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What should and shouldn't be legislated?
poshniallo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, it's clear that many of the regular posters in D&D have the general political view that the government should regulate a lot of things. Libertarians get, deservedly, destroyed when they post here. All fair enough.
However, a whole bunch of recent threads have me thinking - where would you lot believe we should stop. There seems to be a lot of D&D posters who believe that all we need is enough laws and then society will be sorted.
It's easy to posit a world with too few rules - anarchy, or just libertarian corporate dystopias.
It's easy to posit a world with too many rules - BNW, 1984, communism (in it's real-world and ideal varieties)
There are some classic ways that threads round here devolve, but there are some less obvious ones too. Many just become a litany of how we should make rules that everyone has to do X, without really exploring the pros and cons of having that particular rule.
So, how do we decide what's legislatable and what's not?
Factors that I reckon are interesting:
The financial costs of enforcement and it's general feasibility (e.g. you make a 55-mph speed limit to save fuel, and then waste fuel by sending police officers out to enforce the new law)
The rights of people (not just those in the American constitution e.g. free speech, which is held to be a right by many, regardless of their home nation or the legal wording of the US constitution)
The dangers of totalitarian governments (e.g. by forcing everyone to carry ID in your country, you perhaps make people more vulnerable to oppression - the innocent having plenty to fear)
The intangible benefits of freedom (learning from mistakes, moral growth, experimentation, discovery e.g. if unhealthy food additives are allowed we have to learn about health to decide what to eat)
Anyhow - what do you think?
However, a whole bunch of recent threads have me thinking - where would you lot believe we should stop. There seems to be a lot of D&D posters who believe that all we need is enough laws and then society will be sorted.
It's easy to posit a world with too few rules - anarchy, or just libertarian corporate dystopias.
It's easy to posit a world with too many rules - BNW, 1984, communism (in it's real-world and ideal varieties)
There are some classic ways that threads round here devolve, but there are some less obvious ones too. Many just become a litany of how we should make rules that everyone has to do X, without really exploring the pros and cons of having that particular rule.
So, how do we decide what's legislatable and what's not?
Factors that I reckon are interesting:
The financial costs of enforcement and it's general feasibility (e.g. you make a 55-mph speed limit to save fuel, and then waste fuel by sending police officers out to enforce the new law)
The rights of people (not just those in the American constitution e.g. free speech, which is held to be a right by many, regardless of their home nation or the legal wording of the US constitution)
The dangers of totalitarian governments (e.g. by forcing everyone to carry ID in your country, you perhaps make people more vulnerable to oppression - the innocent having plenty to fear)
The intangible benefits of freedom (learning from mistakes, moral growth, experimentation, discovery e.g. if unhealthy food additives are allowed we have to learn about health to decide what to eat)
Anyhow - what do you think?
I figure I could take a bear.
poshniallo on
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It would be a little disingenuous to limit an argument over speed limits solely to their economic impact.
I'll post more on this in a little bit, but I wanted to address this statement really quick. Communism, in its ideal form, does not have "too many rules". In fact, in its pure form, communism is extremely close to libertarianism in that it promotes the idea of a minimal amount of government interference.
The government should adjudicate disputes between individuals, and can only legislate things citizens have a natural right to. (Society can't do things an individual can't, example death penalty, because one person can't ask another to give up their life the government shouldn't be able to carry-out a death penalty.)
Tear it apart, go!
People should be free. That's it.
I don't care if my government can wrap me in a nice security blanket and lay me down in a nice warm safe and secure bed. I couldn't sleep knowing I sacrificed my fundamental rights and freedoms as a human being to get there.
"Those who are willing to give up essential liberties for a little safety diserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin
You just admitted to being a libertarian in D&D.
Might as well have shot yourself in the foot. Several times.
And while enforcement of legislation vs the benefits of the legislation is an interesting question, I'm dubious of your example Many of the speed enforcement techniques I've seen involved cops standing by a roadside with the parked car, burning no fuel at all. And there are also photo-radar options, which may or may not require a police officer even to be present, potentially offering even greater savings.
The only places I feel that regulation is necessary is when you run into a collective action problem. The one above is a good one: California has a lot of problems with people driving out to the wilderness and dumping garbage (mostly because there's a lot of wilderness in California very close by cities), so it solves this problem by removing the individual incentive to dump. Another example is the speed limit on freeways; most people know they could save gas by driving more slowly, however with it being legal to drive faster, everyone knows the amount they would save on an individual basis doesn't really make up for the increased danger and minimal savings they would get from driving more slowly; if the speed limits themselves are dropped, though, that would mean that everyone would slow down, not only saving money because they're buying less gas, but because the price of gas would go down significantly. It would have the positive externalities of reducing carbon emissions, gas consumption, reliance on foreign oil, particulate pollution, and the negative externality of increasing travel time. Any additional enforcement necessary could easily be paid for by the increase in revenue from maximum speed limit violations; there's no way that you'd need so many more cops on the road that it would make up for the savings of literally everyone else on the road.
Do you know what I want to do, on an individual level? I want to breathe clean air, drink clean water out of the tap, eat food that I know is safe, and that I can tell is healthy because of what's on the label, know that the drugs I take when I'm sick are going to do what they're supposed to because they've gone through clinical trials, and know what is in those drugs. I want to be able to walk in national and state parks without tripping over toxic waste. I want there to be wilderness areas that I can go to and know won't be developed. I want to drive on roads that I know are (relatively) kept up, drive on bridges that generally don't collapse, and know that other people driving on those roads and bridges are legally required to be trained, keep their cars in good mechanical condition, and carry a minimum amount of insurance so that if they hit me, I don't get totally fucked because they're broke. I want to be able to have a job without having to work 15 hours a day seven days a week, and have medical insurance so that if I get sick, I know that my life isn't pretty much over.
And yeah, a lot of government regulation sucks (nuclear power, corn, marijuana, and professional sports come to mind), but it would suck a lot more going the other direction.
Do you have any idea just how many regulations are based on just those principles? See the food additives thread. You had libertarians arguing wildly against it, but all it is is the government saying "No, you may not slowly poison others." Literally, that's IT.
I imagine you'd be against the EPA, FDA, etc. They. Do. The. Same. Thing. Why should it not be OK to punch someone in the nose, but it is OK to dump pollutants into their water? The later does FARM more harm to the individual. Should people have the freedom to say "This product is free from impurities and safe to eat" when in fact it isn't?
Is there a proper term for people who recognize the utility of government but would rather them stop fucking things up trying to be an all-encompassing, all-legislating solution to all the world's problems?
Maybe what most people would like, individually, is to be safe and secure.
I know I want to be secure, and I want my kids (I don't have any, but that is besides the point) to be secure, and I want my family to be secure.
Freedom is a very nice term, but in the end you can't have total freedom, you have to give some up so that society can function.
So I'll jump in. First, simply by saying this: the present approach, as you're positing it, is extraordinarily oversimplified and dualistic. By asking about the appropriate amount and enforcement of laws, you're slipping a lot of assumptions in. Mainly, you're putting the popular Western contemporary political tradition off limits, and only allowing us to fiddle with one little knob, so to speak.
Some of us simply don't fit, there. I would have nowhere to place myself in this dual approach. I detest the capitalist exploitation of one side and the bureaucracy and authoritarian practice of the other. The middle isn't all that great itself-- it's riddled with the arbitrary, for one thing.
Anyway, the larger point. Human societies are extraordinarily complex and can never be described simply and completely. The political dynamic, even as we understand it, exists alongside (and meshes with) all sorts of social dynamics. And as I mentioned, our notion of politics is entirely narrow if we're going with simply the tradition we inherited.
So what do I think? I think our ideas on property and permissiveness should be reformed. I think that communities and producers, associating in whatever manner they please, should control the direction of society by consensus. I think that individuals should feel unrestrained by social mores, that is, they should be able to do as they please to the extent of not interfering with others' rights to do as they please. And even the above aspirations should be approached without a mind to formality. So, in essence: no governing authority, maximal individual freedoms, and community/workplace decisions being made collectively by that community/workplace.
@Chaos Theory: I think your idea sounds nice, but I can't see how it's possible. What happens when one of the communities decides to enslave or kill other communities? Or do you believe it's possible to make that aspect of our history disappear through education or somesuch? If so, wouldn't that education itself be reducing intellectual freedom greatly? I just don't see how you get to avoid the dilemma. I think you're in that 'arbitrary' middle and unwilling to admit it.
@kakos: Can you elaborate? Your idea of communism bears no relation whatsoever to mine, and I used to be a member of the SWP, so I'm not some right-winger coming to this ignorant.
@Thanatos: Good points. Do I take it then that you don't think there are general rules to be applied, and that each law has to be argued on it's own merits? I agree with everything you say, but there have to be some limits on legislation.
@ProPatriaMori: I don't know of a term for that, but I think I'm one. I used to think I was a libertarian, until I realised how much of them are corporate apologists and rabidly right-wing. Now I seem to be bereft of labels, which either makes me wishy-washy or original. Possibly both.
@Libertarians: Why do you only worry about government oppression? Does corporate oppression, military oppression, social oppression and crime not worry you? Or is just that you happen to be in a group (middle-class, white, heterosexual, male, living in a good area in a country with excellent defences) that does not usually experience these other evils?
@PirateJon: Social Democrats sound good, except that I would expect the taxation to be high to very high. Otherwise you get a situation like the NHS in the UK, where a wonderful institution is being destroyed simply because no-one will face up to its funding needs.
Second, why does the state say something is wrong (you mala prohibita)? Either it believes it to be wrong or as a means of control. Either way, you can't prove them wrong on the former unless it violates the fundamental rules that provide the basis and justification of that government (in the case of the US, the Constitution and arguably the Bill of Rights/Manga Carta/etc) and the latter has no honest justification and is invalid because of that not because its 'inherently' wrong.
Third, you're wrong. Taxes. If there was no government, would it be wrong to not pay taxes? Clearly not because there is one to pay taxes to. Is it necessary to require payment of taxes? Yes. Therefore, no government can function in the real world under your rule. Taxes again as the example. Can I demand you pay me a % of your earnings naturally? The collective will, through the form of government, by definition must have some powers an individual does not have in a 'natural' state.
The Preamble of the Constitution :
Declaration of Independence
The Government's first job is to protect the rights of the citizens, including life and liberty. That is rarely disputed. The thing is, that isn't the government's only job. The government's full job is to protect life liberty and also to "promote the general welfare" and an individuals "pursuit of happiness".
Building roads or libraries does not protect anyone's liberties, for instance. That is an action that can only be viewed through the lens o f economic and societal benefit. Yet from the very beginning of the Republic the question was not truly whether or not economic or societal actions were in the scope of interest of the government (either federal or state) but whether those actions would have a desirable effect.
Now this can be viewed from the viewpoint of a living wage as a right, but these actions pre-date that concept by the better part of a century. If we are all created equal, we all have the right to the pursuit of happiness, and the job of the government is to secure those liberties not just from external but internal threats, then it follows the job of the government is promote not only a healthy economy overall but an economy that provides for individual opportunity. Thus we have public schools, libraries, minimum wage, worker safety laws, etc.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The problem is that right now Democrat politicians promise a lot of personal freedoms in their campaigns, but then when they get into office they focus more on market control. Republicans promise a lot of free market fiscal responsiblity, but then they just focus on more God and more wiretappings and less gays. So in the long run we get increasongly fed up with both of them as we gradually lose more rights to the government across the board. A sensible Libertarian is not a gun-nut anarchist, it's just someone who wants to reverse this trend.
@posh: we don't worry about those things because they don't seem as relevant. They often have no real precedent to look at, such as corporate oppression, and hence sound a lot like fear-mongering and horseshit, and they are otherwise things that ought to be solved outside of government, such as social oppression.
Yeah.
I think it's unfair to associate every libertarian with Ron Laul or Ayn Rand. Libertarianism is a broad political concept with different schools of thought.
But hey, D&D makes fun of those two because it's easy to make fun of retarded kids.
The usual approach in most Common Law countries is personal injury litigation/liability insurance. So, if somebody is hurt in an accident they approach the party at fault for compensation, then if compensation isn't forthcoming voluntarily then it goes to court and is settled there. It isn't the fastest of systems usually (although I'm sure some jurisdictions are faster than others) and it requires the aggrived party to have the will/determination/resources to mount such a challenge to start with, and for the party at fault to have resources/insurance sufficient enough to pay if they are found guilty. It does have the advantage that it can be used as a punishment tool against the transgressor.
How we do it back home in NZ is a little different but in many ways a little better. We have a near universal/ comprehensive compulsory accident insurance scheme that provides compensation for medical costs or loss of income in the case of any accident. By law if an injury is caused by an accident then this regime will apply and one cannot sue through the courts instead. So there is no free choice but people do get compensated quickly and at little cost. The sole state Scheme Insurer is paid for through taxation and levies on a bunch of different things - pay-roll/car registrations etc. So we have excluded the courts from nearly all PI situations - traded off the right to sue on the basis that it is both cheaper (over-all), more efficient and more effective at compensating those who need it most. And it largely works - very few people would trade this regime for the old PI regime we once had. To preserve the punishment side of the equation we have to rely upon the Health&Safety inspectorate
Think about how many social programs we could have funded with the billions (possibly trillions!) we've spent on the Iraq war or the trillions lost due to bush's tax cuts. We could have funded so many things. Roads. Public transportation. Universal health care. Well funded schools. and on and on...
So yes we do have the money to fund those programs without some absurdly high tax rates. Anyone that tells you different is trying to sell you something.
What we lack is the will to demand change.
Personal liberty is great, but the ideology-based/reality deficient economic policy and self-centered social outlook of Libertarianism is fatally corrupted.
*"Libertarian" comes from the French "Libertaire" which is a synonym for anarchist. The logical conclusion of libertarianism is anarchy, so that's fitting.
edit
Such as?
This is getting off topic so:
Libertarians claim the stability and prosperity of society that has ensured their social and economic freedoms demonstrates that the very government that made that stability and prosperity possible is unnecessary.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
in Quebec it is not possible for a married person (man or woman) to adopt their spouse's surname. Why? Because we all know that this was (or is) something expected of women and only women, and is a pretty obvious symbol of patriarchy (and as such, only a symptom not a cause). But this law doesn't fix it - all it does is let some self-righteous folks declare "we've made women equal!" even though it's A) extremely superficial (does anyone think Mme. Fontaine is treated any better by M. Cousteau because she kept her father's name?) and
Also related to one of the OP's last points, I'm kind of a fan of this quote:
All of that said, dangerous additives in food and the vast harms of urban sprawl and vehicle dependancy are precisely the kinds of issues that need to be and can be (but not always are) dealt with through legislation and government action.
Thanks for the sound post. I think most Libertarians are far more interested in Jeffersonian political philosophy than they are anarchy. Unfortunately, this forum is far too left leaning to take an honest look at the proficiencies and deficiencies of both major parties. I've seen some centrists though, I believe they exist.
Your other post was a proper ad-hom (for once) - 'D&D is too left-wing to debate this issue properly' and now a simple attack without any explanation given?
You could probably manage to post a whole lot more constructively.
That's pretty much it. I really don't like Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, or Bob Barr (even though I'll end up voting for him... more on that in the spoiler). But I still identify myself as a libertarian. Remember, Ron Paul and Bob Barr believe abortion should be illegal, aren't big fans of immigration, are for the "war on drugs," and hate the idea of gay marriage/adoption... not all of us agree.
What exactly do you mean by the bolded bit? Not enough funding/too much? Its my understanding that in real terms NHS funding has substantially increased over the last decade - and the Exchequer would have to increase its already heavy borrowing further to give any further substantial funding
According to a quick search "total NHS funding has risen in real terms from £35 billion in 1997/98 and will reach £110 billion in 2010/11". This to me suggests that the goverment has been very generous in giving the NHS more funding in the last decade. This doesn't mean to say that the outcomes delivered are 3x better or anything like that, but annecdotal evidence I heard/saw from the recent Anniversary celebrations indicates that things were pretty dire in the early 1990s, before the massive surge in funding.
Direct democracy turns into majority oppression. That's why we (in America) are supposed to be a Republic. I edited my post because I figured it wasn't worth discussing with someone who didn't realize the obvious. You unfortunately caught my edit and so I have to respond, in kind.
You have a really odd idea of what 'in kind' means. If I'm too retarded to understand your wisdom, then don't bother posting at all.