What a Great Place to Park Your Maserati!

I walked past this really nice, illegally parked car on my way to the grocery store. 10 points to anyone who can spot what the violation might be.

I wonder if this was due to being in a rush perhaps and merely not paying attention, or an overinflated sense of entitlement based on the make of the car.

If it was the latter, and the owner really is as wealthy as they’re letting on driving this around, then perhaps they just write off the parking fines as a business ‘expense’, like big banks and businesses do with slap-on-the-wrist fines. This is why I’m such a big fan of proportional fine systems like what Norway and Finland have where fines are proportional to your taxed disposable income. If you’re a millionaire behaving badly in your vehicle, congratulations, that $200 speeding ticket just became a $103,000 one.

Another idea: parking tickets proportional to the value of your vehicle. That might cut down on the sort of behavior on display here.

The point of fines is to be a deterrent. If you’re so wealthy that the fine is chump change to you and doesn’t ‘hurt’, then the deterrent effect is lost. Proportional fines make sense to me. That way it still sucks to get a parking ticket as a millionaire. Fair is fair.

I showed this to a friend and jokingly said that if a fire did break out, I hope the fire engine just rams it out of the way. He said, “You should have started a fire!” He’s right. I should have…

I should have set the Maserati on fire.

Fireman: “I’m sorry sir, we’d love to put out the fire consuming your nice car, but some moron is blocking the hydrant.”