Article says that there is a cap of CHF3,000 for the daily rate and that the fine imposed in this case was 50 daily rates. So the maximum fine is CHF150k or about $175k.
Rule number 1 when you go to Switzerland: it is the most anti-car country there is.
There are so many possibilities to make costly "lessons" if you do not prepare in advance. I lived in Zurich - lovely country, but what in other countries is more or less tolerated or fined with a price tag of two McDonalds menus, can hit you very hard.
A parking violation and driving a bit too fast downhill (it's a hilly region, isn't it?) because you overlooked a sign, and not only ordinary people will wish they were billionaires.
Switzerland is a car country that would make AAA drool. But it doesn't have the same approach to laws and flexibility of the system as the US because it didn't need to encode different outcomes for different people in authority discretion like the US did.
> Rule number 1 when you go to Switzerland: it is the most anti-car country there is.
Not even close, even for the more general superalative meaning of most.
Lots of Swiss drive, car and gas prices are more affordable than the rest of Europe, many Swiss live outside of big cities where parking is harder/expensive. I even saw a drive thru at a McDonalds in Renens (suburb near Lausanne), which...I've never seen a drive thru at McDonalds anywhere else in Europe (although I only lived in Switzerland).
Yes, Switzerland is very law and order, you follow the rules (like in Germany). But it is definitely a place where you can drive if you want, and many people do.
I think the law should apply equally to all. That means you don't give special breaks or come down especially hard on someone just because of their economic circumstances.
The funny thing about this opinion is that it is both extremely widely shared and extremely unpopular, depending on the context. Just seems invasive to me for a court to demand your personal monetary situation when determining how much to punish you.
The flip side to this is no-cash bail and people being allowed back on the streets after committing awful anti-social crimes. In NYC some people get released on no cash bail for 2nd degree manslaughter. But you know, economic circumstances
The law should have the same consequences for everyone. $1M fine for you is likely making you bankrupt, but is a rounding error for Elon. Is that the same consequence?
If fines don't scale with wealth, they mean the activity is only illegal for the poor & middle class.
So in principle, different rules for different people? If you have no money you should be able to break the law more cheaply?
Principles are principles for a reason. You don't hold equal treatment / punishment under the law as a principle. Equal does not mean relative to something.
> If you have no money you should be able to break the law more cheaply?
Yes, the total value of the fine is less for someone with no money, but has the same impact the same because it is the same portion of their overall income.
Just like "if you have no money, you should be able to live in country more cheaply by paying less in taxes".
And realistically poor will always have more impact due to any fine. As they have almost always both in relative and absolute terms less disposable income. It is not like taking 9 million from someone on net earning 10 million will make them starve, but try to do same with someone making 20k and taking 18k from that...
The word "equality" is underdetermined here. To me, it is obvious that scaling fines with income (so everyone gets 1/500th of their annual wage for a speeding ticket, e.g.) is equality and that flat fine amounts, being a larger burden on the poor, are unequal. Apparently you don't agree, but that means we need to sit down and hash out an agreed-on definition of equality first, not go slinging around emotive rhetoric.
Thousands of people die in car related situations. Most of them are preventable if people would just drive they are told in drivers ed. Don't tailgate is a big on as it means when (not if!) someone makes a mistake there is enough time and space to take evasive action. Many other safety laws exist that people think nothing of violating.
> Just seems invasive to me for a court to demand your personal monetary situation when determining how much to punish you.
What if the default punishment was instead a nice, equitable 21 days in jail for rich and poor alike, with the option to instead pay a fine of 21 days income, if you were willing to disclose your income?
The equality is that the fine is for hours of your life it takes to pay that fine. If you make $20/hr and the fine is $100, that's 5 hours of work that you could use to pay for whatever, that you have to use to pay the ticket. If you make $200/hr, then the fine is $1,000, also 5 hours of your life. That's where the equality is. No matter who you are, violating this thing costs, in this example, 5 hours of work.
Compared to the person making minimum wage (say $11/hr) receiving a $450 fine paid on an installment plan, I think this sends the right message.
Income proportional fines should also have an alternative minimum fine that weighs their entire liquid balance sheet value because it's entirely possible decamillionaires to billionaires keep their live expenses allowances low compared to vast assets they control.
The day-fine system is kinda interesting, because it recognizes that the impact of paying a $500 fine is very different based on your income.
I was surprised to learn that the UK experimented with it, briefly, but it's something that exists in several other countries for example Finland has had the system since 1921.
For speeding, we do have a fine based on your weekly income. It can be up to 175% of your weekly income (capped to £2,500), if doing >100 MPH on a motorway (or >76 MPH if speed restricted to 50 MPH).
Good. We should do more to tailor fines to income to the extent feasible. Otherwise it's just a hardship for the poor and an inconvenience fee for the rich.
No, not good. $116k is a ridiculous fine for tailgating. Fines should be at least partially related to the damage or potential damage inflicted on the public. I'd be fine with sublinear scaling but straightline increasing a fine ad infinitum is ridiculous. And/or the fine should be cut for the poor.
I think there's a big difference between what people say (the poor shouldn't be massively overburdened by a traffic fine, which most people would support), and what many advocates of these policies are actually motivated by (make the rich pay reeeee), which is silly schadenfreude I won't support.
If we want to prohibit an activity, having a fine that's the same in dollars is not great because of the whole inconvenience-fee thing. If the purpose of the fine is punishment and deterrence it is ineffective.
If we want to have less of an activity but reach a quantity where there's a equilibrium between the social costs and social benefits for the activity, then that's really a tax. And it should be uniform and not vary based on income.
> I'd be fine with sublinear scaling but straightline increasing a fine ad infinitum is ridiculous.
What is actually properly ridiculous is that some people get enough money that a linear fine seems ridiculous. Income distribution is completely out of whack.
Tailgating is ridiculous and can kill people. I experience that every day where I live and it’s a psychological nightmare. I say we should fine them and remove their license, it’s the only thing those morons understand.
Aren't "many advocates" only seeking to make penalties for unsafe behavior felt? Wealthy people can and do routinely scoff at -- for them -- trivial costs, abusing their wealth until someone ends up injured or killed, and then employ a team of lawyers to skate on that as well.
I think fines that are proportional to your income or wealth are clearly a better approach than fixed fines. In practice, that kind of stuff can be really hard to figure out, but overall it seems sensible? There are lots of downsides to a highly connected financial system for poor people, but hopefully we can move towards scaled fines as something of a consolation for all of the downsides the poor endure.
Along with the wealth tax, these revenue-based fines also pushes you to minimize the revenues that you declare to the state, ending with overall losses in collected taxes.
For example, many crypto-bros are insanely poor on paper.
Companies can spend on behalf of a person, etc.
A more fair system is to be able to pick between jail or community service.
Time is equally precious to all humans and giving some of your time to repair your mistakes is the best you can do.
A poor person cannot afford to miss a day at the job, or not care for their children, when it would just be another day not working for a rich one. Not to mention the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest populations are 10-15 years. If anything jail sentences should be longer for wealthy people!
I don't even think it needs to be hard to figure out. Fines could, and should, be set to something like "basis points [hundredths of one percent] of your gross income on last year's tax return", which the government already knows. A speeding ticket could then be set to e.g. 20 bp = [last year's gross income] * .002.
Yah - income is clearly the first way to do this, but you'd want to integrate assets at some point (many wealthy people do not have traditionally high incomes). That's the tricky part.
I know, if you can't pay the fine don't do the crime, but realistically income is not a constant and is much too temporal to be useful here. A decent income year last year, and little income this year, means you might have no hope of paying the fine.
Why not a fraction of the current value of gross assets at the time of investigation? This a much better reflection of someone's financial standing, is a greater deterrent, ensures that the fine is actually payable, and deals with the issue of the rich not having much in the way of income.
It sounds very progressive for a society to admit high income spendthrifts are immune to self reflective remorse, but I feel like we should still try impose penalties to give them an opportunity for growth.
Fair enough. Then the fine shall be levied at the value of the car being driven when the offence occurred. Driving a $500 beater? Your fine is $500. Driving a $1,000,000 sports car? Your fine is $1,000,000.
While this theoretically allows the rich to drive said $500 car in order to minimize their liability in the event of a fine, it also means the rich have to drive a $500 car if that is what they are trying to optimize for, which is a decent social tradeoff.
I would argue if the goal is justice then the fine is basically a tort on the externality imposed. At some point society imposes an injustice if the fine exceeds the externality imposed by tailgating, even if it's a pittance to the rich person.
That is, for justice rather than just retribution, I think the real nominal cost of tailgating is probably not closely linked to wealth or income of the offender
It's fair to say and, on some level, I like the idea of scaling fines to lower income more than scaling them to higher incomes. The marginal utility of wealth goes down as you get more anyway.
I also think that, if you wanna critique the efficacy of fines in metting out justice, you need to go further than you do here. Scaling the fine tries, imperfectly, to match the punishment to the circumstances of the offender. We could imagine an even better system that more perfectly reacts to misbehavior, but exactly what that would be seems hard and this is a sensible adjustment to an existing system.
But the point of the fine in this case is clearly not restitution, but disincentive. Justice in this case is ensuring everyone is equally incentivised to follow a law that society thinks everyone should follow.
If the goal were only to ascribe economic harms to certain actions and reclaim those costs, it would be called a tax or a fee, not a fine.
Instead of being the discretionary income of this philanthropic rich guy who would graciously give it all away to his servants, those 100k go to the Swiss government, which famously provides no public benefit or services and in fact just sets the money on fire
some people will never understand and at this stage i think its pointless.
Lets have a look at two examples of parking in a disabled person space
if you make 30k a year, have no savings, $100 is major expense.
if you make $1m a year, $100 is just a vip parking space.
Both people should be equally de-incentivized to illegally park in a disabled people parking spots. The proportional fines are the only way to get close enough to that state.
Should some people be able to drive recklessly just because they can't afford to pay speeding tickets? I don't see what problem this is trying to solve. Is there an epidemic of wealthy people speeding and running over school children? In America you get points for speeding and your insurance goes up (more expensive car, more expensive insurance) and after a number of points you lose your license.
Wealthy people don't break the law any more than less wealthy people even though the naive view of the economic costs of crime would have you think they would.
Precisely that. A fine is a simple non-violent way of enforcing consequences for actions we, as a society, want to discourage.
Here in Poland I have met too many corpo-achievers literally bragging that they just put all their speeding tickets on the corpo-card because it's _peanuts_, so they drive as fast and as loose as they feel...
And no, things are not simple, but fines being proportional to income is better than fixed fines.
Like taxes, I'm a fan of proportional fines, at least for major offenses. The purpose of fine is to deter the perpetrator. If you fine a (m|b)illionaire 20 quid like the rest of us, how much of a deterrence can that be? I'm also a fan of increasing the fine exponentially for frequent and/or repeated offenses.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThere are so many possibilities to make costly "lessons" if you do not prepare in advance. I lived in Zurich - lovely country, but what in other countries is more or less tolerated or fined with a price tag of two McDonalds menus, can hit you very hard.
A parking violation and driving a bit too fast downhill (it's a hilly region, isn't it?) because you overlooked a sign, and not only ordinary people will wish they were billionaires.
Not even close, even for the more general superalative meaning of most.
Lots of Swiss drive, car and gas prices are more affordable than the rest of Europe, many Swiss live outside of big cities where parking is harder/expensive. I even saw a drive thru at a McDonalds in Renens (suburb near Lausanne), which...I've never seen a drive thru at McDonalds anywhere else in Europe (although I only lived in Switzerland).
Yes, Switzerland is very law and order, you follow the rules (like in Germany). But it is definitely a place where you can drive if you want, and many people do.
The funny thing about this opinion is that it is both extremely widely shared and extremely unpopular, depending on the context. Just seems invasive to me for a court to demand your personal monetary situation when determining how much to punish you.
The flip side to this is no-cash bail and people being allowed back on the streets after committing awful anti-social crimes. In NYC some people get released on no cash bail for 2nd degree manslaughter. But you know, economic circumstances
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/all-crimes-new-york-bai...
If fines don't scale with wealth, they mean the activity is only illegal for the poor & middle class.
Principles are principles for a reason. You don't hold equal treatment / punishment under the law as a principle. Equal does not mean relative to something.
Yes, the total value of the fine is less for someone with no money, but has the same impact the same because it is the same portion of their overall income.
Just like "if you have no money, you should be able to live in country more cheaply by paying less in taxes".
Thousands of people die in car related situations. Most of them are preventable if people would just drive they are told in drivers ed. Don't tailgate is a big on as it means when (not if!) someone makes a mistake there is enough time and space to take evasive action. Many other safety laws exist that people think nothing of violating.
Fines for doing 10 km/h over posted speed, etc doesn't have be so draconian.
What if the default punishment was instead a nice, equitable 21 days in jail for rich and poor alike, with the option to instead pay a fine of 21 days income, if you were willing to disclose your income?
The law is: your fine amount is based on your daily income.
This law is applied equally.
Income proportional fines should also have an alternative minimum fine that weighs their entire liquid balance sheet value because it's entirely possible decamillionaires to billionaires keep their live expenses allowances low compared to vast assets they control.
I was surprised to learn that the UK experimented with it, briefly, but it's something that exists in several other countries for example Finland has had the system since 1921.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
I think there's a big difference between what people say (the poor shouldn't be massively overburdened by a traffic fine, which most people would support), and what many advocates of these policies are actually motivated by (make the rich pay reeeee), which is silly schadenfreude I won't support.
If we want to prohibit an activity, having a fine that's the same in dollars is not great because of the whole inconvenience-fee thing. If the purpose of the fine is punishment and deterrence it is ineffective.
If we want to have less of an activity but reach a quantity where there's a equilibrium between the social costs and social benefits for the activity, then that's really a tax. And it should be uniform and not vary based on income.
Which is tailgating?
What is actually properly ridiculous is that some people get enough money that a linear fine seems ridiculous. Income distribution is completely out of whack.
I bet the f*cker stops now.
For example, many crypto-bros are insanely poor on paper.
Companies can spend on behalf of a person, etc.
A more fair system is to be able to pick between jail or community service.
Time is equally precious to all humans and giving some of your time to repair your mistakes is the best you can do.
The reality is somewhat different.
Why not a fraction of the current value of gross assets at the time of investigation? This a much better reflection of someone's financial standing, is a greater deterrent, ensures that the fine is actually payable, and deals with the issue of the rich not having much in the way of income.
While this theoretically allows the rich to drive said $500 car in order to minimize their liability in the event of a fine, it also means the rich have to drive a $500 car if that is what they are trying to optimize for, which is a decent social tradeoff.
Though it hurts poor people who prioritize their car over other essentials.
That is, for justice rather than just retribution, I think the real nominal cost of tailgating is probably not closely linked to wealth or income of the offender
I also think that, if you wanna critique the efficacy of fines in metting out justice, you need to go further than you do here. Scaling the fine tries, imperfectly, to match the punishment to the circumstances of the offender. We could imagine an even better system that more perfectly reacts to misbehavior, but exactly what that would be seems hard and this is a sensible adjustment to an existing system.
If the goal were only to ascribe economic harms to certain actions and reclaim those costs, it would be called a tax or a fee, not a fine.
https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/to-put-trickle-d...
Lets have a look at two examples of parking in a disabled person space
if you make 30k a year, have no savings, $100 is major expense.
if you make $1m a year, $100 is just a vip parking space.
Both people should be equally de-incentivized to illegally park in a disabled people parking spots. The proportional fines are the only way to get close enough to that state.
The argument being if fines for breaking rules are not proportional to wealth, then wealthy people will become disdainful of those rules.
https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2024/09/how-if-you-g...
Wealthy people don't break the law any more than less wealthy people even though the naive view of the economic costs of crime would have you think they would.
Keeps your income private from cops + uses existing mechanism of determining your income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
Otherwise most rich people will only consider them a mere inconvenience, like in most countries.
Here in Poland I have met too many corpo-achievers literally bragging that they just put all their speeding tickets on the corpo-card because it's _peanuts_, so they drive as fast and as loose as they feel...
And no, things are not simple, but fines being proportional to income is better than fixed fines.