A penalty-ruling that I like
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8446545.stm

why I like this penalty of a quarter of a million for speeding?

Because I oppose the concept of fixed financial penalty fees, and this case here illustrates how it should be done instead: to base financial penalties on the wealth of the offender. when a low class factory worker with 800 bucks per month income gets caught for speeding, a penalty of 50 bucks is much. If a millionaire with a monthly income of 250.000 gets a fee of 50 bucks, it means nothing - maybe even amuses him and causes him to smile.

Instead i want a law code not saying "x dollars for an offence of y", but "x% of the offender's current wealth for an offence of y". In principle. One could also imagine that there are modifications in the formula, setting caps for the Bill Gates of this world, or increasing the percentage with growing wealth level. But you get the general idea.

the goal is a qualitative instead of a quantitative understanding of justice. If you have two offenders commiting the same crime or offence, they should be made to feel the same negative stimulus - the penalty - then. But this tolerance for a negative financial stimulus varies with the treshold of what the accused can financially afford. The subjective percpetion and economical status of both must be taken into account. A penalty only is a penalty if the offender experiences it as a penalty. If he does/can not, it is no penalty.

The problem with this concept is that someone with a worth of 1.000 (pick your curency) only pays 10, which is squat considering the offense. A minimum fine, and maximum, fine is in order, but a progressive % is not.

With the forsaid taken into account, the concept sounds like a positive idé.

In the example I gave, the guy with 800 income per month and a penalty of 50, that would be 6.25%. No have a guy with a monthly income of 250.000. 6.25% would be 15,625.

the idea of eventually progressive % comes from that somebody having 250.000 per month has a much greater fiancial security space that safes him from feeling the negative effect of even having to pay 15625 instead of just 50. Over the year, it may not make a difference for him that he reallyfeels as a real aversive stimulus whether he pays 50 or 15,000. With a yearl yincome of 3 million, both would mean peanuts for him.

Now consider not monthly income, but existing property or bank accounts. Compare for example 3% for some normal guy having 4000 on his banking account, and 3% for somebody having 20 million on his banking account, three villas and six Ferraris.

One problem that can come into play here is that some people are very good at hiding their assets, and other people (at the lower end of the scale) simply do not have enough assets to justify the cost of determining their worth.

And yet another problem could very well be selective ticketing, based on the value of the vehicle.

What happens with an owner/operator trucker who has almost everything invested in his sole source of income (the truck), and very little in reserve?

I think rich people should be able to do whatever they want: murder, rape, etc. It's just the right thing!!! Our society would collapse without prime movers and wealth creators like Paris Hilton, George W. Bush, or the entire Saud family. They've earned every penny they possess, and are clearly superior to the rest of us as evidenced by their greater wealth.

:yep:

You see the symptoms, Torvald, but you do not see the disease that causes them.

Have you never asked yourself why it is that the rich hold so much power? To be rich is one thing, and one can realize many desires by becoming rich, but how is it that rich overcome the law?

The answer is that you give them that power. Of course, it isn't just you but people like you give them that power all the time without meaning to.
Think about it for a moment. How often have you voted for someone who claim to want to exercise power on behalf of causes you agree with? Now ask yourself how often the people you voted for delivered anything besides rhetoric.

In this country you only really have three possible votes. You can vote for the left, which tries to get the most out of the bell-curve voter demographic. You can vote for the right, which does the same, or you can not vote or waste your vote on third party with no prospect of success, both of which are essentially the same thing. You are stuck in a no-win situation. We all are.

What most people do not understand is that we live in a two-party system, which is basically a one-party system. It cannot be otherwise in a "winner-takes-all" political system. The Republican and Democratic parties have changed names and platforms over the years, but they have always had the same goal. They seek to control the majority of the vote. People of similar but still very different political alignments will vote together just to beat the other voting block. The system was originally intended to make it so individual regions within a state would be adequately represented, but it has since mutated into a system where politicians spend tremendous effort redrawing the borders of voting districts so that their constiuency will be victorious. The process is known as Gerrymandering, and it continues to this day, despite what some textbooks may say. Just visit a hearing on the boundaries of congressional district and you will see what I mean. Republicans will try to argue a case to get all the upper middle-class districts with a smattering of densely-populated but poor districts with poor voter turnout. Democrats try to get all of the lower-class districts with as much of the middle and upper-class districts as they can manage without compromising their typically atrocious 15-35% voter turnout rate.

You may be asking yourself what this has to do with rich people and their ability to obtain tremndous wealth with little apparent effort. The answer is that it has a lot to do with them. Rich people don't necessarily create the system - its just a product of the natural order of things.

As business grows in a free society there will be those who excel. Those who excel will have more money than those who do not, and in turn they will be more successful. At this point the economy can go one of three ways. The stat can be co-opted by small business which makes an excellent moral case, or it can co-opted by big business which makes an excellent financial case(and often a good moral case as well, owing to the quality of the lawyers it can hire), or it can reamain neutral and let competition dictate the fate of the market. Believe it or not, the last option has really never been chosen by anyone, ever, save for the founding fathers.

This natural course of events leads us to a fairly obvious conluson; that is, the rich are able to surmount the expensive legal and financial barriers needed to start a business, and the less rich simply cannot. Therefore, the rich control virtually everything, and it takes a businessman of exceptional talent to overcome these problems, which is why we have so few new businesses and such a high failure rate among them in a resource-rich country with a workforce of over 120 million people.

When we support an established power structure like the one we have today, we are simply encouraging a wealth disparity and the resultant societal inequality. This is true on many levels. If it takes a million dollars in federal licensures, permits, and inspections (not to mention payments to the investors who secured the loan) to start a business then very few people will start businesses. If it takes thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars to hire a spokesperson who will actually convince a member of the state or federal congress to allow your business to even exist, then very few people will start a business. If it takes a similar effort and expenditure plus the fees for very expensive lawyers to even make your business viable, almost nobody can start a business..... save the rich.

It is ironic that the will of the many encourages the prosperity of the few to the detriment of the many. Where we call for greater regulation because we feel, or worse, are persuaded, that we are being treated unfairly we are constantly outfought by large firms and wealthy people who actually have some kind of power over the actual nature of government and law.

Like so many other great nations in history, we are approaching a system of unsustainable plutocracy that wil destroy us. We are just too blind too see it because so many of us blindly believe what the state tell us. We are too poorly educated to really see what is going on. People vehemently fight for things like universal healthcare without pausing to consider what they are actually fighting for. So many in this nation are naive enough to believe that their words and will can actually compete with well-funded, professionally-trained, highly-paid, and highly-skilled lobbyists. I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.

There is only one solution to this quandry; The power of the federal government must be reduced to its proper state. We are not a nation, we are a group of United States. The true power is delegated to the states and the people, respectively. That means that we should be free to make our own choices or at least live in a state that suits our ideals. We are supposed to have a choice in the matter. Perhaps you believe my argument, and perhaps you do not, but I daresay that you cannot argue with the principle of it.

Free choice is the right of all people, as is the freedom to deal with the consequences of their choices. It is we who should be dictating state policy through our representaives, and we should demand a political and legal structure that allows us to do so. We have no need for whatever ultimately failed national vision the federal government happens to endorse at any given time. We are Americans and we will succeed or fail based upon our own merits. We will help our brothers and sisters because we are free and therefore prosperous and generous and so have the means to aid them. We will, we must, lead by example if we are to sustain ourselves as a nation and lead the world to prosperity. We must be ever vigilant of the state. States have caused more destruction and suffering worldwide than any other entity, and they must be guarded against. We must pursue a policy of free trade all nations, and alliances with none. We must not become entangled in foreign wars. In doing so we will not only provide an example to the world but prosperity four ourselves and all who choose to join us. There is nothing more prosperous than a nation that trades freely, unfettered by wars and state agendas, especially in the case of the a large, remote, and rich nation such as the US.

These wealthy people that you have such apparent disdain for all have one thing in common; they began as rich people in a society structured to preserve the position of the rich. What's more, they have convinced people who are not rich that their success is justified. Would you readily give them more power by believing people like them that the state can somehow remedy this wealth gap, or would you take the commonsense approach and take the state power they have so often abused away from them?

In case you do not yet see the point, I will reiterate it the most basic fahion that I can; DO NOT GIVE POWER (ESPECIALLY LEGISLATIVE POWER) TO A FEW PEOPLE WITHOUT VERY, VERY, STRICT WRITTEN GUIDELINES DEFINING THAT POWER. You do not write regulations or serve in an advisory capacity concerning them. Only people with money can do that. Rather than complaining about rich people and plutocrats, you (and all of us) would be better served by eliminating their preferred means for securing power i.e. the state. No matter what you think you are doing, you are actually handing power over to the peoplem that you do not want it going to. They are all very rich, and they can all afford very good legal representation. No matter what your ideals are, you wil not beat them on their own playing field.

I rest my case. :salute:

Penalise the poor person more, they have less economic worth.
Actually ban the poor from driving. Face it if all these paupers didn't have cars in the first place traffic would flow better and we woulkd have less worriy with that "peak oil" thing.

He better does not speed regularly. ;)

Anyway, you bypass the basic argument I made, Snestorm. I am about making the sanctions imposed on an offender (not only traffic offences, btw) having the same subjective aversive stimulus for a rich and a poor.

We also often see the rich (I just say: banksters, but also many others) massively abusing their position to fill their pockets without shame, and putting immense moneys at risk as long as these moneys are not theirs. If we allow the actors as well as the rule-makers to avoid any negative consequences of their deeds and decisions, and only the others having to face them, than this means to increase the pürobability that such people indeed will brake the rules. If you want to decrease the probability of these people doing wrong acts and making bad decisions for egoistic motives, you have to make sure that they will be unable to avoid the ngative conseqeunces all others have to face.

What we have now is a system that means: the richer you are, the more space you have to outmaneuver the law. This cannot be what is meant by "to the law everybody is equal". We are not.

Hello,
it is also that those "rich" often get rich by public money basically certainly coming from taxpayers. All real big money comes from billions taxpayers, it is them that build up capital and make science and innovation possible by accumulated capital, but it also makes some greedy and ruthless, think of Mr. Durant and the Union Pacific :D , nice capitalistic job back then.
And after the company gets bankrupt because its director just decided to take some money off to the Bahamas, guess who will pay for the disaster.

Banks have learned nothing from the "crisis", it did work like intended and there was no crisis for the banks. It is high time for a non-political response.

Greetings,
Catfish

On this we finally, finally, finally need a massive change in economy laws: managers at the top, managers in principle, must be considered as being fully liable not only for their incomes and bonusses, but also for the losses and damages their decisions mean for a company. Damages they created, they have to compensate for with their full private property, no matter whether they caused the damage intentionally to get a personal profit from that while knowing they will get away with it, or unintentionally. Right now you can sink a whole company intentionally in order to fill your sacks with golds, getting fired (then you enjoy your wealth and must not work anymore, great!) , go to court and demand another 2 million compensation for that early deletion of the contract - and get away with it. Eventually you even get a pension from the state, for which the ordinary tax payer has to pay for.

Parasites. Get a spray and let them have it.

What must I do to get punished like that? I would happily send a company into bancruptcy or push an old grandmother in front of a bus if I get two million for it and will not be held legally responsible for it. that is a nice way of getting punished, really. the public shame I can live with - money does not stink.

If such people would not be allowed to keep the money they have stolen that way, and would know they even could lose the wealth they already own, I promise you much fewer people would try to make it up to these ranks, and those who would, would act with much more caution, and awareness for their social responsibility, they would also make sure they are competent for the job they are aiming at. An economic culture of much higher awareness of one's own responsibility, greater competence, and understanding of that there are not only one's own rights and interests but also one's own duties, would be the result.

Too man ypeple these days, rich and poor, run around and know much abotu their right - and do not want to know about their duties. And raison d'État is a term that has been gotten rid of by political parties in their quest to take over the power.

I understand totally the point that Sky is making here, but I am uncomfortable with the degree of the fine being determined by how much a driver is worth financially. In a lot of cases in the US, cops giving out speening tickets has more to do with them acquiring money for their local City than anything else. The proposed scenario would effectively make it worth their while to profile the expensive cars rather than look at everyone so that they get more money.

I would prefer a system where more stringent penalties are applied to everyone in a fair way. If you are caught speeding at more than 10 over the limit, you get a $1000 fine and 5 points off your license. More than 20 over and it jumps to $2000 and suspension of license for one year. More than 25 over and your fine is $5000 and your car becomes the property of the City you are caught in.

While I agree with your initial assesment Skybird, I must concur with Snestorm in that this might be more difficult than it seems. It is not unusual to see someone you would consider "rich" by the external look have almost nothing on paper. For example, I know a guy whose industry is owned completey by a company whose only shareholders are the wife and childs, through another company (A family assets one). He has a regular wage (About 40.000 Eur yearly) but otherwise nothing else belongs to him. Then the whole benefits of the industry, which might raise up to several million euros a year, go to the other company via the shareholders. The guy is rich, and drives alternatively a Porsche 911 or an Audi S8, but if you would put him a fine according to his incomes tax yearly bill, then you would end up still with a sum that could make him laugh.

Then there are also lots of people who work a lot with black money (Money never revealed to the tax administration) and are on paper poor as rats, while they enjoy in fact a high living standard.

In conclussion: The idea is good and fair, but ultimately too difficult to put in practice. Not that I say we shouldn't try it, but the results will probably be less than satisfactory.

You have no arguments from me, only a highlighting of some points which may, or may not, need some attention. Overall, it looks like a VERY GOOD idé.

If there is a way to fix the afformentioned, full ahead.

Let'S not split hairs, I lined out a principle thing only. that there are details to be solved, should be clear, and in some parts I ndicated that. The guy with that industry he does not own, but driving two cars: he could sell the Porsche and the Audi and buy a cheap 2nd hand Toyota, right? That thing drives, too. I mentioned monthly income levels as one example only, but also indicated that one could count all possessions.

Let'S not split hairs here, focus on the principle I am after. It goesa without expalnation that we also should delete the many (even legal!) options for people to hide income from taxes and authorities. I could imagine for example that people get one or two bankoing accounts at their birth - and keep these accounts for all their life, without anybody being allowed to open more accounts later on. These two banking accounts then are known to the authorities for all a citizen's life, and all business and interaction he ever does, must run via these accounts, and all oney he ever makes can only be saved on these accounts. The probelm is that today we have a plthory of laws and special rules and exceptions from the laws that make it hilariously complex a matter and intentionally create a lack of transparency so that people have options to hide from taxes, researches, or whatever. What's more, lobbies and interested people do not want these complex things being simolified and cleared up again, for they not only make profitable use of the chaos around, but maybe even base their professional existence as "experts" for this complexity on this chaotic situation.

I am certain that the law codes of our nations cannot be reapired and sorted out, for that they are already too much messed up and too complicated. I would like to see them getting thrown out of the window completely and being done new froms cratch, while we must find ways to make sure that they cannot againb mutiate like cancer again and do not get written by politicial and economical lobbyists. Difficult a thing to do, yes. But absolutely desirerable, and I say: even necessary. Currently we strangle ourselves with our societies drowning in their own disorder and adminsitrative chaos, we accelerate more and more although already right now more and more people cannot keep up with the already insane pace. The old ways do not work anymore, allow more and more deformation only, of which the few can benefit at the cost of the many, increasing inner-cultural tension.

It's one big, whole metastasis we are living in. We will not get rid of it in clean, painless ways. We need a whole new concept of what "order" and "justice" is. Else we gonna implode in the centre of the spiral.