Your regulations did absolutely dick to stop this happening. IIRC, the people responsible for enforcing the regulations were too busy playing golf with the people they were "regulating" to do their jobs. Passing more regulations which aren't enforced simply penalizes those who follow them and gives a competitive advantage to those who don't.
I think of "regulations" as including enforcement as a part of the whole package. Otherwise, yeah, there's no point in having the regulations, and it's not really "regulated" at all. The first thing that comes to mind for me is an electrical component called a voltage regulator. Its only purpose is to produce a constant and stable output voltage, which it does by constantly monitoring that output, and automatically adjusting its output voltage as the load changes. But if it doesn't bother to monitor the output or adjust it, it's not really a "regulator" now, is it?
And far too often, the large organizations are left to "self-regulate" - "Yeah sure, we did those inspections. Just rubber-stamp that form and we're good to go. And I'll see you Saturday afternoon!" Too much of that stuff like you said, where there's the revolving door of the regulators and the regulated. Or you have BS like we saw in the aftermath of the financial mess of 2008: How do we keep this from happening again? Let's ask the people who caused the problem!
Next, we should also call in some heroin dealers and addicts to advise us on how we can do a better job of enforcing anti-drug laws.
Eleven felony convictions, conviction for lying to Congress, a bunch of misdemeanor convictions and a $4.5 billion dollar fine-that doesn't sound like a slap on the wrist to me. This fine is more than four times what Exxon paid in the Exxon Valdez case where a drunk captain ran the tanker aground.
...
Exxon was able to do various repeals to get their actual payment amount down. This fine might not stand. And who knows what the payment terms are. I bet it's probably not some "net 30" arrangement.
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