I am increasingly becoming convinced that one of the problems we’re facing these days is simple innumeracy on the part of lawmakers, jurists, and journalists. When you hear about a multi-million dollar fine for some sort of illegal activity it sounds like a lot of money. However, if the proceeds being earned through the illegal activity were measured in the billions or tens of billions of dollars a multi-million dollar fine isn’t even a slap on the wrist. It’s barely a rounding error.
The difference between something being a real penalty and, presumably, a deterrent and something just being an acceptable cost of doing business is one of scale. Are guys who don’t know the difference between a million and a billion (let alone a trillion) capable of identifying the right scale?
Or, as a wise man once said “what’s twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?”
Innumeracy? How about letting industries write their own regs, including the penalties. While people are, in general, innumerate I think this has more to do with the system being rigged in favor of one side.
Steve
More like them banking on the innumeracy of the public. They want us to think that all numbers ending in “-illion” are roughly equivalent.
I’ve occasionally seen it mentioned in articles on things like illegal logging – they’ll mention that it was cheaper for the company to pay the fine and keep on doing.
That’s rare, though. Probably because it takes more time to find out what a business’s revenue from a certain type of activity is for comparison, than it’s worth spending on the article.