The point is to punish in such a way that the action does NOT happen again. Make an example of the perp.
Overbooking is fraud, pure and simple. The airlines only get away with it because they are large and powerful and connected corporations.
As with ANY time an individual or entity does wrong, the repercussions should be of sufficient severity to dissuade others from doing the same.
If EVERY overbooking cost the airline millions in damages, eventually they will stope doing it.
I like the ability of social media to level the playing field between the individual and the big powerful entity.
Stupid should hurt. You can’t hurt a corporation physically, you can financially. Bumping someone who has paid for a ticket is both FRAUD (regardless of any weasel words on the back of the ticket on the click-through) and stupid; EVERY incident of it should HURT badly enough to make even a multi billion dollar corporation take notice.
Regardless of what you think of the “fine print” it’s there for everyone to read prior to buying a ticket and it is also a notorious and well know policy. You know about it so when next you buy a ticket you cannot claim a fraud has occurred. Save the historonics for true fraud.