> That wasn't always true. The Robinson-Patman Act made it illegal

"Legality" has never stopped big companies from doing these things. Google, Apple, Meta, etc has been receiving fines all day long and they still continue what they do.

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JoeAltmaier 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fines don't scale. The Australian mining company, fined a thousand bucks for every native rock drawing they destroy? They counted them up, paid the fine, and blasted a road through. All gone.

Fines becomes a business calculation. Not a deterrent, not if it matters to the big corporation. Which at some scale, it will become cost-effective.

	▲	Ekaros 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Fines should be percentage of stock price. Applied to the owners of stock. Next time there is dividend or stock is transacted fine is collected. Still limits the liability to price of stock, but fully incentives stock owners to make sure the leadership will do their best to avoid fines.
	▲	abustamam 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I once saw a meme of a quote somewhere that said "if the only penalty for a crime is a fine, then it's only a deterrent for poor people" or something to that effect. I suppose it scales upward infinitely.
	▲	QuantumGood 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		A "fine" or "tax" is not necessarly regulation, in that it can be avoided, as in paid for by other actions, or gamed. Regulation should be though of as an input to cause a result in a scenario. Work backwards from the desired result, accounting for gaming the system, to attempt a regulation action. Of course, politicians are motivated only to provide something, not to make it effective.
	▲	5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	re-thc 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Fines don't scale. The Australian mining company There's the problem. Australia doesn't scale... not the fines. In Australia, there are a lot of rules, a lot of fines but not much to gain.

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array_key_first 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Our legal system would rather do just about anything than bring companies to court. Unless they're, like, giving people HIV. And even then it's reluctant.

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mlhpdx 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I imagine a world sometimes where punitive measures reflect the scope of crimes. If steal from a person is 1 year, then stealing from 1000 is 10 years and from a million is a lifetime. That’d put the end to political shenanigans, in my imagination.

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_DeadFred_ 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As someone proposed on here, instead of fines, punishment should be a percentage government ownership stake. This serves to 1. dilute the shares, punishing the people who can affect change (the shareholders) and 2. Put the government on the inside, a major pain in the ass and a stronger position for the government to know when, prevent, and/or punish these things in the future.

An irredeemable company/ownership will ultimately lose control over time.