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You're advocating for wealth being over the law. I don't see how you can feel that this is not a big problem.

• Karunamon 10y ago
  Some laws are dumb. There's a distressing trend on HN recently of people citing "the law" as if it were the end of any kind of practical or moral discussion.
  • _jal 10y ago
    So those with the money to do so should be free to break them, while those who can't need to obey, and that's just right and proper?
    • jamornh 10y ago
      No, but then that's an issue with the way fines and punishments for said crimes are structured, not the fault of those who takes advantage of the loophole. There are 2 types of fines: fines that are meant to stop things from happening and fines that are there to basically make the city money. Most traffic fines seem to be structured for the latter.
      • orcdork 10y ago
        Good to know it's up to you to pick and choose which laws inconvenience you, I mean which laws are there to make those fat cats at the city office the big bucks.
        • Dylan16807 10y ago
          What in the world are you talking about? They stated that different laws exist for different reasons. That's not picking and choosing laws. And they didn't say that laws to make money are inherently bad either.
        • Karunamon 10y ago
          Do you ever exceed the speed limit? Pass on the right? Rip your music or movies? Download torrents? Take pens from work? Park inches over the line? Throw away mail addressed to the previous resident of your house (federal felony)? Participated in an office pool? Smoke weed? If so, kindly do not speak from the glass house about picking and choosing which laws to follow. You do it, I do it, everybody does it. Society still functions somehow.
        • jamornh 10y ago
          I don't think that was the point of my argument. I don't agree that rich people should be above the law, but that doesn't mean I can't disagree with the way the punishments are structured. I'm all for punishing all equally under the law whether you are rich or not. With that said, that also means that I think financial punishments for laws should be redesigned. A good start would be to fine people based on their networth instead of a fixed sum. Even then, the impact of a $900,000 fine on a wealthy person is likely less than a $900 fine for a poor person.
      • st3v3r 10y ago
        Wrong. It is an issue with the idea that the rich are above the law.
        • jamornh 10y ago
          If you want the rich to not be above the law then the punishment for breaking said law should not be financial in nature. Any punishment that is financial in nature will ALWAYS be less impactful to the rich than to the poor. An improvement to this would be to structure fine based on networth rather than a fixed amount. Yet even then, a millionaire paying $900,000 in fines is still not as devastating as a poor person paying $900. So I would say that the issue is still the structure of the punishment.
          • ghaff 10y ago
            A lot of the Nordics apparently have some fines based on income: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland... I can't say I really favor this but it has been done.
        • Dylan16807 10y ago
          Someone with money to burn can already get priority access to so many things. I don't mind if they can buy priority access to roads and reduce the amount of funding that has to come from everyone. When there's no harm or risk of harm, it's a pretty big exaggeration to use a phrase like 'above the law'.
• mikeash 10y ago
  Let's say you're in a really big hurry for something, and you park illegally knowing that it's illegal and accepting the chance that you'll get a ticket. When you do in fact get a ticket, you pay it willingly. Is that morally wrong, in your eyes?
  • tedunangst 10y ago
    Are we talking about parking in a spot and not feeding the meter? Or parking in the bus zone, forcing riders to wade out into traffic to board?
    • mikeash 10y ago
      Does it matter when it comes to the morality of breaking the law? You might consider the latter action to be morally wrong, but it seems like it would be because of its impact on others, not because it's breaking the law.
      • tedunangst 10y ago
        I think choosing to disregard the law also means choosing to disregard why the law exists. Not so easily disentangled.
      • endominus 10y ago
        There is no inherent morality, positive or negative, in obeying the law; the law is not meant as a moral authority, but a social one. To be consistent in your logic, you would have to argue that helping slaves escape their condition in 1800s America would be morally wrong, as it would be breaking the law.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          I think you might have me backwards. I'm arguing that there is no inherent immorality to breaking the law, and that deliberately breaking a law and paying the resulting fines is a reasonable thing to do.
  • 10y ago
• padobson 10y ago
  That's now what this is. They're breaking the law and willingly serving the penalty. You can argue that the penalty isn't strong enough, but then your issue is with the legislature, not the criminal. What you're saying is tantamount to saying a thief who likes prison food is also above the law, because he actually enjoys the penalty for the laws he breaks.
  • orcdork 10y ago
    That's great, but no. I can argue that they shouldn't break the law. The penalty is irrelevant.
    • padobson 10y ago
      >I can argue that they shouldn't break the law. And if you had done that, I'd have never responded. What you said was: >You're advocating for wealth being over the law. Which no one has yet done, not even close. Justice, according to the law, is being served. You can argue that the penalty is unjust, which you have failed to do so far. You can also argue that it's wrong to break the law, which is a new argument in the thread starting with your "over the law" comment. Saying an entity isn't subject to the law because of wealth and saying that an entity shouldn't break the law are two completely different things. The first argument doesn't work because the companies in question are proving they are subject to the law by paying the fines. The second argument is new, nebulous, not particularly substantive, and otherwise better left ignored.
  • st3v3r 10y ago
    That's exactly what that is. Basically, if you're rich enough to where the fine doesn't matter, you don't have to follow the law.
    • Dylan16807 10y ago
      It's not about being rich at all. Someone barely making ends meet running their own courier service could do the same thing. It's up to them to figure out if the increase in deliveries per day is worth the cost of the tickets. There are fines that impact big companies and rich people less because of deep pocketbooks. But parking tickets on delivery trucks are not such a fine. They scale linearly with bad-parking activity. As mikeash said, this case is effectively a tax.