A penalty-ruling that I like

[Skybird]

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

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?

[Torvald Von Mansee]

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.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

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.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Torvald Von Mansee

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.

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.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Snestorm

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?

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.

[Catfish]

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 , 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

Originally Posted by Skybird

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.

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.