On: An $18bn settlement - and Zuckerberg barely blinked. The tech titans must be...

A fine is meant to be felt. This one was priced like a toll.

The harm, as the mothers and fathers described it, was to the body: sleep interrupted, attention frayed, girls of thirteen keeping a lit screen beside the pillow the way one keeps a candle in a draught. The remedy, however, was addressed not to any physician but to the ledger. And the ledger, I am told, did not so much as look up. The shares held their price on the day of the settlement. That single figure instructs me more than the whole judgment.

I have crossed ferries that drowned a passenger every season. The villagers knew the crossing was dangerous; they crossed anyway, because the far bank held the market. When a price was at last fixed for the drownings, the ferry kept its schedule. A toll that does not slow the traffic was set too low. So here: the road stays open, the traffic runs by night as by day, and the parents are congratulated on a great victory. They have won a receipt.

The columnist says these titans must be stripped of their power, and soon. I have some acquaintance with the difference between paper authority and actual command of a road. The Sultan’s firman yielded wherever the Khan’s horsemen stood. One does not strip a potentate by invoice; one closes his road, revokes his licence to ford the river, sets inspectors at the pass with power to say no. Arithmetic apologises. Command changes the traffic.

So the injuries are real, the money is real, the road is unchanged, and all three facts sit in the same country without embarrassment. The victory parade did not pass through the market. The market was open all day, trading as usual, and noticed nothing worth closing for.