The fine has to be big enough to cause enough pain to the shareholders that the board of directors cares.

Let’s say we set the fine to an amount that would destroy the company if levied in a single financial year, then actually leviing it over five years. Five years of poor dividend performance.

Or perhaps partial dividend forfeiture for a period of time.

The people who make the kinds of decisions that result in this kind of failure are driven by next quarter’s share price, hurt that enough and they’ll make the right decisions.

Either way, that particular fine is appallingly small for poisoning the general public with heavy metals.

No no, it’s the people who are wrong.

But we saved $75!

Prisons serve to remove a person from society (in the civilised world).

Removing a person from society has two subtly different justifications:

1. Prevention: their offence against society is such that society must be protected from them.
2. Punishment: their offence against society is such that society wants them deprived of society.

Consider the difference between violent crimes (1) and nonviolent crimes (2).

Note that some societies expand (2) to include more punishment than just separation from society.

I’m unfortunately stuck with him.

Unfortunately we’re all stuck with him. US politics/economy leaks out into every other country’s politics/economy.

The US threatened to pull out of the WHO at the time since the findings didn’t match US drug policy. Instead of losing the US, the WHO quietly shelved the study.

Time to release it then.

Meet Mushu! The whale that thinks she’s better than you!

If only the nation were awash with guns, to secure the union, or something.

James Doohan was missing the tip of one/some fingers on one hand, so he always stood off centre from camera so he could hide his hand behind his body.

Because all this is happening out in the open, there’s no secret conspiracy.

A conspiracy theorist thrives on being one of the few who know the actual truth.

how 99.9% of all public figures, “philosophers”, inventors, important rulers, generals, diplomats, and so on were all men?

Men got the credit for them, no matter who actually did the work.

It’s not convenient, it’s survivor bias.

The thing is, it’s almost certain that the orange idiot will do this again next month, next quarter, next year, ad infinitum. He’s also shown that it’s mostly bluster, Canada called his bluff and he blinked. So now it’s noise, risk, and unnecessary cost.

There’s also no confidence that this nonsense will stop in four years, no confidence that another Trump won’t be elected next time.

America’s burned the last shred of respect it had left, and it’s gone, for decades if not forever.

Every other country is going to do its best to divest itself of every dependency on the USA it can; find other buyers and find other sellers.

simply driven over

That’s called smuggling.

Supermarkets exploit that behaviour by displaying per-person limits on merchandise. E.g. “limit 5 per person”.

It works.

Not hypothetical. Ours is cursed already.

She’s “reading” the three blank pages at the back to makeup the signature.

Never again.

Optimistic

Its very possible to enrich corrupt elites without taking an axe to the US’s strategic position.

Yes. But not for a very stupid easily manipulated “businessman”.

“So our worldview is our maunga are ancestors, they’re not resources but they are living beings and so the notion of legal personhood fits well with our worldview.”

We generally don’t think of people as resources… Human resources… Shit.

Shame that he doesn’t have the capacity to decide when to shit his pants.