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What's the point of a legal system if it can't deter lawbreaking? Fines should scale the way they do in Scandinavia. Baristas and doctors can both get speeding

What's the point of a legal system if it can't deter lawbreaking? Fines should scale the way they do in Scandinavia. Baristas and doctors can both get speeding tickets, but they pay it as a fraction of their income, to ensure it acts as a deterrent.

mavili 5y ago
Also, what is the point of a fine if it doesn't go to the people that the company wronged? Where does this money go? To the corrupt government entities that don't give a shit about the fees consumers have been charged?
tapland 5y ago
I wish it scaled in Sweden. It's a flat 4000 SEK here, regardless of income.
- loopbit 5y ago
  OP was probably thinking of Finland.
- jeltz 5y ago
  It scales in Finland though which is probably what parent was thinking of. And we do have scaling fines here in Sweden, just not for minor traffic offences. I think we should change all normal fines to scaling fines (dagsböter).
  - tapland 5y ago
    Yeah. Fines here (static) can be broken out of convenience for the wealthy (see new SUVs parked illegally on small streets in central Stockholm). It feels like breaking traffic regulations should maybe be considered crimes with dagsböter (income based penalty).
  - taotau 5y ago
    How is it calculated for non residents. How much would Elon pay if he were caught speeding in Finland?
    - nikonyrh 5y ago
      In general as a percentage of the last year's income. "In 2002, a Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle." Elon's fine could easily be 10x that but maybe not 100x. I don't know his finances and I'm not sure how capital gains are included.
- GlassKingdom 5y ago
  Everything people say about Sweden on the Internet is wrong. It should be called “Sven’s Law” or something.
  - foobar1962 5y ago
    The law should have a name that sounds Swedish, at least to people outside Sweden, but actually isn't.
    - mikestew 5y ago
      Seems to me that a Swiss name would be most appropriate.
  - boringg 5y ago
    I hear that health care is free, it's always summer, the people are beautiful and there are no problems whatsoever in Sweden. Can you confirm?
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      Having been to Sweden, I can confirm > it's always summer, is false. I went in winter and it was dark by 3pm. I love the cold and dark, so it was awesome for me > the people are beautiful is true. I was constantly stupefied by how attractive people are there. Also, I'm a 184cm male, and every single day I saw multiple women taller than me, just going about town. Not like I was at a basketball training center or something.
      - oh_sigh 5y ago
        I hear this a lot and I just don't understand. People in Stockholm seem about as attractive to me as the people I see in the US in NYC. I sometimes think it is just a blonde-fetish or something. I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you? The average female adult height in Sweden is still only 165cm, with > 95% of women being less than 178cm. I'd imagine 99+% of Swedish women are < 184cm.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> What’s the point of a legal system if it can’t deter lawbreaking? To reinforce social heirarchy, protect elites, and subjugate the proles.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  Course, the thing is in America there is in many ways no true proletariate. It isn't the same. Pay cut after firing after pay cut after saying "take any job, any job" after firing--all that--just means they don't have children. It's not like in other places or eras where capitalistic oppression would bring forth great numbers of workerlings.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    That’s not “not having a proletariat”. The proletariat is a state of being. It’s a (wilfully and very successfully engineered) absence of class consciousness.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
      Perhaps the word missing here is “precariat”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
      - daniel-cussen 5y ago
        I like that word because it illustrates America better. You're always on the edge of multiple cliffs: the deportation cliff; the prison cliff; the insurance doesn't pay the doctor the half million they extort cliff; the no financial aid cliff; the debt cliffs (more like a mountain range unto themselves); the you're fired or unemployment on your resume or bad resume cliff; the addiction cliff; the fertility (especially for women) cliff; the sickly child cliff; the disability cliff; the homelessness or lose your house or get evicted[1] cliff; And my personal favorite: the lobotomy cliff. It's the beautiflest as seen from below! There's others I'm sure. Lots of cliffs to go around! Everybody gets lots of cliffs! No parachutes though, but if you're looking for a good time you can ride a motorcycle off them! [1] So this one is...it's weird. I talked to a homeless kid (over 18 yeah but still a kid) and asked him, "so what do I do if I end up on the street? What strategies..." "Just don't end up on the street." "But if I DO end up on the street then what I do is I..." "No. The street is cruel. You wake up with people spitting on you, or pissing on you, depends on the night. You for one, you specifically would get gutted and murdered by the guy you pissed off the other time who threatened to do just that. Just do whatever the FUCK you have to do WHATEVER ANYBODY ASKS to not end up homeless." That's what I call a cliff.
urthor 5y ago
The Australian legal system has zero concept of punitive damages. You can only have repertory (recuperative) damages. There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law. Digest that one for a second.
- zensavona 5y ago
  Meanwhile nonviolent drug offenders landing in prison 5x'd between 2005-2013 in VIC, AU. Conveniently coinciding with the percentage of prisoners being held in private prisons increased substantially.
  - nomilk 5y ago
    I hadn't realised Australia has private prisons. Seems to have at least 17 (wiki article hasn't been updated in a few years, so could be more): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Private_prisons_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Private_prisons_in_Au...
  - chottocharaii 5y ago
    The parent comment is incorrect
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law. I might be missing something but it seems like a good idea that a civil court is unable to punish people after deciding it is necessary to encourage them not to break a criminal law in future. Australia does presumably have punitive fines and other punishments that are for deterrence in criminal punishments?
  - chottocharaii 5y ago
    The parent comment is completely incorrect as to their understanding of Australian law.
  - vkou 5y ago
devoutsalsa 5y ago
How does the scaled fine work on a mega rich CEO that earns a $1 salary for annual compensation?
- namecheapTA 5y ago
  Or people unemployed by choice basically early retirement living off savings earning a decade or more ago?
- masklinn 5y ago
  It takes in account personal income as a whole, and the index can be court-reviewed for this sort of cases where the income is engineered out.
nl 5y ago
In Australia, for this particular crime the ACCC can impose: > For corporations, will be the greater of: $10,000,000 3 times the value of the benefit received, or 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.[1] $26M is a significant penalty for the Australian arm of Uber. [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections/fines-penalties https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections...
toshk 5y ago
In the Netherlands we had a fine given to the Dutch Tax office for a huge scandal, which is even more ironic. In politics, and maybe corporates, there has to be a line that at some point also personal charges can be made, or persons can be held responsible in some way or another. These huge organizational structures have all been created to defer personal responsibility, which is good to an extent, but it got a little bit out of hand.
- belter 5y ago
  In the particular case that you mentioned, the details of the scandal are so horrifying, that as you stated, the fact it only come to a fine is an example of the lack justice not the presence of any proper governance or personal liability on the part of the individuals making these decisions... From the racist criteria, used for years to identify and bankrupt innocent Dutch nationals. The destruction of documents by government officials, or the taking of children from families of innocent victims of said Tax office. To finally the reelection of the same prime minister that oversaw all for 6 years and lied to parliament about it... "Scandals tarnish Dutch reputation for clean government": https://www.ft.com/content/9996a65e-0996-4a08-aa65-041be685deae https://www.ft.com/content/9996a65e-0996-4a08-aa65-041be685d... "Over 1,100 children taken from homes of benefits scandal victims": https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/19/1100-children-taken-homes-benefits-scandal-victims https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/19/1100-children-taken-homes-bene... "The Dutch government has been rocked by scandal. Why does its leader remain untainted?": https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-dutch-government-has-been-rocked-by-scandal-why-does-its-leader-remain-untainted/ https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-dutch-government-has-been-rocked...
mlindner 5y ago
To put a cost on lawbreaking. The legal system is only supposed to disincentivize law breaking. It's not supposed to nor can it completely stop law breaking.
- oblio 5y ago
  That cost needs to be higher than not breaking the law. Otherwise, why would a company ever respect the law? You hire any fresh grad accountant, have them figure out that: Profit from breaking law > cost of fine and the company will rationally decide to just keep breaking the law. That's not a deterrent, it's just another line item in an accounting spreadsheet.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Perhaps because they're not profit focussed. When people becry the evils of capitalism, this attitude is what they're talking about: that it is ok and expected to do the thing that maximises profit and that if we want people to not do something then we need to make it financially uninviting. It is not possible to arrange the world so that the financial incentives are always aligned with what is the right thing to do. So if we want to "have nice things" and live in the sort of world that most people will want to live in then we need to have some kind of ethical system which guides our action independently of the profit motive. This seems to be one of the bigger cultural differences between the US and Europe. In the US the attitude seems to be "if there's some situation you can exploit and it's not illegal then why would you not do so". In Europe there is much more emphasis on societal-level reciprocity: not just "will there be negative consequences to me if I do this", but "will this lead to the sort of society I want to live in if everybody does this". Of course there are still bad actors. There will always be bad actors. But the assumption is that most people won't be, rather than that most people will be.
    - oblio 5y ago
      So you're basically saying social pressure? That doesn't work in most cases. It only really works when people die.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xxs 5y ago
>Fines should scale the way they do in Scandinavia. Baristas and doctors can both get speeding tickets, That's Finland, which is not Scandinavia.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
  Denmark, Finland and Sweden have it. Not sure about Iceland and Norway. They also have something similar in Germany IIRC.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    > They also have something similar in Germany IIRC. citation needed! german here, business ppl routinely joke about the fine for illegal parking on public gounds is mostly far less than a few hours at a commercial parkinghouse.
    - belter 5y ago
      Parking is an exception. How would you do it? Scan your latest tax report when driving in? They do it for other stuff: [1] "Day-fine" "...A day-fine, day fine, unit fine or structured fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender's daily personal income... " "...Jurisdictions employing the day-fine include Denmark (Danish: dagbøde), Estonia (Estonian: päevamäär), Finland (Finnish: päiväsakko), France (French: Jour-amende), Germany (German: Tagessatz), Sweden (Swedish: dagsbot), Switzerland, and Macao...." "The Limits of Fairer Fines: Lessons from Germany" https://www.fairtrials.org/app/uploads/2022/01/Day_Fines_Report.pdf https://www.fairtrials.org/app/uploads/2022/01/Day_Fines_Rep... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine#cite_note-1
    - rndgermandude 5y ago
      Germany has it, but not for things like parking tickets[0], speeding tickets, etc. But criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) makes extensive use of it. Every time you see the StGB talk about a fine, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it will be a scaled fine based on the daily income of the convicted party (Tagessatz). Courts can estimate the income if need be. A court may e.g. find that somebody committed minor battery, and issue a fine of 12 Tagessätze. If you make 3000 EUR a month (net), that's 3000EUR/30 = 100 EUR for a Tagessatz, and then 10 Tagessätze is 1200 EUR. However, it's not fully scaled, as it is capped at 30,000 EUR per Tagessatz. E.g. a football (soccer) player was recently convicted[1] of battery against his former partner, and fined 60 Tagessätze. He makes (or used to make) significantly more than the 30K cap, so "only" would have to pay 1.8M EUR instead of the probably 3-5M EUR he'd have to pay if there was no such cap. Personally I'd welcome if traffic and many other fines were scaled fines, too. The reason it isn't is probably because fine issuance would not scale itself: too many violations and each violation would then involve a court deciding what the net income of somebody is and therefore what the scaled fine will be. With a flat fine you can avoid involving the courts most of the time (most parking tickets will be uncontested). [0] The parking violation joke was common, indeed, but not so much anymore, as the fines for parking violations have been drastically increased this year, from 15 EUR to 55 EUR per violation or even 110 EUR if you obstruct traffic, including pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Obstructing traffic also earns you one point in the traffic register now, so even people who still think a ticket is cheaper than paying for a proper parking space will not like it when their license is suspended eventually due to too many parking violations. [1] The sentence is not final yet. The defendant, the prosecution (state) and the accessory prosecution (victim) each appealed the decision.
rosndo 5y ago
But this is a solved problem in Scandinavia, you just have someone else do the speeding for you and pay them a low salary. The fines will be scaled based on the income of the chauffeur, not the highly paid executive in the back. Even if it’s actually the executive who’s paying them.
burnoutgal 5y ago
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” The overton window in america is so far to the right that the prospect of charging rich people for breaking the law is unheard of.
- kodah 5y ago
  This article is about Australia...
- dahfizz 5y ago
  TFA is about Australia, but go off...
  - nness 5y ago
    I think the statement still holds true for Australia.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mwexler 5y ago
  Just to give a source to this quote: See https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protects https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec... for a bit more context, as it's base is from Frank Wilhoit via this comment https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre....
  - ta4234 5y ago
    To clarify without requiring link chasing: the quote is not from the political scientist Frank Wilhoit (1920-2010) but the musician Frank Wilhoit (https://www.broadheath.com https://www.broadheath.com).
- twoxproblematic 5y ago
bko 5y ago
The law should apply equally to everyone. The sole purpose of the legal system isn't only to provide deterrence. Fairness and equal treatment under law are cornerstones of the legal system. Some discrepancies make sense (e.g. higher bail amount for someone with means as an incentive for them to show up to court), but this is a huge overreach IMO. Also begs the question, do wealthy people speed more than non-wealthy people? Do they need a deterrence? > The overall TA mortality rate was 26.6(95% CI 13.4, 39.8) per 100,000 person-years, which was almost three times higher in men than that for women (40.4 vs. 12.1 per 100,000person-years). Lower economic level was associated with increased incidence and mortality of TA. Optimizing for deterrence maybe means charging poor men a larger ticket. You see how this way of thinking is wrong? Also imagine having to disclose your entire financial status to some court because you got a speeding ticket? It's a gross violation of privacy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309632/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- skulk 5y ago
  You're focusing way too hard on the example of risky traffic behavior, which has a deterrent far more potent than any fine: potential loss of life (one can even argue that how much you value your life scales with your wealth, partially explaining the findings of that article). What about parking tickets, for example? Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative.
  - bko 5y ago
    You don't get it. I reject the whole premise of optimizing on "deterrence" based on [group]. If you accept the premise that we should base fees on deterrence, you have to accept where that leads. And that may not lead to your image of the world as being full of honest law abiding working folks and cigar chomping awful fat cats. > Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative. Where do you come up with this stuff? Your vision of how "wealthy people" behave is so off from what I've observed. > Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents. https://nbrazil.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/481/2018/07/brazil_parking_tickets_uar_2018.pdf https://nbrazil.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites...
missedthecue 5y ago
So money losing Uber should get a negative fine?
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Income? Won't the ultra rich pay $0 then? Also- devil's advocate but a speeding ticket is a speeding ticket. They should pretty much all cost the same. Minor cost for minor crime. It's not the same as something like VW emissions scandal or opioid epidemic stuff.
- pk455 5y ago
  what's the incentive not to speed if it only costs less than 1% of your income/net worth? the risk to everyone else around you is the same regardless of how much you make
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    Because you don't want to endanger yourself, others, or talk to a cop for a half hour? This is worse than any financial penalty, even to me, and I ain't rich.
    - fredophile 5y ago
      People don't typucally drive at speeds they think are unsafe. When someone is speeding, they generally believe that they are capable of safely operating their vehicle on that stretch of road under the current conditions. Avoiding the time wasted while pulled over does sound like a reason not to speed but even there it's a tradeoff. How much time do I save off my commute vs how long a stop would take weighted by the probability of being pulled over.
- wlll 5y ago
  It's not a business transaction, you aren't paying for the opportunity to go too fast, it's meant to be a deterrent. As such scaling with income makes sense, it's only a deterrent if it affects you, and realistically people with lots of money aren't going to be deterred by a relatively (to their income) fine that's going to deter people who are less well off.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
TomSwirly 5y ago
Deliberate lawbreaking should result in a fine so large the company goes under.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Fractional fines are perhaps better than flat-fee fines for law breaking without a clearly assignable dollar value, but still face the problem of log-ish utility of money. A person living paycheck to paycheck will be extremely burdened by any kind of fine, whereas a richer individual is much less likely to be, and even if they are - have more ability to make downward lifestyle adjustments to absorb the burden of the fine. To put it another way, it is more painful to lose $250 when you're making $25,000, versus losing $3,000 when you're making $300,000.
1123581321 5y ago
You have the law in both Aus and Scandinavia wrong, but that’s been covered. There are a few reasons not to make fines scale overly aggressively, from the perspective of a western government. They feel capricious and encourage expatriation, they punish (potentially hundreds or thousands of) innocent employees who want financial security, and they incentivize worse behavior. This last principle is counterintuitive but has been repeatedly discovered over the last thousands of years. An immoral person is incentivized to behave by a reasonable grade of punishments and will risk the worst behavior of all punishments are equally deadly or above a certain threshold. Hopefully that answers your question; this is just an explanation.
- sharpneli 5y ago
  Ok Finland is not in scandinavia but we’re all nordic countries and it works roughly the same. We have fully scaling fine. The concept is päiväsakko (literally day fine) that’s determined linearly by your net monthly income. Cops give you X dayfines. In code terms the formula is max(6, (net_monthly_income - 255)/60)); That means there is regularly some person in newspapers whining about their 30000€ speeding ticket (iirc the highest was 100k€ in 2004). In reality that’s just an acceptable way to brag how much you’re making.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Also incentivizes unreasonably-low speed limits, which are not the net positive for road safety that many people think.

mavili 5y ago

Also, what is the point of a fine if it doesn't go to the people that the company wronged? Where does this money go? To the corrupt government entities that don't give a shit about the fees consumers have been charged?

tapland 5y ago

I wish it scaled in Sweden. It's a flat 4000 SEK here, regardless of income.

loopbit 5y ago
OP was probably thinking of Finland.
jeltz 5y ago
It scales in Finland though which is probably what parent was thinking of. And we do have scaling fines here in Sweden, just not for minor traffic offences. I think we should change all normal fines to scaling fines (dagsböter).
- tapland 5y ago
  Yeah. Fines here (static) can be broken out of convenience for the wealthy (see new SUVs parked illegally on small streets in central Stockholm). It feels like breaking traffic regulations should maybe be considered crimes with dagsböter (income based penalty).
- taotau 5y ago
  How is it calculated for non residents. How much would Elon pay if he were caught speeding in Finland?
  - nikonyrh 5y ago
    In general as a percentage of the last year's income. "In 2002, a Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle." Elon's fine could easily be 10x that but maybe not 100x. I don't know his finances and I'm not sure how capital gains are included.
GlassKingdom 5y ago
Everything people say about Sweden on the Internet is wrong. It should be called “Sven’s Law” or something.
- foobar1962 5y ago
  The law should have a name that sounds Swedish, at least to people outside Sweden, but actually isn't.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    Seems to me that a Swiss name would be most appropriate.
- boringg 5y ago
  I hear that health care is free, it's always summer, the people are beautiful and there are no problems whatsoever in Sweden. Can you confirm?
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Having been to Sweden, I can confirm > it's always summer, is false. I went in winter and it was dark by 3pm. I love the cold and dark, so it was awesome for me > the people are beautiful is true. I was constantly stupefied by how attractive people are there. Also, I'm a 184cm male, and every single day I saw multiple women taller than me, just going about town. Not like I was at a basketball training center or something.
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      I hear this a lot and I just don't understand. People in Stockholm seem about as attractive to me as the people I see in the US in NYC. I sometimes think it is just a blonde-fetish or something. I guess you were walking around a city and had to see thousands of people to see multiple women taller than you? The average female adult height in Sweden is still only 165cm, with > 95% of women being less than 178cm. I'd imagine 99+% of Swedish women are < 184cm.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> What’s the point of a legal system if it can’t deter lawbreaking? To reinforce social heirarchy, protect elites, and subjugate the proles.

daniel-cussen 5y ago
Course, the thing is in America there is in many ways no true proletariate. It isn't the same. Pay cut after firing after pay cut after saying "take any job, any job" after firing--all that--just means they don't have children. It's not like in other places or eras where capitalistic oppression would bring forth great numbers of workerlings.
- masklinn 5y ago
  That’s not “not having a proletariat”. The proletariat is a state of being. It’s a (wilfully and very successfully engineered) absence of class consciousness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
    Perhaps the word missing here is “precariat”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
    - daniel-cussen 5y ago
      I like that word because it illustrates America better. You're always on the edge of multiple cliffs: the deportation cliff; the prison cliff; the insurance doesn't pay the doctor the half million they extort cliff; the no financial aid cliff; the debt cliffs (more like a mountain range unto themselves); the you're fired or unemployment on your resume or bad resume cliff; the addiction cliff; the fertility (especially for women) cliff; the sickly child cliff; the disability cliff; the homelessness or lose your house or get evicted[1] cliff; And my personal favorite: the lobotomy cliff. It's the beautiflest as seen from below! There's others I'm sure. Lots of cliffs to go around! Everybody gets lots of cliffs! No parachutes though, but if you're looking for a good time you can ride a motorcycle off them! [1] So this one is...it's weird. I talked to a homeless kid (over 18 yeah but still a kid) and asked him, "so what do I do if I end up on the street? What strategies..." "Just don't end up on the street." "But if I DO end up on the street then what I do is I..." "No. The street is cruel. You wake up with people spitting on you, or pissing on you, depends on the night. You for one, you specifically would get gutted and murdered by the guy you pissed off the other time who threatened to do just that. Just do whatever the FUCK you have to do WHATEVER ANYBODY ASKS to not end up homeless." That's what I call a cliff.

urthor 5y ago

The Australian legal system has zero concept of punitive damages. You can only have repertory (recuperative) damages. There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law. Digest that one for a second.

zensavona 5y ago
Meanwhile nonviolent drug offenders landing in prison 5x'd between 2005-2013 in VIC, AU. Conveniently coinciding with the percentage of prisoners being held in private prisons increased substantially.
- nomilk 5y ago
  I hadn't realised Australia has private prisons. Seems to have at least 17 (wiki article hasn't been updated in a few years, so could be more): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Private_prisons_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Private_prisons_in_Au...
- chottocharaii 5y ago
  The parent comment is incorrect
throwawaylinux 5y ago
> There are no "monetary payments to deter future crime" in Australian civil law. I might be missing something but it seems like a good idea that a civil court is unable to punish people after deciding it is necessary to encourage them not to break a criminal law in future. Australia does presumably have punitive fines and other punishments that are for deterrence in criminal punishments?
- chottocharaii 5y ago
  The parent comment is completely incorrect as to their understanding of Australian law.
- vkou 5y ago

devoutsalsa 5y ago

How does the scaled fine work on a mega rich CEO that earns a $1 salary for annual compensation?

namecheapTA 5y ago
Or people unemployed by choice basically early retirement living off savings earning a decade or more ago?
masklinn 5y ago
It takes in account personal income as a whole, and the index can be court-reviewed for this sort of cases where the income is engineered out.

nl 5y ago

In Australia, for this particular crime the ACCC can impose: > For corporations, will be the greater of: $10,000,000 3 times the value of the benefit received, or 10% of annual turnover in preceding 12 months, if court cannot determine benefit obtained from the offence.[1] $26M is a significant penalty for the Australian arm of Uber. [1] https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections/fines-penalties https://www.accc.gov.au/business/business-rights-protections...

toshk 5y ago

In the Netherlands we had a fine given to the Dutch Tax office for a huge scandal, which is even more ironic. In politics, and maybe corporates, there has to be a line that at some point also personal charges can be made, or persons can be held responsible in some way or another. These huge organizational structures have all been created to defer personal responsibility, which is good to an extent, but it got a little bit out of hand.

belter 5y ago
In the particular case that you mentioned, the details of the scandal are so horrifying, that as you stated, the fact it only come to a fine is an example of the lack justice not the presence of any proper governance or personal liability on the part of the individuals making these decisions... From the racist criteria, used for years to identify and bankrupt innocent Dutch nationals. The destruction of documents by government officials, or the taking of children from families of innocent victims of said Tax office. To finally the reelection of the same prime minister that oversaw all for 6 years and lied to parliament about it... "Scandals tarnish Dutch reputation for clean government": https://www.ft.com/content/9996a65e-0996-4a08-aa65-041be685deae https://www.ft.com/content/9996a65e-0996-4a08-aa65-041be685d... "Over 1,100 children taken from homes of benefits scandal victims": https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/19/1100-children-taken-homes-benefits-scandal-victims https://nltimes.nl/2021/10/19/1100-children-taken-homes-bene... "The Dutch government has been rocked by scandal. Why does its leader remain untainted?": https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-dutch-government-has-been-rocked-by-scandal-why-does-its-leader-remain-untainted/ https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-dutch-government-has-been-rocked...

mlindner 5y ago

To put a cost on lawbreaking. The legal system is only supposed to disincentivize law breaking. It's not supposed to nor can it completely stop law breaking.

oblio 5y ago
That cost needs to be higher than not breaking the law. Otherwise, why would a company ever respect the law? You hire any fresh grad accountant, have them figure out that: Profit from breaking law > cost of fine and the company will rationally decide to just keep breaking the law. That's not a deterrent, it's just another line item in an accounting spreadsheet.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Perhaps because they're not profit focussed. When people becry the evils of capitalism, this attitude is what they're talking about: that it is ok and expected to do the thing that maximises profit and that if we want people to not do something then we need to make it financially uninviting. It is not possible to arrange the world so that the financial incentives are always aligned with what is the right thing to do. So if we want to "have nice things" and live in the sort of world that most people will want to live in then we need to have some kind of ethical system which guides our action independently of the profit motive. This seems to be one of the bigger cultural differences between the US and Europe. In the US the attitude seems to be "if there's some situation you can exploit and it's not illegal then why would you not do so". In Europe there is much more emphasis on societal-level reciprocity: not just "will there be negative consequences to me if I do this", but "will this lead to the sort of society I want to live in if everybody does this". Of course there are still bad actors. There will always be bad actors. But the assumption is that most people won't be, rather than that most people will be.
  - oblio 5y ago
    So you're basically saying social pressure? That doesn't work in most cases. It only really works when people die.

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xxs 5y ago

>Fines should scale the way they do in Scandinavia. Baristas and doctors can both get speeding tickets, That's Finland, which is not Scandinavia.

2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
Denmark, Finland and Sweden have it. Not sure about Iceland and Norway. They also have something similar in Germany IIRC.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  > They also have something similar in Germany IIRC. citation needed! german here, business ppl routinely joke about the fine for illegal parking on public gounds is mostly far less than a few hours at a commercial parkinghouse.
  - belter 5y ago
    Parking is an exception. How would you do it? Scan your latest tax report when driving in? They do it for other stuff: [1] "Day-fine" "...A day-fine, day fine, unit fine or structured fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender's daily personal income... " "...Jurisdictions employing the day-fine include Denmark (Danish: dagbøde), Estonia (Estonian: päevamäär), Finland (Finnish: päiväsakko), France (French: Jour-amende), Germany (German: Tagessatz), Sweden (Swedish: dagsbot), Switzerland, and Macao...." "The Limits of Fairer Fines: Lessons from Germany" https://www.fairtrials.org/app/uploads/2022/01/Day_Fines_Report.pdf https://www.fairtrials.org/app/uploads/2022/01/Day_Fines_Rep... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine#cite_note-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine#cite_note-1
  - rndgermandude 5y ago
    Germany has it, but not for things like parking tickets[0], speeding tickets, etc. But criminal law (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) makes extensive use of it. Every time you see the StGB talk about a fine, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it will be a scaled fine based on the daily income of the convicted party (Tagessatz). Courts can estimate the income if need be. A court may e.g. find that somebody committed minor battery, and issue a fine of 12 Tagessätze. If you make 3000 EUR a month (net), that's 3000EUR/30 = 100 EUR for a Tagessatz, and then 10 Tagessätze is 1200 EUR. However, it's not fully scaled, as it is capped at 30,000 EUR per Tagessatz. E.g. a football (soccer) player was recently convicted[1] of battery against his former partner, and fined 60 Tagessätze. He makes (or used to make) significantly more than the 30K cap, so "only" would have to pay 1.8M EUR instead of the probably 3-5M EUR he'd have to pay if there was no such cap. Personally I'd welcome if traffic and many other fines were scaled fines, too. The reason it isn't is probably because fine issuance would not scale itself: too many violations and each violation would then involve a court deciding what the net income of somebody is and therefore what the scaled fine will be. With a flat fine you can avoid involving the courts most of the time (most parking tickets will be uncontested). [0] The parking violation joke was common, indeed, but not so much anymore, as the fines for parking violations have been drastically increased this year, from 15 EUR to 55 EUR per violation or even 110 EUR if you obstruct traffic, including pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Obstructing traffic also earns you one point in the traffic register now, so even people who still think a ticket is cheaper than paying for a proper parking space will not like it when their license is suspended eventually due to too many parking violations. [1] The sentence is not final yet. The defendant, the prosecution (state) and the accessory prosecution (victim) each appealed the decision.

rosndo 5y ago

But this is a solved problem in Scandinavia, you just have someone else do the speeding for you and pay them a low salary. The fines will be scaled based on the income of the chauffeur, not the highly paid executive in the back. Even if it’s actually the executive who’s paying them.

burnoutgal 5y ago

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” The overton window in america is so far to the right that the prospect of charging rich people for breaking the law is unheard of.

kodah 5y ago
This article is about Australia...
dahfizz 5y ago
TFA is about Australia, but go off...
- nness 5y ago
  I think the statement still holds true for Australia.
deleted 5y ago
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mwexler 5y ago
Just to give a source to this quote: See https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protects https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec... for a bit more context, as it's base is from Frank Wilhoit via this comment https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288 https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre....
- ta4234 5y ago
  To clarify without requiring link chasing: the quote is not from the political scientist Frank Wilhoit (1920-2010) but the musician Frank Wilhoit (https://www.broadheath.com https://www.broadheath.com).
twoxproblematic 5y ago

bko 5y ago

The law should apply equally to everyone. The sole purpose of the legal system isn't only to provide deterrence. Fairness and equal treatment under law are cornerstones of the legal system. Some discrepancies make sense (e.g. higher bail amount for someone with means as an incentive for them to show up to court), but this is a huge overreach IMO. Also begs the question, do wealthy people speed more than non-wealthy people? Do they need a deterrence? > The overall TA mortality rate was 26.6(95% CI 13.4, 39.8) per 100,000 person-years, which was almost three times higher in men than that for women (40.4 vs. 12.1 per 100,000person-years). Lower economic level was associated with increased incidence and mortality of TA. Optimizing for deterrence maybe means charging poor men a larger ticket. You see how this way of thinking is wrong? Also imagine having to disclose your entire financial status to some court because you got a speeding ticket? It's a gross violation of privacy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309632/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309632/

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skulk 5y ago
You're focusing way too hard on the example of risky traffic behavior, which has a deterrent far more potent than any fine: potential loss of life (one can even argue that how much you value your life scales with your wealth, partially explaining the findings of that article). What about parking tickets, for example? Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative.
- bko 5y ago
  You don't get it. I reject the whole premise of optimizing on "deterrence" based on [group]. If you accept the premise that we should base fees on deterrence, you have to accept where that leads. And that may not lead to your image of the world as being full of honest law abiding working folks and cigar chomping awful fat cats. > Wealthy people often park illegally and just eat the fine because it's more convenient than the alternative. Where do you come up with this stuff? Your vision of how "wealthy people" behave is so off from what I've observed. > Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents. https://nbrazil.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/481/2018/07/brazil_parking_tickets_uar_2018.pdf https://nbrazil.faculty.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites...

missedthecue 5y ago

So money losing Uber should get a negative fine?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Income? Won't the ultra rich pay $0 then? Also- devil's advocate but a speeding ticket is a speeding ticket. They should pretty much all cost the same. Minor cost for minor crime. It's not the same as something like VW emissions scandal or opioid epidemic stuff.

pk455 5y ago
what's the incentive not to speed if it only costs less than 1% of your income/net worth? the risk to everyone else around you is the same regardless of how much you make
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Because you don't want to endanger yourself, others, or talk to a cop for a half hour? This is worse than any financial penalty, even to me, and I ain't rich.
  - fredophile 5y ago
    People don't typucally drive at speeds they think are unsafe. When someone is speeding, they generally believe that they are capable of safely operating their vehicle on that stretch of road under the current conditions. Avoiding the time wasted while pulled over does sound like a reason not to speed but even there it's a tradeoff. How much time do I save off my commute vs how long a stop would take weighted by the probability of being pulled over.
wlll 5y ago
It's not a business transaction, you aren't paying for the opportunity to go too fast, it's meant to be a deterrent. As such scaling with income makes sense, it's only a deterrent if it affects you, and realistically people with lots of money aren't going to be deterred by a relatively (to their income) fine that's going to deter people who are less well off.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

TomSwirly 5y ago

Deliberate lawbreaking should result in a fine so large the company goes under.

oh_sigh 5y ago

Fractional fines are perhaps better than flat-fee fines for law breaking without a clearly assignable dollar value, but still face the problem of log-ish utility of money. A person living paycheck to paycheck will be extremely burdened by any kind of fine, whereas a richer individual is much less likely to be, and even if they are - have more ability to make downward lifestyle adjustments to absorb the burden of the fine. To put it another way, it is more painful to lose $250 when you're making $25,000, versus losing $3,000 when you're making $300,000.

1123581321 5y ago

You have the law in both Aus and Scandinavia wrong, but that’s been covered. There are a few reasons not to make fines scale overly aggressively, from the perspective of a western government. They feel capricious and encourage expatriation, they punish (potentially hundreds or thousands of) innocent employees who want financial security, and they incentivize worse behavior. This last principle is counterintuitive but has been repeatedly discovered over the last thousands of years. An immoral person is incentivized to behave by a reasonable grade of punishments and will risk the worst behavior of all punishments are equally deadly or above a certain threshold. Hopefully that answers your question; this is just an explanation.

sharpneli 5y ago
Ok Finland is not in scandinavia but we’re all nordic countries and it works roughly the same. We have fully scaling fine. The concept is päiväsakko (literally day fine) that’s determined linearly by your net monthly income. Cops give you X dayfines. In code terms the formula is max(6, (net_monthly_income - 255)/60)); That means there is regularly some person in newspapers whining about their 30000€ speeding ticket (iirc the highest was 100k€ in 2004). In reality that’s just an acceptable way to brag how much you’re making.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Also incentivizes unreasonably-low speed limits, which are not the net positive for road safety that many people think.