The Purpose and Nature of Law; When Laws Go Bad Posted on 07/05/2011
People have an idealistic misconception that laws are, or should be, or are intended to be, applied equally to everyone, that they promote justice, that they protect the public; that laws prevent acts contrary to the law; that laws are objective and fair and nondiscriminatory; or that laws guide human behavior into the path of virtue and humanitarian morality.
No law, not even against murder, is intended to be applied equally to all, or equally to even a very few; no law is applied or enforced in practice equally to all (and no bad law should be); and no law is objective, nor impartial. Laws target and apply to a subset of people within specific situations, to people who perform specific roles, to people who commit certain prohibited acts, and only to those people who are apprehended and convicted of violating the law.
Let’s take the case of hypothetical 12-year-old everyboy, Johnny, who wants to ride his bike to baseball practice. His dad tells him that a law has been passed that says that bike riders cannot ride on the sidewalks—a law that prohibits, or enjoins people from performing a specific act.
“Why,” Johnny asks.
His dad tells him that it’s to keep everybody safe, to keep them separate so they don’t accidentally hurt each other.
Johnny could ride on the lawns owned by people in the houses that the sidewalks serve, but lawns are bumpy and homeowners will then have the right to sue Johnny and his parents for trespassing on their property.
The only viable option is for Johnny, and everyone else who rides a bike (a subpopulation of the public) in areas where there are both sidewalks and streets (a category of conditions), to ride their bikes on the street. This means that Johnny will be forced to learn and follow another set of laws that apply to vehicular street traffic. He must also modify his bike with signals, lights, and reflective surfaces, and he must modify his clothing so that he’ll be more visible, wearing a reflective orange vest, for instance, while biking. A helmet, kneepads, and other safety equipment become imperative accessories when biking on streets.
Johnny’s afraid to ride on the busy street. Two-ton cars drive 30 miles an hour faster than he can pedal. If a car hits him, he doesn’t have much chance of surviving, since cars are so large and heavy and going so fast, compared to him being so small, so light, so unarmored, and so slow. Any act that requires such safety gear and obeying so many rules is obviously dangerous.
Drivers honk at him as they pass him the first time Johnny rides his bike on the street, which startles him, increasing his chance of making a steering error. Some drivers give him the finger because they’re upset that he forces them to dangerously merge into another lane to get around him or cross the double yellow line on one-lane roads, or slow down behind him and all other bicyclists until they can safely pass and resume the regular speed intended for motorized vehicles traveling on roads. Some drivers are shaken with the stress that they might harm bikers if they don’t see them in time, because these drivers aren’t confident in their reaction times or their ability to maneuver their cars quickly and safely to avoid accidents. Some drivers worry that a boy on a bike might swerve out into the road, presenting the drivers with the choice of risking an accident with another car or braking and possibly hitting the biker.
Bicyclists who choose to follow the law against riding bikes on sidewalks create a host of unintended consequences for drivers, forcing them to change the way they customarily do things and the way they think about the order of the world around them. Most new laws impose these kinds of changes in the way we act, which is one reason, among many, that lawmakers pass laws, to change the way we all act.
Johnny can’t help how the drivers feel about him as a bicyclist who must now ride on the street. State law says it’s illegal for him to ride his bike on the wide sidewalk, even if there’s no one walking on the sidewalk, even if Johnny’s very careful and rides slowly, or even if he uses his handlebar bell to warn pedestrian’s of his presence. Johnny feels safer riding his bike on the sidewalk, because any accidents would be relatively minor to him and others who might be sharing the sidewalk, compared to what could happen to him in an accident on a busy road that the law says he must share with the big, heavy cars.
The State of Ohio tells Johnny that there is absolutely, positively no way that he, in his role as bike rider, or other people, in their role as either bike riders or walkers, who share the sidewalk at the same time, can do so safely. Lawmakers can see no situation under which biking on sidewalks can be safe for pedestrians, and can see no compromise based on Johnny’s or anyone else’s personal behavior (including the behavior of pedestrians) or individual skill. The law must prohibit the activity altogether to prevent those bikers who are less courteous, less skillful, and less careful from potentially disrupting the social order. The no-sidewalk-biking law limits every biker’s behavior, presuming that every biker is, or potentially is, the most unable, most undisciplined, and most malicious. In this way, the law can be said to be applied equally to all bikers and prospective bikers.
The law against riding bikes on sidewalks was made and applied to all bicyclists and all sidewalks because a few dangerous thrill riders, with complete disregard for their own safety or the safety of their fellow pedestrian, collided with pedestrians or other wild cyclists on a few sidewalks in one part of town. The incidents that led to the law involved mostly teenagers wearing rad-culture torn t-shirts and sporting weird haircuts and nose and lip and eyebrow rings.
Laws Bad Enough to Stop Traffic Posted on 07/05/2011
“Do you know how fast you were driving?”
“There’s this little dial thingy in my dash, but I
don’t use it much,” the pulled driver replies. “I was concentrating on catching
that green light.”
“Well you do care how fast?”
“That’s your interest, not mine.”
“You are aware that speed kills?”
But it’s the accident at any speed that kills. Slow
reaction time kills. Inability to maintain and maneuver your vehicle at any
speed kills. Reckless driving by inexperienced drivers can get you killed if
your defensive driving skills are subpar.
But the law and individual police can’t know how good
any of us can drive. They only know that if we’re licensed, we passed the
State’s skill and knowledge and eye test.
So, they reference and apply a blanket law which put
a misleading mark on my driving record that I was speeding, which equals danger
in my car insurer’s mind.
Traffic laws ensure that drivers with the lowest
ability, worst perceptual judgment, slowest reflexes, and least intelligence
have limits artificially set for them for their own protection and the
protection of other drivers and pedestrians and property owners. Drivers who
have stronger ability and better judgment are forced to the lowest standard.
Those with the lowest ability presumably do not pass the driving tests and don’t
get the state’s approval to drive, but there’s a balance point at which the
state’s agreed-upon need for people to have a right to transport must be weighed
against their poor driving ability and the hope that their ability will improve
with experience.
Why can’t the best drivers take a tiered driving
test? Those who pass the most stringent tests can receive a driver’s license
permitting them personal higher speed limits, as indicated by a special sticker
on their license plates.
Because we’re all held to the lowest level of the
worst drivers on any road we travel. The nation’s arteries are clogged with
slowpokes.
This essay examines the anti-distraction laws against
cell phone usage while driving, safety laws that require seatbelt usage and
having headlights on if the windshield wipers are, restricted privileges for
alcohol-impaired drivers (and the Gestapo tactics of road checkpoints),
empowerment of highway patrol officers to guess-timate speeds without the use of
radar guns, mandatory car liability insurance and the State’s right to demand
proof through the U.S. mail, the revenue-generation purpose of speeding and
parking and seatbelt and child-seat tickets and drivers license fees, and other
safety issues, such as driver sleepiness and traffic signal cameras, rules of
the road, road construction, discussions of how gas prices affect driving, and
other traffic-related issues .
Regulating Business Out of Business Posted on 07/05/2011
You hear the complaints from small business owners.
All the local, state, and federal regulations they have to put up with, with new
regulations every day that force them to change their production lines, their
accounting practices, their hiring practices, the very nature of the products
they manufacture and the services they sell.
There’s a fine balance. Government bureaucrats can’t
lay on the regulations so heavy that every entrepreneur will throw up his hands
and quit, plunging the economy and the government revenue-dragging machine into
the dark ages. Entrepreneurs have to see their way through the paperwork and
fees to the profit margin. The regulations must be just heavy enough to keep the
twinkle of the profit-seeking spirit alight in the eyes of people who want to be
their own bosses.
It’s a cat and mouse game. Government gives a tax
break, and takes one away if they deem a company’s safety records could be
better, or their pollution control mechanisms could be more efficient and
robust. They bestow a subsidy, and then levy an export tariff.
The government regulates every aspect of business, pitting businesses against one another with direct subsidies, import quotas or tariffs, protection as a monopoly, special tax incentives, franchises, labor laws, civil rights laws, excise taxes, export limitations on electronics and utilities, safety and anti-trust laws, pollution laws, restriction on sale of stocks and bonds and prices, child labor laws, laws governing vacations, overtime pay policies, minimum wage, and occupational safety, who businesses must favor in their hiring practices (or at least well-document if they don’t hire minorities and the disabled) and who they must reject (undocumented workers), what building standards businesses must comply with, how energy efficient and minimal the packaging of their products, how detailed their descriptions of how their product should be used, how employers must track their employees so that government dead-beat dad agencies can locate them, how to report their earnings and the incomes of their employees, what a newspaper publishing business can and cannot publish, how employers must maintain the privacy of an employee’s personal information, and other intrusive regulations.
These and other government regulations, such as the number
of safety tests a company must conduct, or the years that drug companies must
research new drugs, are covered in this
section.
The Failure of the Government's War on Drugs Posted on 07/05/2011
A recent report compiled by the Global Commission on
Drug Policy concludes that pot brownies are groovy.
Restrictive, aggressive, zero-tolerance policies
against any personal choice, whether it’s skinny dipping or smoking meth as a
recreational libido enhancer, ends in dismal, coffer-draining failure and with
devastating consequences.
The Global Commission urges that governments “‘end
the criminalization, marginalization, land stigmatization of people who use
drugs but who do no harm to others’” (Dayton Daily News).
But instead of ending prohibitions, government steps
up restrictive regulations: “DEA bureaucrats decided to escalate [drug
enforcement steps] by banning five chemicals in synthetic marijuana. Designers
are already developing a new formula to get around the ban. The price will go
up, criminals will be attracted to making it, and the death toll will continue
to rise….”
People will pay a high price to acquire the substance
of their choice. And nanny-state governments, citing public safety, will
continue to conduct no-knock raids in the middle of the night with SWAT teams
and paramilitary weapons; will continue to support policy that turns businessmen
into ruthless, immoral killers to self-preserve against both other ruthless
dealers and police who will steal their freedom for 10 to 25 years if they catch
them dealing; will continue using search and seizure laws to take the homes of
parents when a search turns up an ounce of their son’s marijuana; and continue
to support school districts who strip search girls seeking a reported tablet of
Ibuprofen.
More outrages visited upon the innocent and those who
would be innocent of any harm to others except for definitions in overreaching
drug laws are covered in this essay.
No Victim, No Foul Posted on 07/05/2011
No one’s pressing charges, but with victimless
crimes, the law says that the violation is against the state as the
representative of a majority of the public whose sense of decency is offended
when men pay women for sex, or when people buy drugs that allow them to escape
their realities, or when midgets let themselves be grabbed by an arm and a leg
to be heaved down a bowling alley lane into a set of soft pins, or when people
stage back-alley bare-knuckle fights to get an adrenaline-fueled rush of fear,
choosing to visit tanning salons, choosing to eat an excess of fatty foods,
choosing to pierce oneself any and everywhere and personally paying to get the
resulting infections treated. If we choose to sell our own kidney to the highest bidder, the government has no right to tell us that we can't, though retains the right to regulate the medical procedure and process of extraction.
If the participants are willing and consensual, then
everybody else’s judgments and condemnations are worthy only of being ignored.
Our personal lives are no one else’s business, and this essay will go on to
support this Libertarian viewpoint.
Unfair Trade, Unfree Markets, and SEC Regs. Posted on 07/05/2011
When the federal government and interstate trade agencies
set the prices for goods and services, they manipulate the market and the economy.
The laws imposed to control and manipulate are discussed in this section and
other sections that describe capitalistic tenets.
Consumer Protection Laws and Laws for Your Own Good Posted on 07/05/2011
The Government imposes village-idiot standards on
products that everyone buys, not just the idiot.
Concerned parents forced government to force
manufacturers of strollers to affix the label “Remove child before folding.”
Purchasers of coffee from fast food chains have to be
reminded that coffee is hot.
Government agencies and shadow organizations, as well
as health organizations, tell us that smoking is bad. The Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) has gone so far as to outlaw ads for smokeless tobacco on race
cars because warning labels about the health dangers of using smokeless tobacco
couldn’t be seen by spectators from a distance and are impossible to read on
cars traveling at high speeds.
All warning and information requirements imposed on
businesses presume that people as consumers don’t know the dangers, haven’t been
told the dangers, or must be protected from themselves if they ignore the
dangers.
But would the government care if medicine weren’t
socialized?
Would businesses suddenly spring substandard, poorly
built products onto the public, start using poisons in the foods they process,
if the government relaxed its quality assurance regulations?
This essay examines how government decides what’s
healthy for us and what isn’t, how we’re told what we should do to stay healthy,
and how they regulate business to limit our personal choice at our local stores.
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