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Comment by nemacol | Hacker News Reader

Do you think that a system of public service / community service requirements instead of fines would be better for common offenses?

Without any real research I have often thought that instead of fines for parking violations, noise complaints, (other misdemeanors) etc - having someone spend time instead of money would make those sorts of punishments more equitable.

There are issues - child care if a parent has to spend time. This system would need to accommodate peoples schedules, shouldn't have to miss work for a parking ticket, etc. Much harder to administer than mailing fines.

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The criminal justice system already does this extensively. Often people are sentenced to community service.

So I guess your question is really should this be extended to more low-level offenses like minor traffic violations?

It's an interesting question. In Switzerland, for example, speeding above a certain level ceases to be a fixed fine and is instead a percentage of your income. I'm a fan of that. Fixed fines tend to discriminate against the poor disproportionately.

I can imagine there are many people who would be better off and would prefer 2-4 hours of community service over a $100 fine. So that should certainly be an option instead of paying the fine.

Yeah I think the idea probably does have merit.

One of my past bosses had a supercar as his daily driver. He had a specific law firm on retainer purely to handle speeding tickets. He'd call them when pulled over, and apparently they knew what to say to discourage cops from writing the ticket. People with the kind of wealth to routinely retain services like that effectively play by different rules than the rest of us in the US.

Same in Finland I believe. The fine is a % of your annual income.

Calculate daily income, minus some protected cut and then multiplied by number of days. For drunk driving for example 50 "day fines". So at net monthly wage of 1800€ would be 1288. At 10k€ monthly netwage 8128€...

Also Finland does have option to turn some of these day fines to prison time at rate of 4 to 1..

You're referring to reported income, that in Switzerland is a national tradition to hide.

I like the % of income idea.

I like it simply because screwing the rich and middle as hard as the poors on trivial issues is gonna make it real clear real quick how excessive penalties for common civil offenses are and pretty soon thereafter the laws will change.

HN has this fantasy of $10k speeding tickets. In reality it's gonna look like 100mph speed limits, $100 fines for you and $10 fines for your nanny.

Other countries have $10k speeding tickets for the rich who ignore traffic rules. It’s not such a fantasy, it’s a real world way to reduce emissions and automobile deaths.

The problem is that above a certain level even that doesn't work. Like, answer me this - if you catch Jeff Bezos speeding, what possible fine can we impose on him to "hurt"? Compared to his wealth, we'd probably need to fine him like $1B for it to have any effect, right? And someone would still argue that it doesn't hurt him like a $500 ticket hurts a poor person.

But then literally no court anywhere in the world would agree that a $1BN fine for speeding is "punishment fitting the crime". It's just not.

Like, I like idea in general, but there will ways be people immune to it. Like others have said - the only real punishment is time. And not even necessarily prison - just make a CEO do 300 hours of community service, see how that works out.

Even $100k tickets.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

Don't excessive speeding tickets lead to a loss of license? This is the perfect response. Perhaps a more sophisticated society will one day know our fears and punish us accordingly (cue film script).

>Don't excessive speeding tickets lead to a loss of license?

Usually.

>Perhaps a more sophisticated society will one day know our fears and punish us accordingly (cue film script).

That was a plot line in 1984 and IMO flies in the face of equality under law.

For a normal person, yes.

If you have money to light on fire you can hire attorneys to delay, appeal, etc. Eventually, it will catch up.

This is true of much of the justice system. Penalties aren't meant to curb certain specific behaviors, they're meant to be used as general control mechanisms for people who can't wiggle out of punshiment by one means or another. I think the advance of physical and digital surveillance is eventually going to force a reevaluation of what behavior we criminalize, because either otherwise-upstanding people start to get caught in the web (see: piracy for personal use in the 00s), or we see an increasing number of highly public instances of clearly malicious or neglectful actors sliding (which we're arguably already seeing wrt police brutality cases).

We're inadvertently about to make the dystunction of our legal system everyone's problem, which is when you'll see change.

>gonna make it real clear real quick how excessive penalties for common civil offenses are and pretty soon thereafter the laws will change.

I like you. This is good.

> $100 fines

Where I live, that's what you pay when you drive 10mph too fast.

What do you do with crimes committed by people who have little in earnings (students, unemployed, etc.) or folks who earn “$1” in income but obviously are otherwise wealthy?

Interesting question.

I imagine someone has already thought of this from a tax point of view.

Maybe some % of their net worth divided by their age (working age?) - say if they have 100 million dollars and are 60. 60-18 = 42. We would fine X% of 2,380,952.38? The idea being an attempt to come up with what their yearly salary could have been based on current value.

I am sure there are some excellent flaws with that approach as well.

Fun to ponder.

I hope the government doesn't keep track of everyones net worth, it's bad enough they know everyone's income.

It would be based on the income of all of the money attached to you, including interest/dividends/appreciation within trusts with you as the grantee. Since wealth makes more money in virtually every way it can be stored, and since not investing it results in the "inflation tax," inflation + income tax = wealth tax.

In Finland where all larger fines are day-fines the minimum day-fine is 6€.

Calculation is based in your total income (including capital income). Most rich people would be affected due to capital income.

Nit pick: so income zero means no fines?

Yet another argument for UBI, I guess?

I'd much rather pay a $100 fine for whatever it is, than waste 2-4 hours of my time.

losing your driving license seems also a good deterrent to avoid speeding

Have a friend who got a driving related offense in a Bay Area county. He asked to go to jail for two or three weeks as he had a good job and income and could make it work with his boss. It was denied and he had to do weekend community service for 8 months.

As a traveling consultant, this was a real wrench into his job and for his employer. He'd have to travel back every Thursday because he could not afford a Friday flight cancellation and missing service. Now, this court and county insists they structure it this way so to have the least impact on people. But he would arrive and watch all his crime peers arrive by taxi, foot or bike (bus service to that area on Saturday morning was a no-op).

The vast majority of his peers were not people who could afford $20 each-way taxi or uber trips and worked jobs on weekends. They lost their jobs because their licenses were suspended. He suspected many of them gave up trying to comply and parked 1/2 mile away, driving their cars with with suspended licenses.

Community service is basically a racket and not necessarily a better work/life deal than prison.

I want to see FAANG CEOs do public service, instead of being fined pennies.

I do, it would also be more fair than fines because it wouldn't be worse on the poor. I also think we should have corporal punishment, not because I believe in it per se, but because I think it is more humane than prison and would satisfy societies need for punishing the guilty.

I can see an argument that poor folks have less free time - if someone worked a couple part time jobs, has kids or other family that rely on them, several hours picking up litter is a pretty big deal. Vs my 9-5 M-F job, no dependants, etc. several hours picking up litter is a bummer or inconvenience.

I think that corporal punishment proposal is batshit insane.

Common? Sure.

Well educated, comfortable people who rob others of their livelihood? They deserve state penns, just like the poor folks who got three strikes for walking off with hedge clippers.

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