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[Helgoland]

Doesn't pretty much every civilized country have that, at least for fines set by a judge? In Germany it's called Day Rates.

[martinuzz]

No, there's almost no country that has that. They tried once or twice in the Netherlands, but it never passed parliament or senate. Something something 'everyone is equal before the law somethingsomething'. I've never heard anything about Germany having something similar. Is that really new?

Note that I do not agree with the equal before the law argument. Just make fines be a percentage of someone's monthly income, then billionaires get to pay hundred thousands while still being equal before the law.

[Baffler]

It is a legitimate concern. You don't want the judge to be able to fine people not-quite-arbitrary-but-pretty-close amounts because "they can afford it" and the county needs the money. Finland gives people fines as a multiple of 1/2 of 1/60 of a person's weekly income (what they figure to be 1/2 of that person's disposable income), but a country could in theory peg it to annual income or just tell judges and police to consider the financial means of the defendant when ordering a fine. It's a good idea, but it needs to be configured just right to stop it from becoming a highway robbery scheme and legislators are understandably nervous about putting their signature on such a thing. That and it's to the exclusive detriment of the type of person who can personally throw their weight around to stop it.

[Helgoland]

No, there's almost no country that has that. They tried once or twice in the Netherlands, but it never passed parliament or senate. Something something 'everyone is equal before the law somethingsomething'. I've never heard anything about Germany having something similar. Is that really new?

It's ancient, and apparently a thing in all German-speaking countries. Go to the German article for details on our system - here's the relevant paragraph from our Strafgesetzbuch.

[Sheb]

It is a legitimate concern. You don't want the judge to be able to fine people not-quite-arbitrary-but-pretty-close amounts because "they can afford it" and the county needs the money. Finland gives people fines as a multiple of 1/2 of 1/60 of a person's weekly income (what they figure to be 1/2 of that person's disposable income), but a country could in theory peg it to annual income or just tell judges and police to consider the financial means of the defendant when ordering a fine. It's a good idea, but it needs to be configured just right to stop it from becoming a highway robbery scheme and legislators are understandably nervous about putting their signature on such a thing. That and it's to the exclusive detriment of the type of person who can personally throw their weight around to stop it.

As long as the judge don't benefit from the fine (similar to civil forfeiture in the US) it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

[martinuzz]

I do read that the german version has an upper limit of 30.000 euros, but it's good to see my eastern neighbors have at least the basis for such system in their law. I guess german law has other means to discourage repeat traffic offenders as well. You have some kind of penalty point system for the driver's license, right? 5 points and you're out or somesuch.

Dutch traffic fining system sucks. Rich people can basically just speed and hit red lights all day every day, and laugh when they get fined for maybe 200 euros, which is rare enough, because they know damn well where the speed-o-meters are placed, and police is severely understaffed on the traffic control department.
However, speeding more than 50km/h over the speed limit means your driver's license will be immediatly revoked (I think for at least 3 years), and you'll have to go to court.

[Lord_lemonpie]

Thing is, there are no members to the PVV. It's a one man party. Wilders is the only member of his party.

And yet there are other politicians in the PVV, how does that even work.

@MSH: But Windmills are iconic to the Netherlands, they're like national (along with historical) treasures I'm sure. If that's all Geert Wilders thing, then that seems to make him a traitor to Dutch culture. At least to me, but I'm American, so, what do I know.

There's a difference between traditional and modern windmills.

The latter are gargantuan and can ruin the environment by just being ugly. Not to forget entire rows of them light up the night sky like no other. I'm all for renewable energy and stuff but they should just put them somewhere far, far away on sea where no one sees them.

[Sheb]

Offshore wind is significantly more expensive though. Also, ugliness is relative, I quite like the sight myself.

[Helgoland]

I do read that the german version has an upper limit of 30.000 euros, but it's good to see my eastern neighbors have at least the basis for such system in their law. I guess german law has other means to discourage repeat traffic offenders as well. You have some kind of penalty point system for the driver's license, right? 5 points and you're out or somesuch.

€30.000 per day, not 30.000 overall.

[martinuzz]

Ooh, so the maximum is 360 times 30000 = 10.8 million?

[Helgoland]

Even more, actually. The 365 day limit is only a default in case a law doesn't specify a range itself.

This system is not used for normal traffic fines though, just to be clear. As far as I'm aware it's used by judges to fairly determine punishments.

[Lord_lemonpie]

Offshore wind is significantly more expensive though. Also, ugliness is relative, I quite like the sight myself.

I haven't heard of any others who liked the sight. My grandmother used to look at lovely meadows and some forests in the distance from her house, but now its just white poles everywhere. Believe me, looking at white poles all day and blinking red lights all night gets stale for everyone, especially for someone who's barely able to leave her house due to her age.

Offshore wind is still profitable, though. And why not make solar parks? We have enough sun for everyone, they're still profitable and are not hundreds of meters high so they don't fuck up the scenery for everyone living in a 20 kilometer radius.

But, above all of that I prefer nuclear energy. It's very profitable, doesn't fuck up the environment, only needs one ugly plant to supply an entire province and should actually be safe in a 1st world country without tectonic activity (sorry groningen, windmills for you). I just don't get the stigma,

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The only differences between the all-the-same wood and canvas windmills and the all-the-same metal and carbon fiber windmills is that the latter are newer and produce useful amounts of energy. People oppose them (sometimes to hysterical degrees, see "windmill sickness") because they're not used to them.

Offshore wind is all well and good, but wind resources are limited. There are only some locations where they make sense to build. I'm not familiar with the Netherlands' wind map, but in the US there are land regions that are equally or more wind rich than the coastline. And I'm sure most people who oppose wind turbines on land would oppose them on the sea for "ruining the beaches", whether they're visible from the shore or not.

Solar is also all well and good, but just like wind it has location limitations, and wind is useful to provide at night when solar is obviously not functional.

Nuclear power is hobbled by a number of factors, some which are also public hysteria, but others which are very serious. First amongst them is the cost, not in dollars euros but in time. Nuclear plants take decades from planning to operation, and that's not an investment that anybody's gonna make unless the state is just drowning them in dosh the whole time as compensation. Perhaps more pressingly, new nuclear plants at this point will not come online in time to make a difference in the energy and climate crisis.

In addition to this, we're facing a (usable) uranium shortage that is similar in nature to the oil shortage, which even if mitigated will still raise the price of nuclear energy from its more attractive status quo.

[martinuzz]

Who needs uranium. Thorium is the future.

[Reelya]

Thorium has a future.

EDIT: Why don't we go all nuclear already? Because it would collapse like a pile of shit in no time flat.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/supply-of-uranium.aspx#ECSArticleLink1

the world's present measured resources of uranium (5.7 Mt) in the cost category less than three times present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for about 90 years.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx

They provide over 11% of the world's electricity as continuous, reliable base-load power, without carbon dioxide emissions.

You can do the math that if we were 100% nuclear right now we'd only have 10 years worth of viable uranium, and then we'd be digging up stuff that costs 3 times the current price to dig up, and that's ignoring the fact that prices would be vastly higher if we used 9 times as much uranium, and also the fact that presumably we'd be further through the known resources if we were already using more uranium, meaning we'd probably have already run out of the stuff (what's left would be exorbitantly expensive due to higher demand and higher costs of extraction).

So the economics of expanding uranium power just don't add up. You can't linearly extrapolate the costs, that's not sound economics.

Sure, we'll probably find new sources of uranium, but we're extremely unlikely to discover 6 megatons every decade (an amount equal to the entire amount ever discovered, basically), which is what we'd need to keep finding if we relied on uranium reactors as our primary power source. Uranium is only viable as long as not everyone uses it.