11 ms·

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/711 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/711 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/707 https://www.law.co

by nkw 10y ago

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/711 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/711 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/707 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/707 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/710 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/710 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1762 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1762 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2074 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2074 Those are just from randomly clicking around Title 18 which are actual crimes. When you get into regulations you end up going through stuff like this: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/143.6 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/143.6 Yes the "repeal two regulations before imposing one" is just a gimmick, but there are an insane number of federal laws and regulations that are, at best, unneeded.

rattray 10y ago
Hmm, I don't know how many of those truly are unneeded, at least without context on why they were created in the first place. There may have been real problems with the Water Hyacinths as an invasive or endangered species, for example. And we certainly don't want to make it legal for people to change traffic signals at will! I had actually expected to find oodles of needless cruft and "dead code", but I'm starting to think that it might be possible that most regulation is there for a reason... who'd a thunk it!
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  The question is more one of costs and benefits. Anyone can argue a regulation is useful in the abstract. There's a lot of regulation around internet services and people under the age of 13. The primary effect of these rules has been that American internet services ask for your DoB and then ineffectively try to ban you from signing up if you say you're under 13. Do parents really need this?
- vidarh 10y ago
  One reform that most countries could make, would be for laws and regulations to start with a justification, and a test for outcomes that would see the law or regulation automatically become invalid if it can be proven that the outcomes are not met. Both because it would help with the problem where people don't understand the intent of a law or regulation and so assumes they are stupid, and because it would make passing genuinely stupid laws and regulations harder if you have figure out ways to set out the intent and an "outcome test" in a way that doesn't xpose how bad it is.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    Did... you just propose unit testing laws? Brilliant. Do want.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Sort, of, yes. But with the courts as "testers". A lot of laws would fall due to having been passed due to ignorance. A lot of others would fail to pass in the first place because legislators would be forced to use legislators laying bare intent to punish based on morality rather than provable benefits to society - it's hard to get people to oppose laws where someone claims massive harm if a law isn't passed; it'd be easier to get people to oppose laws justified by a view of morality they may not share. And even if they still pass, it provides a much clearer attack surface for people campaiging for a repeal. But conversely it also provides a strong defense for laws with good purpose that actually work.
jhpriestley 10y ago
These regulations seem completely reasonable. Several are protecting government-related insignia such as the postal uniform, and presumably serve a similar purpose to trademark law. Then you have a ban on transporting an invasive species (water hyacinth), restriction on the mailing of tobacco (often mailed to avoid taxes or tariffs), a ban on unregistered submarines (this isn't some ridiculous idea, drug smugglers have in fact used submarines to avoid border control), a ban on selling traffic signal preemption devices, ...
- nkw 10y ago
  Some background on the water hyacinth [1]. You might have a point there. Mailing of tobacco? It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well? Similarly, it is also illegal to smuggle drugs, why does the fact that someone may have done so with a submarine mean that "unregistered submarines" should be banned?
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well? Likely because proving intent to avoid taxes and tariffs is much harder than proving you've mailed something. I would bet it's a way to get around having complex expensive investigations for what was a common problem. Pass a law, now it's easy. You mailed tobacco? You're guilty. Case closed, problem reduced, taxpayer money saved.
    - nkw 10y ago
      I agree with much of your statement here. However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address and end up with an extremely broad set of laws that have the potential to be applied arbitrarily.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        > However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address Sure, but that's literally the case with every regulation. The point is to use them when the negatives of the behavior will likely outweigh the negatives the regulation might introduce. In a perfect world, there would be no laws, and free markets would work at peak efficiency all the time. Now, I don't have enough information to argue authoritatively about the efficacy of this law, but based on the actual wording, where it says it's okay to do it for business as long as you've met all state and federal requirements means I think it's likely that for the most part it has little impact on individuals (who need to mail tobacco rarely) and businesses operating legally.
leephillips 10y ago
I clicked on one of these at random (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730). This is a perfectly reasonable law that I would not want to see repealed. Don't you agree that it's bad for people to be allowed to impersonate mail carriers? It would facilitate identity theft through rifling mailboxes, make burglary easier, etc. What's wrong with that law?
- nkw 10y ago
  Identity theft is illegal. Rifling through mailboxes is illegal. Burglary is illegal. I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. Especially for six months in federal prison.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    So, is it okay to impersonate a police officer then? The USPS is a government institution, and how ur government often received and sends instructions and funds from its constituents. I don't want people impersonating mail carriers any more than I want them impersonating a police officer. Mail fraud is real, and abusing the mail for more nefarious means happens. [1][2] > I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. You don't generally get official correspondence from the IRS through UPS. I'm fine with protecting the mailcarrier uniform. There are government expectations associated with that uniform. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
    - nkw 10y ago
      First, the statute we are discussing doesn't make it a crime to impersonate a postal carrier. It makes it a crime to "wear[] the uniform [...] prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers". I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz
mschuster91 10y ago
> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 To me, this sounds like a quarantine law. All countries have these, e.g. it is not allowed to transport certain meat products or other foods across German borders. > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E Once again, a "standard" anti-trafficking law. > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 What? Such things exist? Are these "traffic signal preemption transmitter" devices used in e.g. ambulances? > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 A ban on "drug subs", commonly used on the southern border these days. Gangs actually manufacture high-sea-worthy subs in the jungle. > Yes the "repeal two regulations before imposing one" is just a gimmick, but there are an insane number of federal laws and regulations that are, at best, unneeded. Unfortunately, you picked out the worst examples of "unneeded" laws.
- freehunter 10y ago
  >What? Such things exist? Are these "traffic signal preemption transmitter" devices used in e.g. ambulances? Yes, they're used at some intersections to forcibly change the light to green. And they're basic IR transmitters so they're ridiculously easy to make.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    Ah. I remember long ago reading an article where someone... pranked public transport with changing the direction of a railroad tramway switch - basically, right before the train would lock the switch by passing over a detector, the prankster would switch the switch, and the train had to reverse in order to switch the switch to the correct direction.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      That's the kind of "prank" that's likely to kill people. I am at a loss as to how this is a prank. I understand different people have different senses of humor, but is there a context I'm missing in which it's funny?
dgacmu 10y ago
Some of those can and should be consolidated - but they're not all quite as flippant as you might think. The prohibition of transport of water hyacinth, for example, is because it's a massively bad invasive species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes#United_St... Sure, it too should probably be consolidated - perhaps under the Lacey act or the Plant Protection Act or Alien Species Prevention and Enforcement Act. But it's not actually a dumb regulation, just an inefficient expression. You can probably imagine that the letter carrier uniform one may have been in response to fraud. Same for the false weather reports - it's kind of useful to be able to whack someone on the wrist for publishing a hoax tornado warning. I'm all for the idea of cleaning up our soup of regulations, but I think it's worth noting that many of them exist for a reason, and it's typically more complex than the famously silly "can't ride a horse in a dress on sunday"-type laws still found on some state books. Putting my geek hat back on, It'd be cool if we could train an LSTM to de-dup laws... ;) But I guess in the meantime there are interns.
- jack9 10y ago
  > Some of those can and should be consolidated Some should be state laws.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    Given the staffing decisions proposed, they're probably going to be things around health care, business practice, environmental restrictions, and energy reform. It's very difficult for States to regulate those effectively because without federal funding, they are medium term losses that inhibit growth. One of the reasons the Federal Government gets such a bad rep is because they're the one who needs to take a tough position on this.
- baddox 10y ago
  > You can probably imagine that the letter carrier uniform one may have been in response to fraud. I would expect there to already be a federal law prohibiting fraud.
qq66 10y ago
Most of those laws are very useful and are there for a clear reason. Fingers crossed that Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are more thoughtful about which regulations to throw out.
awqrre 10y ago
> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 no postal service carrier uniform allowed on Halloween

by nkw 10y ago

rattray 10y ago

Hmm, I don't know how many of those truly are unneeded, at least without context on why they were created in the first place. There may have been real problems with the Water Hyacinths as an invasive or endangered species, for example. And we certainly don't want to make it legal for people to change traffic signals at will! I had actually expected to find oodles of needless cruft and "dead code", but I'm starting to think that it might be possible that most regulation is there for a reason... who'd a thunk it!

zigzigzag 10y ago
The question is more one of costs and benefits. Anyone can argue a regulation is useful in the abstract. There's a lot of regulation around internet services and people under the age of 13. The primary effect of these rules has been that American internet services ask for your DoB and then ineffectively try to ban you from signing up if you say you're under 13. Do parents really need this?
vidarh 10y ago
One reform that most countries could make, would be for laws and regulations to start with a justification, and a test for outcomes that would see the law or regulation automatically become invalid if it can be proven that the outcomes are not met. Both because it would help with the problem where people don't understand the intent of a law or regulation and so assumes they are stupid, and because it would make passing genuinely stupid laws and regulations harder if you have figure out ways to set out the intent and an "outcome test" in a way that doesn't xpose how bad it is.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  Did... you just propose unit testing laws? Brilliant. Do want.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Sort, of, yes. But with the courts as "testers". A lot of laws would fall due to having been passed due to ignorance. A lot of others would fail to pass in the first place because legislators would be forced to use legislators laying bare intent to punish based on morality rather than provable benefits to society - it's hard to get people to oppose laws where someone claims massive harm if a law isn't passed; it'd be easier to get people to oppose laws justified by a view of morality they may not share. And even if they still pass, it provides a much clearer attack surface for people campaiging for a repeal. But conversely it also provides a strong defense for laws with good purpose that actually work.

jhpriestley 10y ago

These regulations seem completely reasonable. Several are protecting government-related insignia such as the postal uniform, and presumably serve a similar purpose to trademark law. Then you have a ban on transporting an invasive species (water hyacinth), restriction on the mailing of tobacco (often mailed to avoid taxes or tariffs), a ban on unregistered submarines (this isn't some ridiculous idea, drug smugglers have in fact used submarines to avoid border control), a ban on selling traffic signal preemption devices, ...

nkw 10y ago
Some background on the water hyacinth [1]. You might have a point there. Mailing of tobacco? It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well? Similarly, it is also illegal to smuggle drugs, why does the fact that someone may have done so with a submarine mean that "unregistered submarines" should be banned?
- kbenson 10y ago
  > It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well? Likely because proving intent to avoid taxes and tariffs is much harder than proving you've mailed something. I would bet it's a way to get around having complex expensive investigations for what was a common problem. Pass a law, now it's easy. You mailed tobacco? You're guilty. Case closed, problem reduced, taxpayer money saved.
  - nkw 10y ago
    I agree with much of your statement here. However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address and end up with an extremely broad set of laws that have the potential to be applied arbitrarily.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address Sure, but that's literally the case with every regulation. The point is to use them when the negatives of the behavior will likely outweigh the negatives the regulation might introduce. In a perfect world, there would be no laws, and free markets would work at peak efficiency all the time. Now, I don't have enough information to argue authoritatively about the efficacy of this law, but based on the actual wording, where it says it's okay to do it for business as long as you've met all state and federal requirements means I think it's likely that for the most part it has little impact on individuals (who need to mail tobacco rarely) and businesses operating legally.

leephillips 10y ago

I clicked on one of these at random (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730). This is a perfectly reasonable law that I would not want to see repealed. Don't you agree that it's bad for people to be allowed to impersonate mail carriers? It would facilitate identity theft through rifling mailboxes, make burglary easier, etc. What's wrong with that law?

nkw 10y ago
Identity theft is illegal. Rifling through mailboxes is illegal. Burglary is illegal. I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. Especially for six months in federal prison.
- kbenson 10y ago
  So, is it okay to impersonate a police officer then? The USPS is a government institution, and how ur government often received and sends instructions and funds from its constituents. I don't want people impersonating mail carriers any more than I want them impersonating a police officer. Mail fraud is real, and abusing the mail for more nefarious means happens. [1][2] > I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. You don't generally get official correspondence from the IRS through UPS. I'm fine with protecting the mailcarrier uniform. There are government expectations associated with that uniform. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
  - nkw 10y ago
    First, the statute we are discussing doesn't make it a crime to impersonate a postal carrier. It makes it a crime to "wear[] the uniform [...] prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers". I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier. Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal. I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcharging_(law) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

mschuster91 10y ago

> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 To me, this sounds like a quarantine law. All countries have these, e.g. it is not allowed to transport certain meat products or other foods across German borders. > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E Once again, a "standard" anti-trafficking law. > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/39 What? Such things exist? Are these "traffic signal preemption transmitter" devices used in e.g. ambulances? > https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 A ban on "drug subs", commonly used on the southern border these days. Gangs actually manufacture high-sea-worthy subs in the jungle. > Yes the "repeal two regulations before imposing one" is just a gimmick, but there are an insane number of federal laws and regulations that are, at best, unneeded. Unfortunately, you picked out the worst examples of "unneeded" laws.

freehunter 10y ago
>What? Such things exist? Are these "traffic signal preemption transmitter" devices used in e.g. ambulances? Yes, they're used at some intersections to forcibly change the light to green. And they're basic IR transmitters so they're ridiculously easy to make.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  Ah. I remember long ago reading an article where someone... pranked public transport with changing the direction of a railroad tramway switch - basically, right before the train would lock the switch by passing over a detector, the prankster would switch the switch, and the train had to reverse in order to switch the switch to the correct direction.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    That's the kind of "prank" that's likely to kill people. I am at a loss as to how this is a prank. I understand different people have different senses of humor, but is there a context I'm missing in which it's funny?

dgacmu 10y ago

Some of those can and should be consolidated - but they're not all quite as flippant as you might think. The prohibition of transport of water hyacinth, for example, is because it's a massively bad invasive species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes#United_St... Sure, it too should probably be consolidated - perhaps under the Lacey act or the Plant Protection Act or Alien Species Prevention and Enforcement Act. But it's not actually a dumb regulation, just an inefficient expression. You can probably imagine that the letter carrier uniform one may have been in response to fraud. Same for the false weather reports - it's kind of useful to be able to whack someone on the wrist for publishing a hoax tornado warning. I'm all for the idea of cleaning up our soup of regulations, but I think it's worth noting that many of them exist for a reason, and it's typically more complex than the famously silly "can't ride a horse in a dress on sunday"-type laws still found on some state books. Putting my geek hat back on, It'd be cool if we could train an LSTM to de-dup laws... ;) But I guess in the meantime there are interns.

jack9 10y ago
> Some of those can and should be consolidated Some should be state laws.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  Given the staffing decisions proposed, they're probably going to be things around health care, business practice, environmental restrictions, and energy reform. It's very difficult for States to regulate those effectively because without federal funding, they are medium term losses that inhibit growth. One of the reasons the Federal Government gets such a bad rep is because they're the one who needs to take a tough position on this.
baddox 10y ago
> You can probably imagine that the letter carrier uniform one may have been in response to fraud. I would expect there to already be a federal law prohibiting fraud.

qq66 10y ago

Most of those laws are very useful and are there for a clear reason. Fingers crossed that Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are more thoughtful about which regulations to throw out.

awqrre 10y ago

> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 no postal service carrier uniform allowed on Halloween