6 ms·

> This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. > Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like

> This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. > Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. No, it isn't. A company's valuation is not money in the bank. The proper comparison is to profit.

notyourday 7y ago
Proper comparison is the reaction of a CEO - if the CEO responds by firing the upper management->product management responsible for the part that caused the fine then the fine got a point across.
- true_religion 7y ago
  It’s okay for a fine to be insignificant. Parking tickets are insignificant fines too, but in aggregate act to control parking behavior. What’s needed is better enforcement, not more stringent fines.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web. Now if the car is towed that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      > Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.
      - jlarocco 7y ago
        > I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it. That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.
        leetcrew 7y ago
        the above poster is saying that parking fines don't work so you gotta escalate and tow the person's car. I'm saying you don't have to do that, just hire a few more meter enforcement people and stick with fines that are proportional to the offense. personally, I think $40-50 is a reasonable fine for attempting to subvert parking regulations. if you park in a way that blocks a whole lane of traffic, you have caused a big bigger and time sensitive problem that justifies a tow truck.
        notyourday 7y ago
        You can see it every day in the cities. UPS/Fedex delivery trucks getting tickets every day. What happens? Companies simply pay the fines because it is a daily fine. So at say $100 per ticket it is just $3k/mo per truck to do deliveries. Since the company makes more than that per truck for that period of time it is the cost of doing business. Want to stop it? Make this cost high enough to make it non-profitable. If a ticket for illegal double parking is $5k and not $100 then a daily ticket means $150k in fines per truck per month, which is definitely higher than the amount of money a delivery company makes per truck, so the company is going to avoid getting fines.
        leetcrew 7y ago
        I live in a city, but I'm not sure I've noticed ups doing this. just to be clear are you talking about parking without paying or double-parking (a much more serious offense)? if they're double-parking, do they do this because there isn't a reserved dropoff space? what do USPS trucks do when they deliver to these buildings?
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      I don't believe for a second that this represents the minority. One might be tempted to conjure reddit-like images of Chads and Karens who park their cars where ever, when ever, and for however long they like, but the majority of people aren't like this.
      - notyourday 7y ago
        https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violations-Issued-Fiscal-Year-2018/a5td-mswe https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violat... That's 11.7M violations for fiscal 2018.
        zapzupnz 7y ago
        And? What does a page full of data tell me? At a quick glance I can see a lot of violations made repeatedly for the same licence plate; there's no data on whether certain violations are made multiple times by the same person with different vehicles; it's not easy to tell what kinds of violations there are, how much of each, and which are easy to get tickets from unscrupulous parking attendants or which would require actual lack of action by the vehicle's driver or owner… this isn't evidence of anything. The population of New York may be only 8.5 million, but that doesn't make 11 million infractions an indicator that the majority of those people are the sorts of people to accept parking fines as the cost of owning a vehicle.
        notyourday 7y ago
        This actually illustrates that the same license plates get tickets i.e. getting parking tickets is the cost of doing business.
        zapzupnz 7y ago
        That doesn't say anything about whether these people represent the majority, which was my point, though. Not sure why those stats should matter to me.
      - 7y ago
- krj 7y ago
  That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. The only way of really judging is through repeat offences which is difficult in a case like this where the judgement was that Google didn’t do enough. That line of “enough” is going to be redefined a lot as the web develops (as it should be).
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. That's only the case because the cost of mistakes are insignificant. Should the mistakes start costing them 5% of revenue you can bet a farm that the person would be fired.
leetcrew 7y ago
some might argue the proper comparison is to the severity and scale of the offense itself.
Traster 7y ago
Alphabet has $125Bn cash on hand.

notyourday 7y ago

Proper comparison is the reaction of a CEO - if the CEO responds by firing the upper management->product management responsible for the part that caused the fine then the fine got a point across.

true_religion 7y ago
It’s okay for a fine to be insignificant. Parking tickets are insignificant fines too, but in aggregate act to control parking behavior. What’s needed is better enforcement, not more stringent fines.
- notyourday 7y ago
  Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web. Now if the car is towed that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    > Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.
    - jlarocco 7y ago
      > I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it. That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.
      - leetcrew 7y ago
        the above poster is saying that parking fines don't work so you gotta escalate and tow the person's car. I'm saying you don't have to do that, just hire a few more meter enforcement people and stick with fines that are proportional to the offense. personally, I think $40-50 is a reasonable fine for attempting to subvert parking regulations. if you park in a way that blocks a whole lane of traffic, you have caused a big bigger and time sensitive problem that justifies a tow truck.
        notyourday 7y ago
        You can see it every day in the cities. UPS/Fedex delivery trucks getting tickets every day. What happens? Companies simply pay the fines because it is a daily fine. So at say $100 per ticket it is just $3k/mo per truck to do deliveries. Since the company makes more than that per truck for that period of time it is the cost of doing business. Want to stop it? Make this cost high enough to make it non-profitable. If a ticket for illegal double parking is $5k and not $100 then a daily ticket means $150k in fines per truck per month, which is definitely higher than the amount of money a delivery company makes per truck, so the company is going to avoid getting fines.
        leetcrew 7y ago
        I live in a city, but I'm not sure I've noticed ups doing this. just to be clear are you talking about parking without paying or double-parking (a much more serious offense)? if they're double-parking, do they do this because there isn't a reserved dropoff space? what do USPS trucks do when they deliver to these buildings?
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    I don't believe for a second that this represents the minority. One might be tempted to conjure reddit-like images of Chads and Karens who park their cars where ever, when ever, and for however long they like, but the majority of people aren't like this.
    - notyourday 7y ago
      https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violations-Issued-Fiscal-Year-2018/a5td-mswe https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violat... That's 11.7M violations for fiscal 2018.
      - zapzupnz 7y ago
        And? What does a page full of data tell me? At a quick glance I can see a lot of violations made repeatedly for the same licence plate; there's no data on whether certain violations are made multiple times by the same person with different vehicles; it's not easy to tell what kinds of violations there are, how much of each, and which are easy to get tickets from unscrupulous parking attendants or which would require actual lack of action by the vehicle's driver or owner… this isn't evidence of anything. The population of New York may be only 8.5 million, but that doesn't make 11 million infractions an indicator that the majority of those people are the sorts of people to accept parking fines as the cost of owning a vehicle.
        notyourday 7y ago
        This actually illustrates that the same license plates get tickets i.e. getting parking tickets is the cost of doing business.
        zapzupnz 7y ago
        That doesn't say anything about whether these people represent the majority, which was my point, though. Not sure why those stats should matter to me.
    - 7y ago
krj 7y ago
That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. The only way of really judging is through repeat offences which is difficult in a case like this where the judgement was that Google didn’t do enough. That line of “enough” is going to be redefined a lot as the web develops (as it should be).
- notyourday 7y ago
  > That doesn’t really work for a company like google with a largely blameless culture. That's only the case because the cost of mistakes are insignificant. Should the mistakes start costing them 5% of revenue you can bet a farm that the person would be fired.

leetcrew 7y ago

some might argue the proper comparison is to the severity and scale of the offense itself.

Traster 7y ago

Alphabet has $125Bn cash on hand.