I’m not saying I necessarily agree with it, but I believe the intention is basically as a deterrent. If you cause $5000 worth of “damages” to someone and they have to sue and win, and the most that can happen is $5000 of repayment, you’ve basically created an incentive to try to get away with stuff - the worst case scenario would be paying what you owed anyway. If you might have to pay $175k for making 5k, it might make you think twice about taking that chance.

Now the real conversation is actually about whether those kinds of negative incentives are actually related to the decision to commit a crime. I don’t have any solid evidence but my gut tells me no - people who are going to commit a crime usually assume they are going to get away with it, don’t factor potential outcomes into their risk assessment, or don’t have any risk assessment at all.

Yes!

In fact you could do one better - it doesn’t need to make a profit, just break even, so you could either have lower prices, helping the community save money, or higher wages, helping the community spend money. But since it helps most people instead of a few people, it’s bad according to capitalism.