Fines function as a negligible cost of doing business for large polluters

Evidence

El Pueblo also discovered that Chem Waste and its parent company, Waste Management, had paid more than $50,000,000 in fines, settlements, and penalties for price fixing, bribery, and related environmental crimes. “They could get away with all this because they were a multimillion dollar corporation,” notes Alatorre. “These fines meant nothing to them.” The company, they found out, was such an environmental bad actor that the San Diego District Attorney’s Office had told the San Diego Board of Supervisors that “the company’s history requires extreme caution by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors or any other governmental entity contemplating any contractual or business relationship with Waste Management” because of a pattern of continuing criminal behavior. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 69

Categorization

• XREF: Fine-as-business-cost bears directly on the Legal Systems critique of why damage remedies fail to deter — connects to the diamond/private-justice reading thread. — connects to: Fines written off as business expenses let corporations profit from wrongdoing — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1608

Broader Connections

• Fines written off as business expenses let corporations profit from wrongdoing #corroborates (0.92) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1608