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It would be nice if the fines went to the people who are harmed by illegal parking. Businesses could claim income from tickets issued in front of their stores, and homeowners/renters could share the income from tickets issued on the streets they live on.

It would be too inefficient and fraud-prone to actually work, but it's a nice idea.

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"Harm" is difficult to assess in some cases. What about the bunch of school children who faced a higher than normal probability of traffic accident because somebody illegally parked near a pedestrian crossing? You can't really claim losses against somebody who endangered your life, before anybody is hurt. Maybe that's what fines are for...

Easy: you issue fines paid to the school such that they'll earn whatever a student's life is worth within the expected time period of a student dying from an illegally-parked car. Then you can mandate that the schools put the proceeds into a fund for the affected families.

That would be an efficient use of resources. This whole "law-making" thing isn't hard at all, what do they do all day in Congress?

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