And then you talk about meter maids. What do meter maids have to do with Google not breaking labor laws?
Their point is that high potential punishment alone isn't sufficient, but that it must be likely or inevitable as well.
I could use a different one that would stir up much more controversial debate. What if stealing office supplies carried the death sentence? If you are guaranteed never to be caught how much of a deterrent would it be? If you get caught 100% of the time for that but all they do is to make you pay 10x what the supplies were worth?
Basically what I was trying to show that it's all about a combination of percentage of getting caught and the sentence. Only upping the possible sentence does not act as the deterrent people commonly attribute to it.
(what I didn't say is that if all you get is 'you bad boy but please don't do it again' then 100% enforcement doesn't help either. That should be obvious)
In the cheaper ticket city I would freely not pay the meter more or less breaking even on cost, and now in a more expensive city I do unless i’m only intending to park for a few minutes.
If your city has exactly 0 'meter maids' what does the 100x fine do to deter you? Nothing.
If your city is patrolling its meters with a frequency that guarantees you will be caught 100% of the time you will definitely not do it ever (if you knew or after being caught multiple times in a row) and the expenses for meter maid salaries would be exorbitant. No more money coming in.
Theres probably a hard to attain sweet spot where having the patrols brings in enough money to offset enough of the salaries and which also gives you the feeling of 'always getting caught' thus not making it worth your while.