[coldtea]

>By that logic regulators should lower fines if the action wasn’t profitable.

The logic isn't some rigid "make the fine based on the profit".

The logic is based on the intent: make the behavior happen less.

So you can have a base fine of X, even when there's no profit or even if there are losses, and have a scalable fine based on higher profits. This way the company is discouraged to do the bad behavior in general, and is ALSO discouraged to do the bad behavior even if it's profitable.

[Retric]

Nobody is giving people at a government agency the authority to write arbitrary fines, there’s going to be at minimum guidelines.

If the base fine is X, then every actual fine would be X + Y where Y is the profit motive causing the behavior. As such every court case is now also a fight about lowering Y and companies are incentivized to make Y appear lower etc.

Further as companies vary in size generally at large companies Y will be vastly larger than X meaning lowering Y is nearly as valuable at winning.