Comment by liminal

An issue I've noticed with court imposed fines is that they seem to be set based on the cost of the incident involved, not relative to the finances of the org/person being fined. A pipeline is very expensive, so fines end up being very expensive regardless of the receiver's ability to pay. OTOH, a large company can destroy lives with impunity since the cost of a person's entire lifetime earnings is not material to a multinational corporation's bottom line. This seems backwards to me. Fines should be set in such a way as to properly disincentivize behavior and adjusted to the means of the person/organization paying them.