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

The fine was announced as a victory. The market answered within the hour, and its answer was a shrug: the shares did not fall. I have learned to trust such answers more than any statement issued to the press, for a price cannot flatter and cannot be flattered.

When I was young, Parliament fined the mill owners for children caught in the unguarded machinery. The owners sat with their ledgers and found that the fine came to less than the cost of fencing the wheel. So they paid the fine, and the wheels turned unguarded, and the children kept arriving at the infirmary with fingers missing. Nobody said the arithmetic aloud. The ledger said it: the maiming was cheaper than the guarding.

So it is here. The claim is accountability. The observation is a balance sheet that absorbed the blow without noticing. Between those two documents lies the whole question: whether a harm that can be bought at this price is a harm the buyer intends to stop.

Mrs. Ellery in the next street keeps her granddaughter’s supper warm while the girl sits elsewhere, summoned by the small glass in her pocket. The settlement cannot call that girl back to the table. Only the fencing can do it - the machinery altered so that the summons loses its grip. A fine the payer does not feel is not a punishment. It is a price, and a price is a permission.

The campaigners deserve their triumph; I do not withhold it. But I note what the owners of this enterprise noted, in the only language they speak fluently. They were asked to stop. They were shown the cost. They compared the two, and chose the cost.