4 ms·

What is the purpose of issuing laws/regulations without penalty? (2017)

79 points by searchableguy 6y ago

ggambetta 6y ago
This might be a very naive take, but perhaps you need to spell out what people are supposed to do, so they can do it? "Murder bad" is obvious, but there's a ton of much subtler regulations that might not be obvious or intuitive unless they're explicitly written down.
- jaggederest 6y ago
  And, more importantly perhaps, for most legal systems, interpretation of things not explicitly enumerated is pretty unclear. It's a little bit like "undefined behavior" in a C compiler, only half jokingly allowed to do anything up to and including rm-rf'ing the machine you're running it on.
- watwut 6y ago
  But if there is no penalty, you are just limiting rule followers while giving advantage to rule breakers.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    It's strange that a comment like this is downvoted. I agree wholeheartedly. A law without enforcement is pressuring people not to follow it. I think generally everyone understands that (hence tax laws are enforced), but it's a more practical approach: you can never get 100% of the population to comply, and you don't need to. If you can achieve the minimum desired compliance without spending money on enforcement, you have what you need and saved money. It's naive, because it discounts the damage it does to lawfulness. When people see that law-breakers are not punished (and are defacto rewarded in most cases), they lose respect for the law, the state the is supposed to uphold the law, and the states' institutions. I believe we can witness that in many Western societies. Murder investigations don't make a lot of sense economically, in most cases. Unless it's a serial killer or a career criminal, the chances are slim to none that they will commit the same crime again, so why -in that line of thinking- should we spend money on finding out who did it and then imprison them for even more money, especially when, ostensibly, our prison system isn't for punishment? It wouldn't be a problem to let the few murderers in modern European societies go free, but it would create a giant problem by what it does to the population.
  - prmph 6y ago
    That’s assuming everyone sees every law as a limitation or restriction. Some people see the benefit to all of obeying the rules; to them complying is a benefit in itself, and violators harm themselves
praptak 6y ago
There might be no penalty for breaking a regulation but if you do that and cause harm, then you are at fault, which obviously has legal consequences. I think a large part of the road code is like that in many places.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Unless there's breach of contract involved you've usually got a basic tort lawsuit. The bar for civil infraction charge is generally lower in practice than for a tort judgement. The state can pass whatever stupid law it wants and then get conviction based on the fact that the law was broken even if nobody is injured. For a lawsuit you need injury. A prior civil or criminal case can be pointed to in order to establish a fact pattern but a fact pattern doesn't win you a lawsuit. That said, in reality there's generally an exception if the person you're suing is a class of person that doesn't in practice get equal protection under the law (people who are drunk when the problem happened and people who have been convicted of certain crimes are the most common classes of people who suffer this fate).
onetimemanytime 6y ago
Purpose is to get the money and to shift the blame to employers since they "were told" to renegotiate. So suck it up employees.
xphilter 6y ago
It’s to solidify a certain position before someone can. Suppose a state or states have a law that is consumer friendly and has teeth behind it through private right of action and penalties. Businesses don’t like that so they lobby US senators and Reps to pass a law that preempts those state laws it has no enforcement or penalties. Even better, the new law will, on the surface, appear to “take the issue seriously.” But how can it if it has no penalty? This can happen on the state level too—a good example is the Michigan VRPA which sought to limit data sharing through penalty. It started to work, so state legislature took away the penalties. Oh well.
supernova87a 6y ago
I'll tell you, I hate the idea of half-measures like laws that don't get enforced. (I'm not talking about hundreds-of-years-old archaic laws that are ignored by everyone, I mean real current laws that have some implications. ) Why? Because good law-abiding people -- we want people like that, right? -- follow them with inconvenience and cost to themselves, while the people who don't care just go on with the undesired activity the law is aimed at. Think about when you have had to pay extra or buy something, or do something where you found out no one was actually following up on it. This creates a lot of frustration among the law-abiding. If you can't see that and understand why that's a problem, you need to seriously think about it -- if you're of the opinion "what harm can it do?" or kind of "go with the flow" about it. Just try taking an example from what you would feel at work if this kind of thing allowed to happen. You would not be pleased. I have to say, that is in no small measure a certain part of why people are unhappy right now in public discourse. It seems like everyone is picking and choosing the laws they feel like following. And the law-abiding on every side are asking, "why are we suckers for wanting laws to be enforced"? Pick the issue and you'll find examples of it. Maybe we should retreat a little from our self-confidence and think "maybe I should follow rules even if I don't agree with them" -- inject a little of this approach for everyone's benefit until we figure out what's wrong with us lately.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  If so many people don't wanna follow all the laws maybe there's too many laws.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    That's short sighted and I'm guessing, wrong. People, in general, don't want to follow speed limits when they are comfortable with a road or running a little late. This doesn't in any way mean there are too many laws or even that the speed limit is too low. It is just an instance of not wanting to follow laws. In Indiana, people are required to pay sales tax on online orders. Voluntarily. Technically, you can be charged the tax, but there is little enforcement and little voluntary tax paying. This doesn't mean there are too many laws. The problem here is generally that it is too cumbersome to follow: If the sales tax is added at point of purchase, people pay since there is no need for recordkeeping or saving money for tax time. Sometimes, laws simply aren't aligned with the wants/needs of the people. I think this is a large part of why states are decriminalizing recreational and medical pot: It more reflects the will of the people and enforcement doesn't help the population. Enforcement simply costs money and tends to ruin lives (by putting a drug charge on their record for something less destructive than alcohol). A contractor might cut corners to save money. It doesn't mean we should have fewer building codes, though, since so many are there to keep folks safe. Not wanting to follow laws doesn't mean too many laws.
jgalt212 6y ago
Because if you put important people in office, public servants cannot earn $5MM a year, or more, when they return to private practice. google: Eric Holder

79 points by searchableguy 6y ago

This might be a very naive take, but perhaps you need to spell out what people are supposed to do, so they can do it? "Murder bad" is obvious, but there's a ton of much subtler regulations that might not be obvious or intuitive unless they're explicitly written down.

jaggederest 6y ago
And, more importantly perhaps, for most legal systems, interpretation of things not explicitly enumerated is pretty unclear. It's a little bit like "undefined behavior" in a C compiler, only half jokingly allowed to do anything up to and including rm-rf'ing the machine you're running it on.
watwut 6y ago
But if there is no penalty, you are just limiting rule followers while giving advantage to rule breakers.
- luckylion 6y ago
  It's strange that a comment like this is downvoted. I agree wholeheartedly. A law without enforcement is pressuring people not to follow it. I think generally everyone understands that (hence tax laws are enforced), but it's a more practical approach: you can never get 100% of the population to comply, and you don't need to. If you can achieve the minimum desired compliance without spending money on enforcement, you have what you need and saved money. It's naive, because it discounts the damage it does to lawfulness. When people see that law-breakers are not punished (and are defacto rewarded in most cases), they lose respect for the law, the state the is supposed to uphold the law, and the states' institutions. I believe we can witness that in many Western societies. Murder investigations don't make a lot of sense economically, in most cases. Unless it's a serial killer or a career criminal, the chances are slim to none that they will commit the same crime again, so why -in that line of thinking- should we spend money on finding out who did it and then imprison them for even more money, especially when, ostensibly, our prison system isn't for punishment? It wouldn't be a problem to let the few murderers in modern European societies go free, but it would create a giant problem by what it does to the population.
- prmph 6y ago
  That’s assuming everyone sees every law as a limitation or restriction. Some people see the benefit to all of obeying the rules; to them complying is a benefit in itself, and violators harm themselves

praptak 6y ago

There might be no penalty for breaking a regulation but if you do that and cause harm, then you are at fault, which obviously has legal consequences. I think a large part of the road code is like that in many places.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Unless there's breach of contract involved you've usually got a basic tort lawsuit. The bar for civil infraction charge is generally lower in practice than for a tort judgement. The state can pass whatever stupid law it wants and then get conviction based on the fact that the law was broken even if nobody is injured. For a lawsuit you need injury. A prior civil or criminal case can be pointed to in order to establish a fact pattern but a fact pattern doesn't win you a lawsuit. That said, in reality there's generally an exception if the person you're suing is a class of person that doesn't in practice get equal protection under the law (people who are drunk when the problem happened and people who have been convicted of certain crimes are the most common classes of people who suffer this fate).

onetimemanytime 6y ago

Purpose is to get the money and to shift the blame to employers since they "were told" to renegotiate. So suck it up employees.

xphilter 6y ago

It’s to solidify a certain position before someone can. Suppose a state or states have a law that is consumer friendly and has teeth behind it through private right of action and penalties. Businesses don’t like that so they lobby US senators and Reps to pass a law that preempts those state laws it has no enforcement or penalties. Even better, the new law will, on the surface, appear to “take the issue seriously.” But how can it if it has no penalty? This can happen on the state level too—a good example is the Michigan VRPA which sought to limit data sharing through penalty. It started to work, so state legislature took away the penalties. Oh well.

supernova87a 6y ago

I'll tell you, I hate the idea of half-measures like laws that don't get enforced. (I'm not talking about hundreds-of-years-old archaic laws that are ignored by everyone, I mean real current laws that have some implications. ) Why? Because good law-abiding people -- we want people like that, right? -- follow them with inconvenience and cost to themselves, while the people who don't care just go on with the undesired activity the law is aimed at. Think about when you have had to pay extra or buy something, or do something where you found out no one was actually following up on it. This creates a lot of frustration among the law-abiding. If you can't see that and understand why that's a problem, you need to seriously think about it -- if you're of the opinion "what harm can it do?" or kind of "go with the flow" about it. Just try taking an example from what you would feel at work if this kind of thing allowed to happen. You would not be pleased. I have to say, that is in no small measure a certain part of why people are unhappy right now in public discourse. It seems like everyone is picking and choosing the laws they feel like following. And the law-abiding on every side are asking, "why are we suckers for wanting laws to be enforced"? Pick the issue and you'll find examples of it. Maybe we should retreat a little from our self-confidence and think "maybe I should follow rules even if I don't agree with them" -- inject a little of this approach for everyone's benefit until we figure out what's wrong with us lately.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
If so many people don't wanna follow all the laws maybe there's too many laws.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  That's short sighted and I'm guessing, wrong. People, in general, don't want to follow speed limits when they are comfortable with a road or running a little late. This doesn't in any way mean there are too many laws or even that the speed limit is too low. It is just an instance of not wanting to follow laws. In Indiana, people are required to pay sales tax on online orders. Voluntarily. Technically, you can be charged the tax, but there is little enforcement and little voluntary tax paying. This doesn't mean there are too many laws. The problem here is generally that it is too cumbersome to follow: If the sales tax is added at point of purchase, people pay since there is no need for recordkeeping or saving money for tax time. Sometimes, laws simply aren't aligned with the wants/needs of the people. I think this is a large part of why states are decriminalizing recreational and medical pot: It more reflects the will of the people and enforcement doesn't help the population. Enforcement simply costs money and tends to ruin lives (by putting a drug charge on their record for something less destructive than alcohol). A contractor might cut corners to save money. It doesn't mean we should have fewer building codes, though, since so many are there to keep folks safe. Not wanting to follow laws doesn't mean too many laws.

jgalt212 6y ago

Because if you put important people in office, public servants cannot earn $5MM a year, or more, when they return to private practice. google: Eric Holder