their driving assistant certified under SAE Level 3 [1]. Do that and you'll get a pass because you followed the legal guidelines - but if you don't and use an uncertified system, it means jail time. Autonomous cars aren't some random webshop or bananaware (ripens at the customer's), autonomous cars are two ton heavy ballistic weapons capable of mass murder (as a bunch of terror attacks show) and should be treated as such - test before going on the road, not afterwards after you used the general public as guinea pigs. [1] https://www.heise.de/news/Autonomes-Fahren-Mercedes-wird-Lev...

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an0malous 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rich people get out of jail time too

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dataviz1000 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Had a acquaintance who was in a billionaire family. Trick is never ask them for money. They will invite everyone to lunch, parties at the beach house, ect.. The guy drove a Tesla and parked it anywhere. First time I went with the group, there was a ticket on the windshield, he pulls it off, and he says, "It is just a tax." He puts it on the pile of other parking tickets and says, "it is what accountants are for."

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Braxton1980 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is why the Swiss system makes so much sense. Since fines are meant to a deterrent they need to inflict a similar level of punishment on the people who receive them.

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mschuster91 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fun fact: in Germany, egregious parking violations can and will lead to your license being not just taken, but you gotta take a psychological evaluation to make sure you're of sound mind [1]. Can't get your way out of that.

[1] https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/vgh-baden-wuerttember...

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nandomrumber 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I’d rather tolerate some level of rude / obnoxious behaviour than be concerned with government reeducation programs.

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IgorPartola 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Driving is a privilege, not a right. Privileges require responsibility.

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HarryHirsch 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The authorities aren't going to send you off to reeducation, they will just determine (accurately) that you are a me-first guy who must not be allowed on the public roads and won't return your license. A win for the general public because road traffic is a coordinated effort.

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nandomrumber 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t mind being admonished by a magistrate for my mad behaviour, but being required to attend what boils down to nonsense treatment theatre is a bit much.

Anyone who’s enough of a sociopath to intentionally park like a jerk knows the right things to say to appear repentant.

I wonder what Germans think of this waste of time / money / effort.

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bigfudge 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

My guess here is that this is not treatment as sic but assessment and that if you’re not appealing for your licence back you could just skip it. Perhaps a German could comment?

It’s weird to me how right wing Americans seem primed to catastrophise about Marxist big brothers when they hear about any vaguely effective or equitable example of public policy.

	▲	mschuster91 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> My guess here is that this is not treatment as sic but assessment and that if you’re not appealing for your licence back you could just skip it. Perhaps a German could comment? German here, yep, exactly that.

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cindyllm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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gishh 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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lovich 9 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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zdragnar 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm genuinely curious, what is the appropriate percentage of a person's wealth to take when they overstay at a parking meter for a few minutes?

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anigbrowl 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If it happens occasionally, the same as anyone else. If it's a habit, increasing amounts until they rid themselves of it.

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acjohnson55 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think a fair answer would be divide the current ticket cost by the amount of cash the average total asset value at the poverty line. Forget about net wealth, since that might well be negative.

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lovich 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The appropriate amount is one that makes the poor and rich alike avoid the behavior.

If you set a crime with a flat fine you have only decided that it’s a cost for the rich and a barrier for the poor.

You can have the opinion that this an ok and appropriate situation and I will retain my opinion of anyone who agrees with that situation

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Spooky23 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my city, for a poor person, it’s about 1% of their weekly gross wage.

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nandomrumber 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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harimau777 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Kindly don't post bad faith arguments. The comment you link never mentioned "reeducation camps" and "fun fact" is a common idiom for presenting an interesting fact.

	▲	lovich 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you are going to complain about bad faith arguments then I would expect you to also admonish the poster who asked me what the appropriate amount of fines for a wealthy person is when I had already stated I thought percent based fines that affected the poor and wealthy equally were the choice. That person already knew their answer and was asking a bad faith question

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harimau777 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Depends on how egregious it is and how frequently it happens.

In terms of egregious: Someone staying a few minutes over when they are in a store probably shouldn't be punished at all. On the other hand, someone parking in a handycap spot or leaving their car somewhere for a day or more should probably be a reasonably stiff penalty.

In terms of frequency: Perhaps start small but with an exponential increase for each time someone does it within a calendar year.

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alksdjf89243 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wealth means you don't pay taxes. You don't pay fines. You don't go to jail.

otherwise, there's no value in wealth and no one would do the things necessary to get and keep it.

But we need people to want to get and keep it so we can incentivize people to work, otherwise, there's no reason to work.

Because there is no reason to work people just don't know that.

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gishh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You and people like the billionaire friend the person you are replying to mentioned, are a net negative to societal cohesion

Oh my. How so?

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WhaleClub 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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ants_everywhere 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder what being a worker would be like if every CEO of every company could be personally arrested for a mistake made by any employee.

My sense is it would be significantly worse than it is now.

	▲	nandomrumber 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There would be no companies.