I was just reading about a violation of the Canadian fisheries act that has a maximum penalty of $200k, and realized the absurdity of there ever being a maximum fine.
There should be no maximum fine on any corporate penalty given that we do not cap the size of corporations or their bank accounts.
It would be like having maximum jail terms of 25 years for immortal beings that can live to 10,000.
I saw a comment suggesting companies should “go to jail” like a criminal would, and you have them limit how much they are allowed to interact with the public world until their sentence is up.
I think it’s a pretty interesting way to deal with it. It makes sense for retribution and it forces companies to have cash on hand to cover costs while “locked up” to cover costs. It would really make businesses risk averse.
Seems like every corporation should have a designated group of upper execs who assume responsibility for illegal corporate actions. I know they can sometimes be found guilty of knowingly making decisions that break the law, but the complexity of business makes placing blame on an individual extremely difficult. It should be a more straightforward liability they accept with the job. Some of these people make so ridiculously much money from their positions, they should bear a corresponding degree of responsibility.
Corporate fines should be in % of the company income.
I would also argue that personal fines should be like that too.
All fines should be a percentage of income. Otherwise we have what we call a poor tax on people who can’t afford it, and “the price of doing business” for people who can. And I’m not referring to just companies.
It has to be worth, not just income. There’s too many loopholes around “I don’t have income I just have stock I use as collateral for a loan” or “I don’t have income but my LLC happens to pay for all of my daily expenses”.
But yes, all fines need to scale with the perpetrator. The more dollars you have, the less each dollar means.
A $100 ticket for parking on a crosswalk means nothing to a millionaire, but is potentially ruinous for someone living in poverty. It needs to hurt the same for everyone. The millionaire should have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. They need to feel pain.
A lot of people are really shitty and operate at a very basic level of moral reasoning. It’s just “did I get punished?”.
I don’t have income but my LLC happens to pay for all of my daily expenses
That’s income. Not according to tax laws, but that’s also why we shouldn’t base monetary penalties on tax law. These fuckers have been exploiting the loopholes to have the most money and power and also pay almost nothing. But they still eat! And grocery stores don’t accept leveraged loans, securities, Bitcoin, or percentages of annuities… At some point, they touch money. So let’s tax (and penalize) them so they can’t avoid paying their fair share.
Not income, global revenue of the parent company, like GDPR does it
So if Google fucks up, it’s the full revenue of Alphabet Inc that determines the fine.
That way you can’t found GDPR Violation Incorporated and do your shady stuff there risk free.
Meanwhile, Google is illegally chopping down a forest to make space for a data centre. Those fines should be proportional to revenue too. That would teach them not to mess around with trees.
trees are different. malicious removal of them for profits is even worse. the fine should also be recurring, and paid-in-full annually until that forest is restored to its former condition.
*Networth
You fuck up badly, better be ready to liquidate some assets.
