Lots of meta-level comments here so I’ll add one that’s more in the weeds:

In an office job, it’s always good to be friendly with IT and the office manager/administrative assistant.

Fair enough, good reply.

Upvoted :)

(Maybe Lemmy will bring back some good discussions in threads like these…)

I think the public gets fatigued when we hear about the profits these companies make and then we see these comparatively small fines.

If this is how we “steer the vessel of regulation” then I can accept that this is a push in a better direction.

However, I still feel that a fine in the hundreds of millions, ( not bankrupting but a “shot in the leg” versus a “slap on the wrist”), is appropriate for these very large corporations. They already weild so much political and economic power that consequences for things like this should be higher.

In other words, let’s encourage them to operate responsibly in the first place.

That’s not how laws work.

If you break the law, you deal with the consequences.

It’s not a “game system” where additional infractions lead to multipliers of consequences.

Child labor laws exist because we saw what happened in the past when they did not exist. We, as a society, care about our children enough to protect them. That includes preventing them, by law, from working in industrial environments.

Some states seem inclined to repeat the past by repealing or loosening child labor laws… .

Now another child is dead as a result.

Agreed.

I only mentioned my range because then perhaps it would move to a different column in their budget.

25 million is nothing to Amazon.

A couple of billion might move it into an enterily new spreadsheet and maybe even precipitate a meeting to figure out who needs to be fired. Maybe.

This isn’t a “fine” to Amazon. 25 million dollars is just the cost of business.

Make this 250 or 500 million and then… Maybe… it’s a fine.