The result was that more parents were late. The reason being that the parents effectively considered the fine a "late pickup fee", and one they were more than willing to pay. If the parents were fined a day's daycare fee for being ten minutes late you can bet their attitude would change.

I see company fines in the same light - they formalise the process of absolving responsibility and moving on. Just pay the toll and continue to handle your customer data cavalierly.

The day care changed what was a social incentive for an economic one, and then couldn't reverse the consequences: Not fining the parents anymore didn't reduce the number of late ones to previous levels.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2008/03/31/89233955/dan-ariely-takes-on-...

... as I sit in my home office, just over an hour away from day care closing time I assure you I'm watching the clock like a hungry hawk watching a mouse. See, my kid's day care charges a mere $600 per hour late (billed in 1 minute increments).

I don't see kids parents late that often :-) and we've come close to missing it, but haven't in two years.

Another perspective on this is why should we expect someone else to bear the consequences of our failing to meet our responsibilities? If we're late picking up our kid, they staff at the day care leave late to see their own families, they incur higher operational costs, etc.

Their request that we show up prior to their closing time is completely reasonable and that there are stern consequences for failing to meet our responsibilities doesn't seem unreasonable either... especially in light of the comment I was responding to.... I assure you the day care really doesn't want to collect that fee.

As far as passing out in your home for a few hours. If that were really an issue for you, then potentially paying $600 might motivate you to actually go see a doctor. Otherwise there could come a day when you pass out and never wake up (and your children never get picked up by you or see you alive again)...

My guess is that day cares do this to basically mean "show up on time, we're not f'ing around."

WOW, I'm in the wrong business I think. What else charges that much per hour? I don't even think a neurosurgeon could command that sort of rate!

This is also common when quoting freelance projects you don't really want to do.

(and with that... I better pick up the kid... ;-) )

I think upping the pain works better. What's a daycare going to do with so many gallons of milk?

If for some reason you have too many gallons of milk, you can also use toilet paper, 10 rolls per 5 minutes. You can never have too much toilet paper, some late parents even buy the soft stuff too! lol

A huge fine isn't always the best deterrent and it makes people generally mad at your child care center.

Everyone gets a chuckle out of seeing a dad walk in with three jugs in each hand... It's a light hearted walk of shame and it really works to deter late pickups which is the real goal.

> A huge fine isn't always the best deterrent and it makes people generally mad at your child care center.

EDIT: You can make this revenue neutral. Give parents a discount at the end of every month out of the money they collect in late fines. People on time at a better-than-average rate will come out ahead.

Another alternative is calling the police, because at what point is the child considered abandoned?

I think I would prefer the light hearted milk or toilet paper errand.

Charging them double fees is more like it.

I think it was AT&T or Verizon that got fined the "record" $3 million by the FTC for tracking users' browsing behaviors for like 2 or 3 years.

The FTC should have asked (subpoena I should say) the company for reports on how much money it made per user from that tracking for the whole period, and then charge it a multiples of that.

Did it make $1 billion? Charge it $2 or $3 billion.

And do this sort of stuff across industries with a regular occurrence, so that companies can "expect" such audits, and so they don't just think it's a one in a decade fine that maybe one company in the industry will get.

I think you'll see abusive behavior drastically reduce.

The real question in this story is this: If you find that you have customers who are willing to pay you more for providing more service ... why not provide that service? You get more money, your staff gets paid overtime, parents get peace of mind, everyone's happy.

It's a bit of a hard question because the daycare may not have a legal way to stop holding the child, unlike fedex they can't simply return it to sender, so these sorts of contingencies might not be expected on opening your center, but you'll need to scale into them.

especially when the cost of doing the right thing is higher.

i mean look at HSBC - laundered trillions of dollars of mega-organized-crime money. for a decade. 400m dollar fine probably isnt even .01% of what they made off that endeavor

> 400m dollar fine

> isnt even .01% of what they made

...why even use numbers, a concept literally defined to quantify things, if you're just going to use utterly incorrect ones?

HSBC did not launder trillions of dollars over a decade, that figure is three orders of magnitude too high. HSBC is being fined $1.9B, not $400M.[1] HSBC also did not earn 19 trillion dollars over the course of a decade, which is what would make $1.9B your 0.01% figure. Even a $400M fine would still constitute earnings of $4 trillion.

Not only are your numbers incorrect factually speaking, their relationships with each other are entirely out of whack for measuring HSBC's profit, even in an absurd hypothetical scenario in which HSBC did launder trillions of dollars.

_________________________________________

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judg...

If you give me a million dollars in counterfeit bills, and I launder them for you, I might get paid only $10,000. My laundering efforts might have cost me $9,000. In this case my profits are $1,000 even though my earnings were $10,000 and I laundered $1,000,000.

I'm not saying that HSBC laundered 19 trillion, but the earnings and/or profits of HSBC have absolutely no relation to the potential amount they laundered.

While I agree with your sentiment, there is no need to use such inflated and hilarious numbers.

While "trillions" is definitely inflated and hyperbole, I don't think it's THAT far off.

According to this The Guardian article [0] "At least $881m in drug trafficking money was laundered throughout the bank's accounts."

So 0.88 Tn. Definitely not "trillions" but definitely much more than I would've expected if they said "billions laundered".

Also, it says "at least", which I take it to say that the investigation was not complete so a final number couldn't be calculated and only a "lower" cap is given. Potentially it could still be "trillions" as in e.g. "1.3 trillions" (if that final figure is ever calculated or even published of course). So inflated, yes. Hilarious... not so sure.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/11/hsbc-bank-u...

[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/incoming/article6209613.ece/...

You mean 0.00088 Tn.

"i mean look at HSBC - laundered trillions of dollars of mega-organized-crime money. for a decade. 400m dollar fine probably isnt even .01% of what they made off that endeavor"

$1.9b may sound like a lot, but there's a lot of blood attached to it.

It's not because any specific fine can ever be adequate compensation for all the suffering caused by the cartels. It's because you want the fine to be large enough to actually deter bad behavior in the future.

In this particular case I believe the fine (perhaps in combination with the threat of other regulatory action) has changed HSBC's behavior as there are many stories about erroneously frozen HSBC business accounts.

I just wonder if any number of deaths will ever change the behavior of the politicians who designed the disastrous war on drugs policies that have so utterly failed. I fear that won't happen as long as voters don't care about facts.

Let's remove the stop signs so all drivers can be as cavalier.

It'd save a lot of drivers the headaches that go along with traffic laws.

But the uber situation would be closer to this - the parking meter costs $20/hr and a parking ticket costs $5. We're creating a situation where people who break the law get ahead of those who obey it. Either we can ramp up enforcement (good luck with that happening) or we can level the playing field.

The US federal government decided 30 years ago that it was going to attempt to prevent some kinds of transactions from being part of the global economic growth. Kinds of transactions that were always here, and always willing to be part of the global economic growth.

It decided to use other people's money to attempt to enforce this blockade, at great expense, for perpetuity.

It does this by creating onerous reporting requirements for companies and individuals worldwide, and onerous and expensive procedures for the individuals that fail to merely file the correct paperwork.

All the while, massive multinational banks have been letting the well funded organizations continue moving their money through them and contributing to the global economic growth, while citizens are being fined and imprisoned for paperwork problems.

And your go-to thought was a satire on anyone suggesting less regulation, implying the same or more regulation would be a BETTER use of public resources?

World economic growth has always been fueled by money whose source you don't agree with. Using everyone's money in a government to merely PRETEND like it can prevent illicit sourced money from being used seems irresponsible and unconscionable, looking at the track record.

Is it really so uncomfortable to admit that multinational "cartels" (organizations of people under a common charter) are pretty good at fueling economic growth globally? Because thats how its always been

They also fail at it while ensnaring otherwise law abiding citizens in the dragnet.

So there is no logic to extrapolate to murders, where there is a victim from the activity of murdering.

AML via the Bank Secrecy Act, Patriot Act and other regulations was a swing and a miss, just looking at the evidence alone. Cash transactions over $10,000 were supposed to be reported, to stop terrorists, and the 1 BILLION of organized drug money that HSBC cleared is the equivalent of a dozen terrorists being financed per day, since 9/11.

Excepts its just people with a little extra cash that get jailed from these reporting laws.

https://www.gdpr.associates/data-breach-penalties/

"There will be two levels of fines based on the GDPR. The first is up to €10 million or 2% of the company’s global annual turnover of the previous financial year, whichever is higher. The second is up to €20 million or 4% of the company’s global annual turnover of the previous financial year, whichever is higher.

The Parliament had requested for fines to reach €100 million or 5% of the company’s global annual turnover. The agreed fines are the compromise that was reached."

Why do big firms get off easier than the smaller firms?

OTOH, consider that the bigger firm is made up of a collection of 10 services, each earning $100 million. The breach is only in one business unit - is the global revenue a fair metric if the breach is not global?

It will be interesting to see how this is enforced against giant corporations when (inevitably) some small piece of data is missed on some small service in a business unit nobody at the c level has ever heard of.

Huge fines do exactly what they’re intended to do. JPM for instance responded by making legitimate operational changes to detect all manner of financial malfeasance within their organization.

Other than the sexist nonsense of the CEO, there really is an irrational hatred of Uber. Are many of us secretly moonlighting as cab drivers?

Uber’s nonsense is minuscule compared to generations of taxi corruption.

This isn’t me excusing Uber but it does seem like many people, especially Europeans have an inordinate amount of glee over anytime AirBnB or Uber get in trouble. Has the hacker ethic really devolved into statism?

We should be cheering over disruption of the status quo. Does anyone actually long for the days of getting ripped off by over-regulated and over taxed hotels and taxis?

Do you people actually like having government pick winners and losers? Do you actually trust government to do the right thing? Governments have a strong track record of stifling innovation, abridging freedom and giving regulatory handouts to the privileged classes. People here get all kinds of sanctimonious when it comes to patents and copyrights yet seem to fall firmly on the side of the entrenched incumbents when it comes to things like disrupting hotels and taxis. It’s a weird double standard; a hatred of government when they want to prevent people from stealing movies, but a love of government when they want to prop-up taxis and hotels.

Having those concerns isn't the same as unfailingly supporting incumbents, out of date regulation or a love of government.

It's a really crappy and obvious distraction tactic, made worse by the addition of cliched libertarian sighs.

> regulatory handouts to the privileged classes

And unregulated AirBnB is basically a way for rich people (privileged classes) to buy apartments in cities and turn them to money-making machines, to the detriment of the lower-incomed renter (lower-incomed because they can only afford to rent, not to buy their own place).

Yes, many many people do.