Quote:
Originally Posted by Jel
I see what you are saying now  and it's more in line with what I've previously got from your posts, and thinking (which I do find very interesting mostly).
The thing is, the loss of freedom is exactly what you need as a further level of punishment, otherwise the wealthy would do what they like, knowing they'd only have to pay an easily affordable fine. You also assume every person has money to pay a fine in the first place.
There'll never be an ideal solution that caters to every circumstance, so you have to weigh that in. Some problems with monetary fines only:
do they have money to begin with?
do they have so much that they don't give a fuck (a look at most politicians will give the answer to that one)?
where do you disburse fines so that it's 'fair' to everyone?
what if you receive a fine and refuse to pay?
do you then breach further 'freedoms' by taking it from the source?
what if the source is offshore?
do you then create a world police/fines collection agency?
etc
etc
etc
utopia is a great place inside the imagination, unfortunately that's the only place it ever exists, and is different in every mind that imagines it. |
For starters, I think that my country has some record for the biggest fine ever, or something like that, as those are proportional to your income without uplimit. So, it kinda depends how it is arranged.
Fines are not the only solution, there all kind of other penalties as condional punishment, and various lengths of imprisonment. You know, it doesn't have to be a year. It can be anything between 1 day and lifetime. Penalties are discussion of it's own, and I am not going to get into that, I am just saying that year for that crime what we are talking about, is too much. At least regarding to my sense of justice.