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Here in Finland, many fines are "means-tested" i.e. based on one's income.
For example, a person gets caught speeding 30 over the limit.
Person A has monthly income of 3000, the fine is 180.
Person B has monthly income of 50,000, the fine is 100,000.
The fine is intended to inflict the same amount of pain, regardless of one's income. For a rich person, it makes sense to just hire a chauffeur for 35,000 a year and pay their 180 fine if they get a ticket.
That last line is somewhat the problem with this. Way too many loopholes around this, many rich people barely have income on paper but work around it in other ways
Let’s clarify the objection. Is the concern that a wealthy person arrives faster? Or that they can legally hire someone to absorb a penalty designed to equalize discomfort?
Because if what offends us is that inequality persists despite mechanisms meant to neutralize it, then the issue isn’t the mechanism, it’s the expectation that justice should feel like equal suffering. That’s not justice. That’s calibrated envy.
Means-tested fines don’t eliminate structural advantage; they merely simulate fairness by scaling pain. They don’t dismantle hierarchy, they accessorize it with the appearance of equity. When a wealthy individual hires a chauffeur to avoid tickets, they aren’t cheating the system. They’re operating within it, creating employment, not evading law.
If that offends our moral instincts, we should question the instincts, not the transaction. Because a system that punishes prosperity instead of regulating behavior will always confuse justice with vengeance.
The concern is that the rich person endangers others.
We're not talking about justice or punishment, but determent.
Not even sure what point you're trying to make, but you're starting from a wrong premise.
Exactly. That is the problem.
The wealthy don’t stop the behavior; they just move the liability. Someone else speeds, someone else gets fined, and the danger stays the same. That’s not a loophole, it’s how financial deterrence works when money can absorb risk.
So no, I’m not defending that outcome. I’m exposing it.
A system built on fines doesn’t stop harm; it prices it. And once something has a price, people with money will pay to bypass the barrier, whether it’s them behind the wheel or someone they hired.
You think my premise is broken? I’m saying the system already is.
Om not saying your premise is broken, I'm saying it's wrong?
No idea what you're even arguing???
I'm not arguing, I agree with you and took it further.
Too bad I don't live in Texas, and fuck you Texas, what are you going to do?
I live in Texas. I know what they want to do. And they cant. The answer to all this is that they are powerless. Continue on as normal and shit post to your heart's content.
That's the fun thing about the Internet. Volume beats quality. Amazon and tiktok are corporate proof of this fact. It takes a good damn army to make wikipedia barely functional, and since 4chan crashed, there is an actual apocalyptic army of degens with nothing but free time and bandwidth.
as a patron and contributor to the mind sink that is the Internet, they can never beat the valueless shit show of volume that our degenerate minds can contribute.
Carry on you worthless shitlords. Magnificent bastards every one. Do your worst.
For the filthy rich, the ONLY penalty is very often a fine, and it's a very small one proportionate to the profit they made from the crime. It's the cost of doing business.
The filthy rich only do jail time if they bilked other filthy rich people out of their money.
Rich people are far less likely to do time, because "the companies I own are responsible for other people's livelihoods, you'd be punishing them as well" is generally accepted by most courts of law as a valid reason not to jail them. If they were less short-sighted they'd be treating the fact that the person had power and responsibilities as an aggravating circumstance and giving them longer sentences...
I thought that was some sort of weird cyberpunk monocle 🙀
Lol. Have fun trying to enforce that while real crimes are happening.
Texas set to overtake Florida for America's redheaded stepchild.
The trick is, they don’t really care about enforcing it - just having it as a potential charge to pursue when they hate someone.
This just in: Breathing is illegal. They’ll only bother prosecuting critics of Trump though.
As always with these laws, they are a tool designed to be used selectively against someone you already decided you don't like.
It irks me when rich people will just pay the fine rather than following the law. Example: Parking in handicap spots and not caring about a $250 fine. It is like paying $5 parking fee for low income drivers.
Finland actually has speeding fines proportional to your income! In 2002, a Finnish millionaire was fined €103,000 (over $100,000 USD at the time) for going 75 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. (47mph in a 32mph zone)
Like the Tesla in New York City which has racked up $38,000 worth of parking tickets?
I'll say it until I'm dead: fines need to be calculated by income and net worth, increasing exponentially. The only way for a fine to act as a deterrent is for it to cost more relative to a person or company's ability to pay it.
That penis was actually there, not interpreted, don't do this. The penis was tattooed right on his face.