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These regulations seem completely reasonable. Several are protecting government-related insignia such as the postal uniform, and presumably serve a similar purp

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.
  - joesb 10y ago
    > Likely because proving intent to avoid taxes and tariffs is much harder than proving you've mailed something. It's hard to prove that you are a criminal, but criminal goes out at night. So every citizen should stay home after 10pm.
- jhpriestley 10y ago
  I would guess that it's just much easier to enforce a ban on submarines than a ban on submarines carrying drugs (it would be very easy to jettison drugs from a submarine).
baddox 10y ago
Even if the concept is reasonable, it seems like these specifics should be treated as data and not their own separate law. Just have laws about trademarks, then store all the specific trademarks (including Smokey the Bear, 4-H, etc.) in the trademark registry. Likewise, there should be a law about invasive species, and a database of the actual species that are covered. The trouble with listing a dozen very specific laws like this and considering them all reasonable is this: what if the list had 1,000 items? 10,000? And with no way to know which are the actual meaty laws (like trademark law) and which are just specific instances of said laws (like Smokey the Bear).
- fnord123 10y ago
  That's basically what the laws are. They are merge requests into the db you're talking about. It's just that there's not a good interface to the law as it stands now.

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.
- joesb 10y ago
  > Likely because proving intent to avoid taxes and tariffs is much harder than proving you've mailed something. It's hard to prove that you are a criminal, but criminal goes out at night. So every citizen should stay home after 10pm.
jhpriestley 10y ago
I would guess that it's just much easier to enforce a ban on submarines than a ban on submarines carrying drugs (it would be very easy to jettison drugs from a submarine).

baddox 10y ago

Even if the concept is reasonable, it seems like these specifics should be treated as data and not their own separate law. Just have laws about trademarks, then store all the specific trademarks (including Smokey the Bear, 4-H, etc.) in the trademark registry. Likewise, there should be a law about invasive species, and a database of the actual species that are covered. The trouble with listing a dozen very specific laws like this and considering them all reasonable is this: what if the list had 1,000 items? 10,000? And with no way to know which are the actual meaty laws (like trademark law) and which are just specific instances of said laws (like Smokey the Bear).

fnord123 10y ago
That's basically what the laws are. They are merge requests into the db you're talking about. It's just that there's not a good interface to the law as it stands now.