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One of my favorite policy proposals I've ever seen is Andrew Yang's proposal to sunset old laws, and put expiration dates on legislature. Laws should have to co

One of my favorite policy proposals I've ever seen is Andrew Yang's proposal to sunset old laws, and put expiration dates on legislature. Laws should have to continuously defend their existence. Particularly in regards to laws that provide benefits to a group of people, it's basically political suicide for somebody to run on the platform of removing that benefit. My girlfriend used to work in affordable housing, and she would tell me about how the reference book of codes and laws they had to keep in line with had increased by orders of magnitude in size as compared to those from a few decades prior. A politician adds access to affordable housing for those making less than 45k, except for those who were part of the 1985 initiative benefiting LGBTQ out of state college graduates, in which case their children can continue to benefit from access to the affordable housing for 7 years after the death of their parents at a more forgiving 75k minimum salary, after which a 15 year period lowers it to 60k, given that they continue to work within 50 miles of the initial residence of their parent beneficiaries. I'm obviously making this specific example up, but it's not too far off from reality.

pessimizer 7y ago
This would just result in industries, sharks and scam artists waiting until laws expired and quietly doing the thing the law was designed to prevent like crazy until it was noticed and legislative machinery could slowly get around to closing the loophole again. Legislation and regulation are horribly slow to get passed anyway, a rule like that would add an order of magnitude more overhead. Now the question wouldn't be "how may laws apply to the thing I want to do" but "how many laws will pop out of existence over the duration of the thing I want to do, which ones benefit me and which hurt me, how much will I have to spend on lawyers and lobbyists to maintain a vaguely stable environment, and who will be spending to oppose this?"
- ruytlm 7y ago
  That, or representatives tacking on pork barrel spending to legislation renewal when their vote is needed to pass it. "Oh, you want to renew the "Don't put lead in milk" law? Yeah, you're gonna have to set aside $50m for this project I think is super important.."
kd5bjo 7y ago
My personal twist on this one is to make showing a habitual failure to enforce a law be an affirmative defense for all crimes. That way, the law is by definition what is enforced, and singling someone out for infractions that are generally overlooked becomes a much more risky tool for the police to use.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > My personal twist on this one is to make showing a habitual failure to enforce a law be an affirmative defense for all crimes Murder would be legal in Detroit, or at least, it would have been for more than one year.
- sergioj97 7y ago
  It doesn't seem reasonable to me to evaluate if a law is necessary by checking how enforceable it is. Even if a crime is hard to fight, I think that's a problem but not an excuse. And if the problem is the police singling out some people like you said, then in my opinion there are other, more straight forward ways to tackle it. There are too many cases where a crime should be prosecuted even if it's difficult to do so. (As an example, I consider rape a difficult crime to deal with, but I wouldn't understand not prosecuting it because of that)

pessimizer 7y ago

This would just result in industries, sharks and scam artists waiting until laws expired and quietly doing the thing the law was designed to prevent like crazy until it was noticed and legislative machinery could slowly get around to closing the loophole again. Legislation and regulation are horribly slow to get passed anyway, a rule like that would add an order of magnitude more overhead. Now the question wouldn't be "how may laws apply to the thing I want to do" but "how many laws will pop out of existence over the duration of the thing I want to do, which ones benefit me and which hurt me, how much will I have to spend on lawyers and lobbyists to maintain a vaguely stable environment, and who will be spending to oppose this?"

ruytlm 7y ago
That, or representatives tacking on pork barrel spending to legislation renewal when their vote is needed to pass it. "Oh, you want to renew the "Don't put lead in milk" law? Yeah, you're gonna have to set aside $50m for this project I think is super important.."

kd5bjo 7y ago

My personal twist on this one is to make showing a habitual failure to enforce a law be an affirmative defense for all crimes. That way, the law is by definition what is enforced, and singling someone out for infractions that are generally overlooked becomes a much more risky tool for the police to use.

microcolonel 7y ago
> My personal twist on this one is to make showing a habitual failure to enforce a law be an affirmative defense for all crimes Murder would be legal in Detroit, or at least, it would have been for more than one year.
sergioj97 7y ago
It doesn't seem reasonable to me to evaluate if a law is necessary by checking how enforceable it is. Even if a crime is hard to fight, I think that's a problem but not an excuse. And if the problem is the police singling out some people like you said, then in my opinion there are other, more straight forward ways to tackle it. There are too many cases where a crime should be prosecuted even if it's difficult to do so. (As an example, I consider rape a difficult crime to deal with, but I wouldn't understand not prosecuting it because of that)