Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Instead of paying fines to “the Treasury,” how about we do something useful instead?

Facebook recently paid a $5Billion fine for violations of this or that. Lots of fussing about the “pain” felt by Facebook and the pain felt by those who were violated in this violation.

Let us consider, for a moment, the money.

$5Billion is a lot of money to me and most of the persons I know. $5Billion may not be a lot of money to Facebook or the US Treasury.

Why, however, does the money go from Facebook to the US Treasury. Did they drive a big truck full of money from Facebook headquarters to the Treasury building in Washington D.C.? Did one line of a spreadsheet here and a corresponding line of a spreadsheet there change? What really happened?

Here is an idea: have Facebook repave the roads in all the National Parks and put up signs stating such: “We did you wrong. As penitence, we are repaving these roads.”—Mark Zuckerburg.

Compare the two actions. What is more meaningful? What is more practical? Why do we modify the spreadsheet instead of repaving the roads?