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Comment by remh | Hacker News Reader

Execs, Managers, etc. should be sent to jail when they break the law deliberately. Fines are not enough as if the benefit of breaking the law is higher than the fine, then there is no incentive to stop.

We've seen that happening with all the big corp cartels that just provision money from those benefits to pay the eventual fine.

The fact that the French Law here may be bad or wrong is not relevant to this point.

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Fines are okay, just make them larger.

Jail for managers should be reserved for situations where people have serious damages. It would be appropriate for certain bank malfeasance, but not for violating taxi regulations.

Maybe a token amount for non-serious damages, like a month. Shame should be effective here.

This is a little past simple violation of a regulation. This is acting like your above the law which is generally dealt with much more harshly.

Everyone driving 15mph above the speed limit is "acting like they are above the law".

Driving 15mph above the speed limit and then ignoring the cop pulling you over is acting like you are above the law and will not end well.

If a court would be able to number the amount of money a corporation did make with an illegal practice it would be able give a fine which is higher then the gains, else the fine wouldn't have any effect. But with the now common creative bookkeeping/tax evasion schemes this is not possible anymore. So Jail is the only solution if you want to be sure that those managers don't just get a compensation from their corporation.

I doubt the benefit is actually higher than the fine. My guess is that Uber is hoping for a long term gain from a reversal of the law, but it's a gamble that might not pay off.

Frankly, I have no problem with this. As long as there's no direct harm to people (so no fake drugs or contaminated food, etc) and it's done openly, I think it's fine for companies to make this gamble. Either society recognizes the law as outdated and abolishes it (a win-win) or it sticks by the law and the government gets to pay for some public expenses by bleeding some VCs. Either way, society wins.

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