Say a big pharmaceutical company makes billions addicting millions and killing tens of thousands with their diabolical poison.
If their profits are several billion a year and they get fined, say $100,000,000 by the government, put quotations around the words describing that payment as punishment.
I know this is done sometimes, but it needs to be applied every time to be effective.
Thank you for stopping in to review my idea and may the mightiest god, whoever he may be, bless America AND England.
Have a nice day and thank you for your comments.-- doctorremulac3, Jan 21 2019 "Fined" https://gph.is/1gV4sqI [doctorremulac3, Jan 21 2019] // Thank you for stopping in to review my idea and may the mightiest god, whoever he may be, bless America AND England //
<Turns down Brane Ray intensity to 10% of previous value, wonders if any permanent damage has been done/>-- 8th of 7, Jan 21 2019 This is the “best” idea ever-- hippo, Jan 21 2019 That's the "best" anno ever.-- doctorremulac3, Jan 21 2019 Sure. But let's be careful about escalating this... I found out recently that neo-nazis signal supposed Jewish conspiracies in their messages by putting three brackets around the subject. (After I heard that, I started to worry that some of my rather more badly hacked code might accidentally have antisemitic slurs, deeply nested away somewhere.)
Also, it gets very much harder to quote people.-- Loris, Jan 21 2019 By the way, I admit that this was a thinly veiled rant. Apologies for that, but I do like how quotes can be two things: indicative of quoting somebody or of sarcasm or at least incredulity.-- doctorremulac3, Jan 21 2019 [Loris] That would make being a LISP programmer a little problematic-- hippo, Jan 21 2019 There was a veil?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 21 2019 Not that we saw.
// putting three brackets around the subject. //
Brackets, braces or parentheses ?
<Googles for version of Lint configured to spot extreme right-wing function definitions/>-- 8th of 7, Jan 21 2019 //their profits are several billion a year//
We'll make a marxist of you yet, [Dr3]. ;-)-- pertinax, Jan 22 2019 I think there's a valid point here, which is that it's inaccurate to say that a huge corporation was 'punished' by being fined $10,000, when that equates to about twenty minutes' worth of profits. Likewise to say that Mark Zuckerberg 'earns' $6m a day is making a value judgement on whether that money was actually 'earnt'. This could be solved by (as this idea suggests) pointing out the misbehaving words with quotes, or by switching to more factual language - e.g. "Mark Zuckerberg is given $6m a day".-- hippo, Jan 22 2019 Or they could just call it "their cut".
Deathtech Pharma International pleaded guilty to killing ten million people last year while receiving 10 billion in profits, or about $1,000 per corpse. Government officials agreed to a 10% cut of the profit or about one billion dollars payoff.
The government's cut will be paid anually after a regular accounting.-- doctorremulac3, Jan 22 2019 random, halfbakery