By that standard you could also propose that the poor should be fined even heavier because they are the lazy ones and should get punished for that.
There is no actual reasoning in your arguments why the fines should be the same for everybody, instead there is an argument why richer people should not be fined higher, while acknowledging that the height of a fine will impact people with differing levels of wealth in different ways.
Actually we need to think about why we are putting fines on people. The answer is: We want to deter bad behaviour. But if we take parking as an example: Some people do not mind a 25€ fine for bad parking because of their wealth so the fine doesn't work on them, while it works on other people. So our goal was to deter people from behaving in a certain way but we partially failed to do so. Now one option is to increase the ticket price for everyone (but I guess you are not arguing for that option). The other one is to attach the fine to income. The third option of doing nothing leads to a system where people can break the rules by being wealthy. But this is obviously one of the things that we seek to avoid in making rules for people to behave.
There is one more obvious option: make fines not monetary but time consuming. For example you acummulate points and at certain threshold you need to do some public work, attend some courses or get some of your privileges revoked .
> By that standard you could also propose that the poor should be fined even heavier because they are the lazy ones and should get punished for that.
I hope that you also understand how that is absurd on its own, and that I certainly wasn't suggesting this.
However, yes, if we're seeing the entire system (including fining speeding) as a way to adjusting bad behavior, then yes, you could theoretically think of a system that directly punishes laziness.
But, wouldn't such a system already be covered by your salary, which does scale as a result of your work (i.e. you can't improve and risk losing your income entirely if you're lazy, and you're rewarded for productivity)?
> There is no actual reasoning in your arguments why the fines should be the same for everybody,
I stated... somewhere, that the magnitude of your crime does not scale with your income, so scaling the fine that way does not seem logical.
It does serve to make punishments clearer, but it still does not seem logical nor fair to me.
> Some people do not mind a 25€ fine for bad parking because of their wealth so the fine doesn't work on them, while it works on other people.
I will try to put this into a different perspective then:
A person who is 20 years old has more years to spare than one that is 50. Should they therefore get longer jail sentences?
I think that punishment should only consider the crime. Anything else is discrimination. Those with less wealth can buy fewer apples, fewer burgers, and pay for fewer speeding tickets. Such is life.
Fixing differences between wealth becomes an anti-capitalist discussion (which is fun, but a subject for another day).
> I stated... somewhere, that the magnitude of your crime does not scale with your income, so scaling the fine that way does not seem logical.
My favourite way of arguing in favour of fines proportional to wealth/ income is this: wealth is something that gives you the power to buy things: say better food, better houses, better cars, or even things that most people cannot afford, for example a big yacht. Depending on how wealthy you are, some products or services become affordable. However, there is one thing that nobody should consider affordable, and that is breaking the law, which should be equally binding for everybody. But if you set a fixed price for breaking the law, that itself becomes a product, and the price defines a set of people for whom the product is affordable and even worth the price. Is that right or desirable?
It depends on what the law is for. For example you could have a nice solid fine for littering, with half of it earmarked for public cleaning/improvement. If someone violates that and reliably pays the cost, it's win-win. They get to be lazy and the environment is improved.
Since littering means degrading the appearance of a public space for some amount of time, it's hard yo put a price on it: the maximum fine should be the cost of a person assigned exclusively to you, who immediately picks up whatever you throw to the ground and nicely dispose of it in the appropriate way.
What you say would make sense in case of unpaid fares. In the case of speeding, there is no amount of money that can offset the increased risk to pedestrians and other cars.
No amount? I disagree. The speed limit is inherently a balance between safety and time-efficiency. You can convert time-efficiency into money, and figure out a monetary cost of different speeds. Even if it's an absolute mandate to keep safety levels the same, you could cut everyone else's speed by 1kph and make it up to them with a share of the money. Or you could subsidize safer cars with the money.
And at a certain price point you can call in a police escort or start installing express lanes.
There is no actual reasoning in your arguments why the fines should be the same for everybody, instead there is an argument why richer people should not be fined higher, while acknowledging that the height of a fine will impact people with differing levels of wealth in different ways.
Actually we need to think about why we are putting fines on people. The answer is: We want to deter bad behaviour. But if we take parking as an example: Some people do not mind a 25€ fine for bad parking because of their wealth so the fine doesn't work on them, while it works on other people. So our goal was to deter people from behaving in a certain way but we partially failed to do so. Now one option is to increase the ticket price for everyone (but I guess you are not arguing for that option). The other one is to attach the fine to income. The third option of doing nothing leads to a system where people can break the rules by being wealthy. But this is obviously one of the things that we seek to avoid in making rules for people to behave.