FTC fines Razer for every cent made selling bogus “N95 grade” RGB masks | Ars Technica - eviltoast
  • majormoron@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    110% seems like it could be a middle ground between actually nuking the company into the ground vs. impose to little of a fine.

    They’re forced to give every cent back (hopefully that can find its way into actual customers hands instead of the government pissing it away) plus lose an additional 10% of whatever they made that is now a loss on the company financials. Shareholders wouldn’t like a loss on their spreadsheets and quickly fire whoever was in charge or sell. It’s bad for the business, the stock market, and the economy.

    It would quickly train the stock market to deter that kind of behaviour. But we need politicians who are not bought by these companies to be able to pose these strong fines across the board.

    10% loss on something on the scale of the likes of what someone like Apple or cough Tesla cough brings in on products would add up very, very quickly. More money back into people’s products going back into the economy in the form of more spending anyway, which is good, and more tax revenue that the government might one day learn how to spend efficiently and dilligantly, since the government would keep the 10% loss, I’m sure getting that 110% out of the company takes work, time, and spending anyway.

    Capitalism only works with extremely tight regulation. And humans can corrupt that regulation very quickly.

    • majormoron@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      "However, the proposed settlement against Razer includes a $100,000 civil penalty, plus $1,071,254.33, which the FTC said is equal to the amount of revenue Razer made from the Zephyr and will go toward refunding “defrauded consumers.”

      Fucking. Yes. The money goes back to the customers. Hopefully, every last cent.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        “go toward” doing some heavy lifting there. Watch them get a few bucks each and the rest goes towards legal fees.

    • JoBo@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      I don’t disagree with your overall argument but, if they’re fined 100% of revenue, that’s way less than zero profit (because they’ve still paid to make, distribute, and recall the things).

      Fines should, of course, always be more than the profit made. 3x is a good number.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yea this time 10% equals 100k which might as well be nothing in the scheme of things. It might hurt Razer but they can probably eat it since this mask wouldn’t have been a large part of their revenue compared to the 40 other products they make and sell a lot of. I still like to see this type of punishment being filled out and hope it is used against some of the larger flagrant frauds you mentioned