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> the goal for the government is to make everything illegal I've heard this line before, but never heard any evidence supporting it. I work with government re

by clucas 7y ago

> the goal for the government is to make everything illegal I've heard this line before, but never heard any evidence supporting it. I work with government regulators in the US regularly in my day job, at the local, state, and federal level. I have never gotten the impression that they are trying to hoard infractions on people that they can later use to strong-arm compliance. Rather, modulo some personality issues, the vast majority government officials I have ever worked with seem to be interested in achieving the best result for the people in the jurisdiction they oversee, and they tend to take "the will of the people" as expressed in elections and public forums very seriously - if that means letting technical infractions slide, that's what they do. In fact, a lot of times, the people running the government (again, in my particular areas of experience) have expressed that they wish the laws or regulations they are tasked with enforcing were less onerous, but they know it won't change because the people don't want it to. Of course, it could be different on the criminal justice side of things. Could you cite some examples that support your accusation?

seibelj 7y ago
I don’t have the time to dig up a hodge podge of article links. It’s more of a philosophical argument. As a recent example, I read this book “The Economist’s Hour” which is a left-wing critique of free markets https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Fracture/dp/031651232X https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Frac... It’s thrust is that free markets are good, but need to be regulated by the government to make them fair. I disagree with many of its conclusions, but I did appreciate the numerous examples of regulatory overreach the author provided to show how it can be taken too far. The sections on trucking and the airline industry were particularly illuminating. For example, airline companies were licensed by 1938 and no other airlines were allowed to be created until deregulation in the Carter administration. Airlines (and many other industries) would go hat-in-hand to regulators begging them to solve all of their problems - prices, competition, union issues, and on and on. As intra-state flying wasn’t regulated by the feds but inter-state was, it became cheaper to fly within a state by over 50% than if you crossed a state border.
Chris_Chambers 7y ago
>modulo Stopped reading. Don’t use that word in this way ever again.

by clucas 7y ago

seibelj 7y ago

I don’t have the time to dig up a hodge podge of article links. It’s more of a philosophical argument. As a recent example, I read this book “The Economist’s Hour” which is a left-wing critique of free markets https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Fracture/dp/031651232X https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Hour-Prophets-Markets-Frac... It’s thrust is that free markets are good, but need to be regulated by the government to make them fair. I disagree with many of its conclusions, but I did appreciate the numerous examples of regulatory overreach the author provided to show how it can be taken too far. The sections on trucking and the airline industry were particularly illuminating. For example, airline companies were licensed by 1938 and no other airlines were allowed to be created until deregulation in the Carter administration. Airlines (and many other industries) would go hat-in-hand to regulators begging them to solve all of their problems - prices, competition, union issues, and on and on. As intra-state flying wasn’t regulated by the feds but inter-state was, it became cheaper to fly within a state by over 50% than if you crossed a state border.

Chris_Chambers 7y ago

>modulo Stopped reading. Don’t use that word in this way ever again.