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Comment by goldcd | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that this is (as mentioned here in the article) the problem with (somewhat more) reasonable fines per day, snowballing.

If it's not criminal, and all you can do is fine, and no action is taken to prevent the the fine incurring - I'm not really sure what option there is.

Do you cap it? Send in the bailiff's to remove the offending thing at a certain point? Just write it all off, setting a precendent?

I've genuinely no idea.

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Yes, there should certainly be a cap. $573,000 sounds like it would be from an unreasonable government at best, authoritarian government at worst with no common sense.

But the problem with caps, is that people hit them.

As a hypothetical, imagine a polluting plant poisoning the neighbourhood. You want them to know once their fine gets to $1M it's capped? You've suddenly presented a clear choice to the plant - fix it if it'll cost less than $1M, if it'll cost more keep ignore.

If you're going to fine anybody "per unit of time", you have to keep it open-ended (as otherwise the only people who'll ignore you, are those making more profit per day, than the per day cost)

It's not an all or nothing thing. You can cap some fines and not others obviously. Fining someone $573,000 for having vehicles in his back yard and working on them is ludicrous and absolutely makes the government look like either a bully, out of touch with reality, incompetent, or all of the above.

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