> I'm not saying anything about this specific case Please don't assume that by discussing the appropriate level of initial fine in an interaction between a com

> I'm not saying anything about this specific case Please don't assume that by discussing the appropriate level of initial fine in an interaction between a company and a regulatory agency, that I'm saying government doesn't have a role here. That does not follow at all. I'm more questioning the presumption in this comment section that the regulator should have been harsher to start with. To me it seems natural that a referee in an interaction will start off gently saying "hey, I'm paying attention to this issue now, here's a minor fine, but watch out" so the players know to care. If they continue misbehaving, they'll start being thrown out of the game. But saying that the ref should start off his first enforcement with seriously damaging penalties doesn't seem reasonable. Nearly every sport in practice involves a gap between the rules "as written" and the rules as "as enforced" - i.e. fouling, traveling in the NBA, strike zone in MLB. In all of these cases, players need 1) knowledge of what's going on in this game and 2) consistency from the ref so they can adjust and not be outplayed. Why don't refs always enforce rules to the max? To me this is a key aspect of human systems, the human freedom of refs as people to adjust to make things work well, especially when the rules as written are insane or incorrect, and are extremely hard to change upstream (due to government/publicity/etc) problems, in addition to just plain incompetence in congress. i.e. "The NBA won't redefine the traveling rule to reflect reality, but refs enforce the 'real' rule which is used on playgrounds, and everyone knows the level of enforcement that will be used in each situation, even though refs never actually write it down." You may want an exact match between rules/laws & enforcement, but it doesn't work that way with human referees. Same thing here. Enforcement is a kind of communication and negotiation between parties; starting off by nuking the company will scare them so badly, others will abandon the space or the US due to the harshness. Also, the discussions that come out of this will be things like "what's an efficient way for the company to do what the agency wants? Keep in mind our restrictions here (e.g. every rocket launch also has some harm/risk to your priorities; is there a way we can help all of our concerns from within the multiple ways to solve this issue?)"