[koolba]

> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"

To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.

[true_religion]

Fines are strictly punitive. The only goal of the fine is to change behavior, not to be 'fair'.

It's true that the fines differ per the act, but that's only because the act itself determines how much people would desire to continue it despite a deterrent.

The fine for jaywalking is less than the fine for speeding because (a) society doesn't want to stop jaywalking as desperately and (b) even a small fine of $25 will cause people in cities to follow the rules and not cross the road willy-nilly but with speeding even with the fine you may want to still speed hence why almost all states also give you only a few chances to break that law in a year before they take away your license.

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You're supposed to collect damages on top of the fine.

Which is why John Deer is paying our almost $100 million[1].

An additional $50 million plus FTC oversight for 10 years is to ensure John Deer comply, and to set a standard for further fines if they do not comply. If they continue to willfully not comply, like some people continue to jaywalk or speed, the fines will drain billions or reach a point that the company will be dismantled.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-is-paying-farmers-99-...).

[Grombobulous]

So with punitive damages it’s still only 2% of John Deere’s 2025 profit.

Not revenue, profit.

[timschmidt]

Depends entirely on whether or not you think Amazon actually caring about the fine and bothering to do anything to prevent it recurring is part of the goal.

If it is, the fine must be large enough to matter against the backdrop of corporate P&L. Courts have an entire category for this type of fine: punitive damages.

[kelnos]

Maybe $100B is too much for that particular infraction, but the idea of punitive damages has nothing to do with "fairness" or charging the real cost of the bad thing they did.

It's a deterrent. It says: "you did a really bad thing and I'm going to slap a huge fine on you so you think twice about doing it again". And "huge" has to scale with the entity paying the fine. It has to be an actual wound, not a papercut.

[Grombobulous]

In this example Amazon could get around culpability for significant fines by making slight variations on the same product.

“We only sold 10 dog toy model A00001, any owners of dog toy model A00002 were not impacted”