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Comment by dataviz1000 | Hacker News Reader

Had a acquaintance who was in a billionaire family. Trick is never ask them for money. They will invite everyone to lunch, parties at the beach house, ect.. The guy drove a Tesla and parked it anywhere. First time I went with the group, there was a ticket on the windshield, he pulls it off, and he says, "It is just a tax." He puts it on the pile of other parking tickets and says, "it is what accountants are for."

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Fun fact: in Germany, egregious parking violations can and will lead to your license being not just taken, but you gotta take a psychological evaluation to make sure you're of sound mind [1]. Can't get your way out of that.

[1] https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/vgh-baden-wuerttember...

I’d rather tolerate some level of rude / obnoxious behaviour than be concerned with government reeducation programs.

The authorities aren't going to send you off to reeducation, they will just determine (accurately) that you are a me-first guy who must not be allowed on the public roads and won't return your license. A win for the general public because road traffic is a coordinated effort.

I don’t mind being admonished by a magistrate for my mad behaviour, but being required to attend what boils down to nonsense treatment theatre is a bit much.

Anyone who’s enough of a sociopath to intentionally park like a jerk knows the right things to say to appear repentant.

I wonder what Germans think of this waste of time / money / effort.

My guess here is that this is not treatment as sic but assessment and that if you’re not appealing for your licence back you could just skip it. Perhaps a German could comment?

It’s weird to me how right wing Americans seem primed to catastrophise about Marxist big brothers when they hear about any vaguely effective or equitable example of public policy.

> My guess here is that this is not treatment as sic but assessment and that if you’re not appealing for your licence back you could just skip it. Perhaps a German could comment?

German here, yep, exactly that.

Absurd.

Who loses their license for a parking infringement and doesn’t go through the motions of getting it back.

Like anyone thinks: yeah, fair enough, I’m such an irredeemable reprobate I think I’ll just walk from now on.

The point is that there should be a mechanism to prevent such arseholes from getting it back if it seems likely that they'll continue their behaviour. This is one such mechanism.

What? Faking their way through empathy theatre?

Only people with organic brain damage are failing that.

Where’s the data? Has the price of implementing such a scheme been worth the costs?

I live in a regional Australian city.

Driving is a privilege, not a right. Privileges require responsibility.

Freedom of movement is the relevant right. That's why you may need a certification to operate a vehicle above a certain level of dangerousness. But you can't be denied that certification unless you have done something that makes it impossible for you to be a safe operator of that vehicle. Vehicles for commerce are treated differently. Your mileage may vary but that's the theory of those laws in most places.

In countries with sufficient transportation alternatives, freedom of movement is still guaranteed even with your driver's license permanently revoked.

And I've never heard anyone use freedom of movement to argue against prisons, so I think we can all agree that limiting someone's movement can be an appropriate response to certain violations of law.

If you're rich enough to ignore fines, leading to a license suspension, you're rich enough to afford a driver. Or at least to Uber everywhere.

Parking violations can affect handicaped people. Also parking and halting restrictions at least in Germany are often motivated by safety concerns. If you get injured in an accident made more likely by a parking violation you may feel different.

This is why the Swiss system makes so much sense. Since fines are meant to a deterrent they need to inflict a similar level of punishment on the people who receive them.

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