What I meant was fines for parking seem less socially important than fines for smoking.

I think policy that protects the lower bound from getting crippled by cascading fines is probably good - at least it's where I think the focus should be. I think we agree more than disagree on that probably.

It's expanding the cost to be more extreme at all levels that I think is a bad idea.

In your two examples the Steve one doesn't really apply. CA didn't used to require plates on new cars (they do now) and he had cancer.

The Bezos example sounds real, but also not personal? More of an "I'll cover your parking tickets" so the contractors don't get hit with them (which seems if anything like he's helping avoid those that would get hit harder by fines). That doesn't bother me too much - I guess I view a fine as an acceptable trade to discourage behavior, but if you're willing to pay it then you can.

Is that unfair because it's worse if you're poor? Yeah, but a lot of things are worse if you're poor. I don't think being poor should be the same as not being poor, but it should be bounded. I'd argue the lower bound in American society today is too low.

I generally agree that at the lower bound there the cascading effect of penalties can be disproportionate and extreme, things like ending cash bail can be a way to improve this (though I'm not a policy expert). Making it similarly extreme for everyone seems bad? It also creates a disincentive for making money which seems like the opposite of what you want.

Ideally, you're supposed to avoid high court fees & fines by not doing criminal things. Avoid the court system and you will never have to pay court fees. And if you do end up with a $50K judgment, you're supposed to go work productively and convince someone to pay you $50K for work that's worth more to them than $50K. Thus you have paid your debt to society - you did something bad, but if you do other good things that people find valuable, that debt is wiped out. In theory at least, someone with $50K in his pocket got it by doing things that a lot of people found valuable, enough that they were willing to pay $50K for it.

Now, I know it doesn't always work that way. Someone could find themselves in the court system not because they did something bad, but because they're black and were standing on the wrong street corner. We shouldn't do that. And sometimes whole behaviors that are normal in one disadvantaged culture (smoking weed, for example) get criminalized precisely because the person in power wants to jail lots of people. The person who did that should've been put in jail himself, but Gerald Ford pardoned him. This is also contingent upon people having money because they did things of value that other people found worthwhile enough to pay them for, which also isn't a given today. We should fix that too, although I think that a lot of people's reaction against wealth is because they can't wrap their heads around how many people a billion users is or how much value they derive from everyday activities provided by a large corporation.

But assuming that things are broken but we're going to slap a band-aid on the one specific instance that's in front of us today risks entrenching the brokenness. Say that you do create lower fees and fines for poorer people. Aren't you now incentivizing criminal behavior, as the costs for it are less? And won't those societal costs be born primarily by the people around them, who are usually other poor people that now have to live with the consequences?