this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Fuck Cars

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

That’s nothing.

100% of last years profit. Make them almost die the first time and utterly ruin them if they do it a second.

Sick of these insignificant fines that do nothing to stop these companies.

[–] Womble 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

4% of turnover is massive. Take BMW as an example, 4% of their revenue is 5.7Billion dollars, compared to their net profit of 18.6Billion. One third of their entire profit is absolutely enough to make them do everything they can to avoid it. Also, importantly, they cant get up to creative accounting to minimise revenue, misrepresenting that is fraud, unlike profit when companies get up to all sorts of tricks to artificiality lower it.

[–] 9point6 11 points 10 months ago

Honestly BMW comes out quite well in the scenario compared to many of their competitors. I looked up Citroen, Fiat, Ford & GM and they all were in the range of 60-90% of their profit getting wiped out by a GDPR 4% fine.

I was kinda hoping to find one over 100% profit, but I decided not to spend the rest of my evening looking up annual financials for car manufactures

[–] grue 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I see no reason to cap fines to anything less than 100% of gross revenue. An egregious enough violation should kill the company (which has no inherent right to exist, BTW -- being granted a corporate charter is a privilege), even if it's the first one.

[–] Sanctus 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Its not even borderline ridiculous. The fines are so low they just incorporate them into operating costs. Jail the entire executive suit and board if a company does this shit, no bail.

[–] 9point6 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I highlighted turnover deliberately. 4% of any company's turnover is absolutely not something that can be rolled into BAU running costs.

Not least of all, if a company doesn't fix the violations, they'll come for it again with a fresh 4% fine.

Edit: typo