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Comment by kqvamxurcagg | Hacker News Reader

What a bargain for the airlines. A 1% penalty and they probably saved at least 5% in financing costs.

No, it was an inconvenience. They actually had to take off the cushion from the couch in the CEO's office, to get that money.

When people see small fines like this, they assume it’s a slap on the wrist.

And it is. Because the message is loud and clear: don’t make us pay attention to you and fix your shit.

Counting to three only works if you're willing and able to do whatever the thing is you said you would do to the child when they are misbehaving.

I think it's less that people see a slap on the wrist, and more that people see the systemic, wholesale capture and gutting of regulatory bodies and are not surprised that nothing substantive happens in this kind of case.

And why are they not paying attention 99% of the other time? When people lose faith in institutions it's not because they're dumb. They understand things.

And then to be gaslit into thinking "don't trust your eyes", you can see why some people are pretty angry nowadays.

I think the message is more like "eh, we're on your side, but once in a while we gotta pretend to do something... just play along and wink, will ya?"

To be fair, it does say that the penalties will ratchet up if the airlines don't correct their behavior.

Why not bring the hammer down so they won't do it again for at least 30 years? No need to spend time and regulatory attention on them, that way.

Seems to me like the airline might fight that harder.

I don't know what the reality is, but I can imagine a justification that looks something like, "We do this slap on the wrist. You fix this or next time we have a paper trail showing you know this is illegal conduct"

I'll believe it when I see it. Threatening to take a kid's toy away when they know you won't cause you never do doesn't teach a good lesson.

Has the US threatened to ratchet up fines in the past and not done so?

Spam callers come to mind. Some of it may be due to some technical nature that made it difficult/impossible to enforce but we've had donotcall.gov and all sorts of legislation for fines and penalitoes and I still get slews of spam solicitations to this day.

I think the general consensus for your average citizen and consumer these days is that they are voiceless and powerless in most these situations while lots of posturing and theatrics go on between government and businesses, all while fleecing your average citizen and consumer.

Most see a lot more erosion than we see realized improvements in daily life from rights, regulatory action, or market trends/shifts.

I wonder if the spam calling companies keep appearing and disappearing so quickly that it's hard for the government to find them. That's not the case for airlines.

It isn't that it is hard to find them but politicians are afraid of setting limits on cold calling because politicians themselves frequently use questionable call lists to robocall people. Also, they are too weak to sanction countries where spam calls are mostly originating. I believe the should start treating robocallers like terrorists, maybe drone a couple call centers and watch as they stop almost overnight.

>politicians are afraid of setting limits on cold calling because politicians themselves frequently use questionable call lists to robocall people.

I think they sometimes avoid this problem by only putting restrictions on commercial entities, not on political or charitable entities:

>In Michigan, commercial vendors are not permitted to robocall individuals without prior consent, but political campaigns and charitable organizations are exempt from any such restrictions.[1]

There does seem to be some bipartisan support for fighting spam calls.[2]

[1] https://www.michiganelectionlaw.com/political-spam-text-emai...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/31/traced-act-signed-into-law...

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