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I think this is used as an intentional strategy of control, at least somewhat. Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, t

by anm89 6y ago

I think this is used as an intentional strategy of control, at least somewhat. Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, that way you know everyone is a criminal if you want them to be. Then if someone is acting up, it's only a matter of figuring out which unrelated laws they are already breaking. It feels like this is the defining premise of the US tax code.

cmehdy 6y ago
This is mentioned in the famous "Don't talk to the police" youtube video (from this point[0] and a minute on): there are just enough laws that even lawmakers and experts don't have an actual count, can't keep track of all of them, and they can say nearly anything. (These are my words, not the video:) In the bigger scheme of things, you're likely to be guilty of something almost at all times. Whether or not people know, care, or come down on you depends on a variety of factors. This is pretty much true in any country, it's just that the richest ones have codified it to give the madness more legitimacy. [0] https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=279 https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=279
- anm89 6y ago
  Funny I think I internalized that rant from that video, because I had forgotten about that video but I'd definitely seen it before.
- baskire 6y ago
  It doesn’t help that politicians face as much hardship in removing old laws as adding a new one. Leading to us always creating laws and rarely removing them.
  - curtis3389 6y ago
    All laws in a democracy should have to be re-affirmed by the populace on a regular basis. That is, every law should be required to have a sunset date. It's insane that we can be born into the tyranny of rotting corpses.
    - Aerroon 6y ago
      I think so too. The government has to pass a budget every year. Would it really be too much to ask of them to reaffirm old laws every 10-20 years?
      - smegger001 6y ago
        > think so too. The government has to pass a budget every year. Would it really be too much to ask of them to reaffirm old laws every 10-20 years? You realize the federal government shuts down every so often fro days to months because they cant get there act together on the budget. can you imagine the chaos that would insue in the current political climate if one party or the other thought they could hold a major law hostage to what ever cause they want.
        yunruse 6y ago
        This is a moot point anyway; laws can be overwritten with new laws. Perhaps requiring a supermajority (2/3) to remove would be useful, but even still, _having_ the laws put into question would be a remarkable use of time, keeping law orderly. I suppose the US Code might help with that effort; in the UK it's a tad more disorganised.
        freeone3000 6y ago
        Most governments manage to pass a budget every year. The American government's exceptional incompetence should not be treated as a foregone conclusion -- and their inability to pass laws speak more to the innate unfairness of unaffirmed laws than anything else! Imagine if they would simply have to defend every law like the Assault Weapons Ban. We'd have fewer laws. Fewer by FAR.
        tialaramex 6y ago
        > Most governments manage to pass a budget every year. Not exactly. Two things are going on here that makes the US "special". I would argue they're both design mistakes in the US government, its proponents will doubtless chime in that it's supposed to be like this, and presumably they are proud of the results... 1. Appropriations bills. In most countries it is seen as a foregone conclusion that the government should continue to operate. Politicians steer, but in their absence the ship of state continues onwards on auto-pilot. The US has never entirely worked that way, and last century the GOP intentionally destroyed some of the mechanisms to let it keep running in their absence, because of course they did. So, Congress must explicitly pass bills at least once per year that say the government will pay for things, or else important government functions just stop. Nothing like these Appropriations Bills exists in most countries. 2. Separate Executive. In most democratic countries there is ultimately a single elected power, even if it looks on the surface as though there are two or more political power centres, one of them is actually running everything. In this situation there is no conflict between policy and budget, so of course a "government budget" will pass. One of the few upsides to another US civil war is it's likely that there would be an opportunity to redesign the US government in the aftermath. We've learned a lot about how to design governments since the 18th century.
  - 0134340 6y ago
    Anyone have a rough estimation of the laws made vs laws repealed? This is what I wonder and worry sometimes. It seems we're constantly making far more laws than repealing and slowly but surely caging ourselves in. Our parties seem to be in a blind race downhill to see who can implement the most laws to block the other parties but I feel we're just "cleaning" ourselves into a corner.
    - yreg 6y ago
      I'm not american, but I listened to this Planet Money podcast[0] and they talked about how Trump planned to enforce the following rule: >If congress wants to add a new regulation, they have to find two outdated regulations and remove them. I have no idea how it went. [0] episode including transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/659049880 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/659049880
      - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
        That would have to include a rule about scope, so that it doesn't end up as two old laws concatenated into one new law ...this would be good for other reasons too, like unrelated riders tacked onto appropriations bills
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        Well, since regulations are created by the executive branch and not Congress, which makes law and to which the President can't dictate rules, the proposed rule is meaningless, so enforcing it is a non-issue. Also, “a regulation” is not a particularly useful unit of size.
      - lenkite 6y ago
        Supposedly it helped a bit according to the below: https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2020/06/29/how-donald-trump-has-cut-regulationbut-also-added-it/#1ccba49930d3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2020/06/29/how-donal...
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    Also lawmakers have pretty much put sourced their jobs to unelected committees. They realized they don’t know anything about a topic and also can’t be bothered so they appoint these committees Who put into place “regulations” instead of laws that are basically the same thing but without oversight or accountability - they don’t get voted out if people don’t like it, and most don’t even know who these people are.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      > They realized they don’t know anything about a topic and also can’t be bothered so they appoint these committees It is literally impossible for any single elected official to know enough about every topic they need to legislate in order to make good laws. This isn't because they "can't be bothered", but because there are only so many hours in a day. They have to delegate. Now, we can argue they do a poor job of delegating, but the problem isn't in the act itself.
  - godelski 6y ago
    This is why I always liked the idea of automatic sunsetting of laws. If it worked as expected, pass it through again. If it had loopholes, patch and reissue (better than applying patch to patch to patch). If it didn't have the effect you wanted, let it slip by. It is always beneficial to review your work and analyze it. There needs to be a good mechanism for this to happen within a government and automatic sunsetting forces this issue on lawmakers. Of course, there are other things that can help too.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  This is why I think our legal system is not really compatible with the world of surveillance. Everyone has something to hide, therefore everyone has something to fear.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Where's the incompatibility? Sounds exactly on the money to me.
    - Aerroon 6y ago
      If you want a society that doesn't run on corruption then it's incompatible.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        You and I want that, but let's not assume anything about the people who decide these things.
        kortilla 6y ago
        Lets. Any model that depends on intentional evil at every level is likely wrong. The more likely reality is that politicians think they are doing what their constituents want by passing laws to address what they are currently complaining about. And constituents rarely complain about existing laws so the only natural way for the government to go is more laws and more regulations. When’s the last time you heard a politician run on the platform of getting rid of laws? Even the Republicans who run on less regulation generates far more legislation than repealed.
        craftinator 6y ago
        > Any model that depends on intentional evil at every level is likely wrong. This is unfounded (do you have any sort of backing for this ridiculously bold claim?), historically inaccurate (in nearly every generation, there's at least one mass-murdering regime born), and isn't actually relevant to the question (evil at every level discounts those who aren't involved, those that are victims, and those that are powerless to stop the evil). The rest of your comment is spot on. The unfortunate truth is that people who are elected have the skills required to be elected, not the skills required to lead. Our legislative system is designed to encourage childish bickering, which is attractive to people with old faces and childish personalities. The system is built around the idea that the president will be the "adult in the room" and apply a considered direction to the children to mediate their bickering; it seems that doesn't work well.
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  Laws are source code. Currently it's all spagetti and applying even simplest proven tricks from software domain would yield immensely good results. Like, duh, removing goto. Software is crap, law is so much worse.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  What's even worse is it's disturbingly easy to not just break the law, but it's surprisingly easy to commit a felony. That's a situation that just shouldn't be. In my opinion, a felony should almost universally be something either egregiously reckless or done with nefarious intent, and it should be something that people can universally agree is an obvious problem. (And by that, I mean an ACTUAL problem, not a side-target of the thing that's really of interest.)
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Selectively enforced laws are a source of great evil. Here’s a quote you might find interesting. “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I went to tech school with a couple of State Policemen. First, I should qualify that I had nothing but respect for these guys. Real professionals, and they were serious about the spirit, as well as the letter, of their vocation. The State Police, in that state, are quite powerful. They have (at least in the early 1980s) complete jurisdiction, throughout the state. I also think they would have written their own mothers jaywalking tickets, for going across the street to borrow a cup of sugar. One of them explained to me, how the state code was written, so that everyone is breaking some law, at any given time, and a lot of their training involved learning all these little violations, so they could pretty much justify pulling someone over, at any time. I suspect these bar owners did something to piss off someone in some authority. It could have been as mild as their main clientele.
- Sargos 6y ago
  Honestly just curious, but how can you describe them as complete scumbags but still have "nothing but respect for these guys"? Is it just a platitude or do you really respect them even though they are bad people?
  - anm89 6y ago
    Yeah, those sounds like thugs, not good people, maybe thugs who were convinced by some authority that what they are doing is right,but that's true of most of the evil in history. Curious how you justify this.
    - metadatabad 6y ago
      Yup What's the largest gang? A: The cops
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    > describe them as complete scumbags Look, I appreciate the current political situation, but I DID NOT describe them in that fashion. That was a value judgement that you imposed on a couple of gentlemen that I went to school with, in 1981. You did not meet them or interact with them; I did. They were insular, and I cannot call them "friends." That's fairly typical for police, but they were incredibly polite, and everyone in the class liked and respected them (it was an extremely mixed class, in a very tough town). The people that engineered that scenario (and are probably still engineering it, to this day), were the state legislature. The officers that commanded that barracks were the ones that established the model for their officers. These were two electronic technicians. They happened to be trained and uniformed officers, but were not particularly interested in the "pithier" aspects of their field. In fact, they had volunteered to spend their careers in a basement, fixing radios. In that particular state, there is a giant world of difference between the State Police, and the various county and municipality cops. The State Police held themselves, and were held to, a much higher standard than regular cops. I know of at least one county in that state, where the cops were renown for rather gratuitous violence; especially against minorities. The State Police had nothing to do with that. As for me, and my views...seriously, dude, you have no idea. If you thought that you learned something untoward about me, you are wrong. Dead wrong. This world is missing something fundamental: basic, human respect. That goes for people in authority, that abuse that authority; whether for personal gain, animus, or to be a "team player." It also goes for people that have appointed themselves "Guardians of 'The Truth'" (Whatever happens to be the flavor of the day). We might want to consider that not everyone in the world is an evil person. Just a thought.
fierarul 6y ago
Replacing the arbitrariness of the monarch with the arbitrariness of institutions is a step forward in terms of diluting responsibility. Next up: machine driven decision making.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  > Next up: machine driven decision making. We already have that when you buy something and a security alarm goes off as you leave the store. You are assumed to be a criminal because a machine said so.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >You are assumed to be a criminal because a machine said so. Not really. At least where I live, the false positive rates are high enough that people would walk right past, or the employees would wave them through because they're holding store branded bags. A more egregious example would be the algorithmic bail systems that some states are deploying.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Bail has been algorithmic for many years, based on previous offenses and seriousness of crime. The new horror is machine learning algorithms that make decisions based on hidden inappropriate discriminatory factors.
  - xnyan 6y ago
    Other way around for me. I'm going to home depot regularly for various home projects and the alarm goes off almost every time when I exit. I have never gotten anything more than a bored looking sales associate casually waving at me to keep walking out.
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      Try walking out of the Manhattan store without their goon insisting on a receipt check after you've been forced to operate the register yourself.
redler 6y ago
“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” —Field Marshal Óscar R. Benavides, former president of Peru (attributed)
mdifrgechd 6y ago
> It feels like this is the defining premise of the US tax code See also, drug laws
chrisco255 6y ago
No, the US tax code is not that hard to follow at the macro level. The complexity of the tax code comes from the thousands of potential write offs and exceptions that favor certain industries as a result of lobbying.
- gspr 6y ago
  It sounds to me that if this were true, you could corner the tax preparer market. That's a strong hint that it's not true.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    How would you corner the market? There are thousands of tax preparers who have already made that observation and are already helping clients take advantage of those loopholes.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Complexity is complexity. If the write offs exist and you think you qualify so you take them, and then it turns out that there was an exception on page 28,274 of the amended tax code that meant you didn't quality but you took the write off anyway, welcome to jail.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    That's completely false. At worst you would owe a penalty. Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > At worst you would owe a penalty. Not if they claim the violation was intentional. Which, whether or not they can prove that, means they can arrest you, and deplete the money you'd have used for your defense as bail. And they do so enjoy that trick where "intentional" generally applies to whether you intentionally did a thing that was against the law, even if you didn't know that it was against the law. Let's also not so easily dismiss as unproblematic a conclusion that you owe five times more money than you actually have in back taxes plus penalties and interest, which someone wouldn't have who filed the same tax return as you but didn't raise the ire of anyone in power. > Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality. If only all of the complex laws actually worked that way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jmnicolas 6y ago
I always felt the GDPR was this kind of law. I'm not sure if it's even possible to be fully compliant.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Don't use information for any purpose you have not gotten explicit permission for. Provide a way to get and delete user data. Bang, you are now GDPR compliant.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    And then somebody emails you with a request to all of their data you have on them. Now you must respond to this email and you must figure out a way to find out whether they are who they say they are. Then you have to either refuse the request or extract the data and send it to them. Now repeat this x amount of times depending on how many people want to mess with you at the time. What happens when spambots start using these requests?
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      If you find it hard to do that (have a defined way to recognise a customer; make a db lookup to get their data) then it's very simple you don't acquire nor keep that data. This means you have to have a level of competence - across your organisation (including how you store, retrieve data, and how you recognise customers) - before you start storing their data. Really if you can't established a way to recognise customers how can we (as customers) expect you to competently do 2FA and competently store data without losing it. It's like complaining that your kitchen shouldn't have to keep track of expiry dates of meat; if that's too onerous for you then you're showing you're not competent to run a kitchen.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        ISTM the system you describe could lead to more data collection. I.e., a site like HN knows emails, pseudonyms, and posting history. What if they got a request like this from someone who claimed not to have access to the email they used to sign up? HN couldn't possibly comply. Maybe that doesn't matter because posting history is public. One could easily envision another site that had some non-public data associated with email address, pseudonym, and no other PII. That site definitely violates the requirements you describe.
marcrosoft 6y ago
It’s also a way of collecting revenue. Oh, you followed 99% of the law but not this obscure piece. You now owe 5MM as a penalty.
roywiggins 6y ago
It's really hard to criminally break the tax code; usually you have to break it willingly. If you just make a mistake you'll owe a penalty, but it won't be a crime. Other laws are much easier to break.
golemotron 6y ago
> I think this is used as an intentional strategy of control, at least somewhat. Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, that way you know everyone is a criminal if you want them to be. It doesn't have to be intentional for the effect to be real.
ryandrake 6y ago
I'm not a Rand fan at all, but if the quote fits... “There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
- WilTimSon 6y ago
  This seems like a very pointed view of a certain kind of government, not government as a concept. If the people are willing and willingly choose a government, it's most certainly possible to govern them as long as that government actually listens to the population, doesn't indulge in corruption and earns the respect of people, not demands it. Whether this type of government will ever come about in our modern world... Let's not get depressing.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > as long as that government actually listens to the population, doesn't indulge in corruption and earns the respect of people, not demands it. Charitably, I think Rand's point would be that such a case is only possible if that government is not actually ruling the people, but merely providing services. (Not sure how much charity is actually justified, though, given what I've read of hers.)
  - unishark 6y ago
    There are so many laws because what started out as rule usually gets expanded out into detailed regulations that cover vastly more than just illegal behavior. Perfectly legal things that fulfill the spirit and letter of the law are nonetheless outlawed to achieve the goal of the law. A law that employees must pay withholding taxes on their pay, gets extended into a regulation that contracting is banned because in some cases this might hide sources of income and be used to dodge the law. Enough layers of this going on and no one except major corporations with teams of lawyers can keep up with the "right way" to operate. Despite everyone having good intentions.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
zionic 6y ago
What is the functional difference from the “law” being the whims of a king, and the “law” being an incompressible mess where you are always guilty, but selectively prosecuted?
- anm89 6y ago
  Lots of things that are the same in some outcomes are very different in process. A totalitarian dictator and democratic judicial system could come to the same decision on any given ruling.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  In the former case, there's only one person and a court to please, in the latter case, there's millions of people who can violate you. (Not intending to argue for monarchy here, ha, just came out that way.)
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >What is the functional difference from the “law” being the whims of a king, and the “law” being an incompressible mess where you are always guilty, but selectively prosecuted? Marketing, plausible deniability and the ability of the higher levels of the system to tell the lower levels of the system to knock it off when they're being jerks under the color of law. Monarchy worked so well for so long because the king didn't want to see his resources pissed away using the government to prosecute crap that didn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
- unishark 6y ago
  That's why both are described as "rule of man" rather than rule of law.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I think this frog is still in the early stages of boiling.
Bombthecat 6y ago
Except you are the president. Then its:do whatever you want.
duncan_bayne 6y ago
> Then if someone is acting up, it's only a matter of figuring out which unrelated laws they are already breaking. Rand was writing about this in 1957: "Did you really think we want those laws observed? ... We want them to be broken. ... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt."
skissane 6y ago
> Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, that way you know everyone is a criminal if you want them to be. Reminds me of Alex Kozinski and Misha Tseytlin's classic essay "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal" – http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_Criminal.pdf http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_C...
mikulabc 6y ago
In Belarus the Regime/Authorities jailed 12.000 People by simply giving them the "Did not listen to the Authorities" fine, you can just use that one on every citizen once it exists.

by anm89 6y ago

cmehdy 6y ago

This is mentioned in the famous "Don't talk to the police" youtube video (from this point[0] and a minute on): there are just enough laws that even lawmakers and experts don't have an actual count, can't keep track of all of them, and they can say nearly anything. (These are my words, not the video:) In the bigger scheme of things, you're likely to be guilty of something almost at all times. Whether or not people know, care, or come down on you depends on a variety of factors. This is pretty much true in any country, it's just that the richest ones have codified it to give the madness more legitimacy. [0] https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=279 https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?t=279

anm89 6y ago
Funny I think I internalized that rant from that video, because I had forgotten about that video but I'd definitely seen it before.
baskire 6y ago
It doesn’t help that politicians face as much hardship in removing old laws as adding a new one. Leading to us always creating laws and rarely removing them.
- curtis3389 6y ago
  All laws in a democracy should have to be re-affirmed by the populace on a regular basis. That is, every law should be required to have a sunset date. It's insane that we can be born into the tyranny of rotting corpses.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    I think so too. The government has to pass a budget every year. Would it really be too much to ask of them to reaffirm old laws every 10-20 years?
    - smegger001 6y ago
      > think so too. The government has to pass a budget every year. Would it really be too much to ask of them to reaffirm old laws every 10-20 years? You realize the federal government shuts down every so often fro days to months because they cant get there act together on the budget. can you imagine the chaos that would insue in the current political climate if one party or the other thought they could hold a major law hostage to what ever cause they want.
      - yunruse 6y ago
        This is a moot point anyway; laws can be overwritten with new laws. Perhaps requiring a supermajority (2/3) to remove would be useful, but even still, _having_ the laws put into question would be a remarkable use of time, keeping law orderly. I suppose the US Code might help with that effort; in the UK it's a tad more disorganised.
      - freeone3000 6y ago
        Most governments manage to pass a budget every year. The American government's exceptional incompetence should not be treated as a foregone conclusion -- and their inability to pass laws speak more to the innate unfairness of unaffirmed laws than anything else! Imagine if they would simply have to defend every law like the Assault Weapons Ban. We'd have fewer laws. Fewer by FAR.
        tialaramex 6y ago
        > Most governments manage to pass a budget every year. Not exactly. Two things are going on here that makes the US "special". I would argue they're both design mistakes in the US government, its proponents will doubtless chime in that it's supposed to be like this, and presumably they are proud of the results... 1. Appropriations bills. In most countries it is seen as a foregone conclusion that the government should continue to operate. Politicians steer, but in their absence the ship of state continues onwards on auto-pilot. The US has never entirely worked that way, and last century the GOP intentionally destroyed some of the mechanisms to let it keep running in their absence, because of course they did. So, Congress must explicitly pass bills at least once per year that say the government will pay for things, or else important government functions just stop. Nothing like these Appropriations Bills exists in most countries. 2. Separate Executive. In most democratic countries there is ultimately a single elected power, even if it looks on the surface as though there are two or more political power centres, one of them is actually running everything. In this situation there is no conflict between policy and budget, so of course a "government budget" will pass. One of the few upsides to another US civil war is it's likely that there would be an opportunity to redesign the US government in the aftermath. We've learned a lot about how to design governments since the 18th century.
- 0134340 6y ago
  Anyone have a rough estimation of the laws made vs laws repealed? This is what I wonder and worry sometimes. It seems we're constantly making far more laws than repealing and slowly but surely caging ourselves in. Our parties seem to be in a blind race downhill to see who can implement the most laws to block the other parties but I feel we're just "cleaning" ourselves into a corner.
  - yreg 6y ago
    I'm not american, but I listened to this Planet Money podcast[0] and they talked about how Trump planned to enforce the following rule: >If congress wants to add a new regulation, they have to find two outdated regulations and remove them. I have no idea how it went. [0] episode including transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/659049880 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/659049880
    - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
      That would have to include a rule about scope, so that it doesn't end up as two old laws concatenated into one new law ...this would be good for other reasons too, like unrelated riders tacked onto appropriations bills
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Well, since regulations are created by the executive branch and not Congress, which makes law and to which the President can't dictate rules, the proposed rule is meaningless, so enforcing it is a non-issue. Also, “a regulation” is not a particularly useful unit of size.
    - lenkite 6y ago
      Supposedly it helped a bit according to the below: https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2020/06/29/how-donald-trump-has-cut-regulationbut-also-added-it/#1ccba49930d3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2020/06/29/how-donal...
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  Also lawmakers have pretty much put sourced their jobs to unelected committees. They realized they don’t know anything about a topic and also can’t be bothered so they appoint these committees Who put into place “regulations” instead of laws that are basically the same thing but without oversight or accountability - they don’t get voted out if people don’t like it, and most don’t even know who these people are.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    > They realized they don’t know anything about a topic and also can’t be bothered so they appoint these committees It is literally impossible for any single elected official to know enough about every topic they need to legislate in order to make good laws. This isn't because they "can't be bothered", but because there are only so many hours in a day. They have to delegate. Now, we can argue they do a poor job of delegating, but the problem isn't in the act itself.
- godelski 6y ago
  This is why I always liked the idea of automatic sunsetting of laws. If it worked as expected, pass it through again. If it had loopholes, patch and reissue (better than applying patch to patch to patch). If it didn't have the effect you wanted, let it slip by. It is always beneficial to review your work and analyze it. There needs to be a good mechanism for this to happen within a government and automatic sunsetting forces this issue on lawmakers. Of course, there are other things that can help too.
Aerroon 6y ago
This is why I think our legal system is not really compatible with the world of surveillance. Everyone has something to hide, therefore everyone has something to fear.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Where's the incompatibility? Sounds exactly on the money to me.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    If you want a society that doesn't run on corruption then it's incompatible.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      You and I want that, but let's not assume anything about the people who decide these things.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Lets. Any model that depends on intentional evil at every level is likely wrong. The more likely reality is that politicians think they are doing what their constituents want by passing laws to address what they are currently complaining about. And constituents rarely complain about existing laws so the only natural way for the government to go is more laws and more regulations. When’s the last time you heard a politician run on the platform of getting rid of laws? Even the Republicans who run on less regulation generates far more legislation than repealed.
        craftinator 6y ago
        > Any model that depends on intentional evil at every level is likely wrong. This is unfounded (do you have any sort of backing for this ridiculously bold claim?), historically inaccurate (in nearly every generation, there's at least one mass-murdering regime born), and isn't actually relevant to the question (evil at every level discounts those who aren't involved, those that are victims, and those that are powerless to stop the evil). The rest of your comment is spot on. The unfortunate truth is that people who are elected have the skills required to be elected, not the skills required to lead. Our legislative system is designed to encourage childish bickering, which is attractive to people with old faces and childish personalities. The system is built around the idea that the president will be the "adult in the room" and apply a considered direction to the children to mediate their bickering; it seems that doesn't work well.
kubanczyk 6y ago
Laws are source code. Currently it's all spagetti and applying even simplest proven tricks from software domain would yield immensely good results. Like, duh, removing goto. Software is crap, law is so much worse.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
What's even worse is it's disturbingly easy to not just break the law, but it's surprisingly easy to commit a felony. That's a situation that just shouldn't be. In my opinion, a felony should almost universally be something either egregiously reckless or done with nefarious intent, and it should be something that people can universally agree is an obvious problem. (And by that, I mean an ACTUAL problem, not a side-target of the thing that's really of interest.)

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Selectively enforced laws are a source of great evil. Here’s a quote you might find interesting. “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I went to tech school with a couple of State Policemen. First, I should qualify that I had nothing but respect for these guys. Real professionals, and they were serious about the spirit, as well as the letter, of their vocation. The State Police, in that state, are quite powerful. They have (at least in the early 1980s) complete jurisdiction, throughout the state. I also think they would have written their own mothers jaywalking tickets, for going across the street to borrow a cup of sugar. One of them explained to me, how the state code was written, so that everyone is breaking some law, at any given time, and a lot of their training involved learning all these little violations, so they could pretty much justify pulling someone over, at any time. I suspect these bar owners did something to piss off someone in some authority. It could have been as mild as their main clientele.

Sargos 6y ago
Honestly just curious, but how can you describe them as complete scumbags but still have "nothing but respect for these guys"? Is it just a platitude or do you really respect them even though they are bad people?
- anm89 6y ago
  Yeah, those sounds like thugs, not good people, maybe thugs who were convinced by some authority that what they are doing is right,but that's true of most of the evil in history. Curious how you justify this.
  - metadatabad 6y ago
    Yup What's the largest gang? A: The cops
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  > describe them as complete scumbags Look, I appreciate the current political situation, but I DID NOT describe them in that fashion. That was a value judgement that you imposed on a couple of gentlemen that I went to school with, in 1981. You did not meet them or interact with them; I did. They were insular, and I cannot call them "friends." That's fairly typical for police, but they were incredibly polite, and everyone in the class liked and respected them (it was an extremely mixed class, in a very tough town). The people that engineered that scenario (and are probably still engineering it, to this day), were the state legislature. The officers that commanded that barracks were the ones that established the model for their officers. These were two electronic technicians. They happened to be trained and uniformed officers, but were not particularly interested in the "pithier" aspects of their field. In fact, they had volunteered to spend their careers in a basement, fixing radios. In that particular state, there is a giant world of difference between the State Police, and the various county and municipality cops. The State Police held themselves, and were held to, a much higher standard than regular cops. I know of at least one county in that state, where the cops were renown for rather gratuitous violence; especially against minorities. The State Police had nothing to do with that. As for me, and my views...seriously, dude, you have no idea. If you thought that you learned something untoward about me, you are wrong. Dead wrong. This world is missing something fundamental: basic, human respect. That goes for people in authority, that abuse that authority; whether for personal gain, animus, or to be a "team player." It also goes for people that have appointed themselves "Guardians of 'The Truth'" (Whatever happens to be the flavor of the day). We might want to consider that not everyone in the world is an evil person. Just a thought.

fierarul 6y ago

Replacing the arbitrariness of the monarch with the arbitrariness of institutions is a step forward in terms of diluting responsibility. Next up: machine driven decision making.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
> Next up: machine driven decision making. We already have that when you buy something and a security alarm goes off as you leave the store. You are assumed to be a criminal because a machine said so.
- gruez 6y ago
  >You are assumed to be a criminal because a machine said so. Not really. At least where I live, the false positive rates are high enough that people would walk right past, or the employees would wave them through because they're holding store branded bags. A more egregious example would be the algorithmic bail systems that some states are deploying.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Bail has been algorithmic for many years, based on previous offenses and seriousness of crime. The new horror is machine learning algorithms that make decisions based on hidden inappropriate discriminatory factors.
- xnyan 6y ago
  Other way around for me. I'm going to home depot regularly for various home projects and the alarm goes off almost every time when I exit. I have never gotten anything more than a bored looking sales associate casually waving at me to keep walking out.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Try walking out of the Manhattan store without their goon insisting on a receipt check after you've been forced to operate the register yourself.

redler 6y ago

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” —Field Marshal Óscar R. Benavides, former president of Peru (attributed)

mdifrgechd 6y ago

> It feels like this is the defining premise of the US tax code See also, drug laws

chrisco255 6y ago

No, the US tax code is not that hard to follow at the macro level. The complexity of the tax code comes from the thousands of potential write offs and exceptions that favor certain industries as a result of lobbying.

gspr 6y ago
It sounds to me that if this were true, you could corner the tax preparer market. That's a strong hint that it's not true.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  How would you corner the market? There are thousands of tax preparers who have already made that observation and are already helping clients take advantage of those loopholes.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Complexity is complexity. If the write offs exist and you think you qualify so you take them, and then it turns out that there was an exception on page 28,274 of the amended tax code that meant you didn't quality but you took the write off anyway, welcome to jail.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  That's completely false. At worst you would owe a penalty. Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > At worst you would owe a penalty. Not if they claim the violation was intentional. Which, whether or not they can prove that, means they can arrest you, and deplete the money you'd have used for your defense as bail. And they do so enjoy that trick where "intentional" generally applies to whether you intentionally did a thing that was against the law, even if you didn't know that it was against the law. Let's also not so easily dismiss as unproblematic a conclusion that you owe five times more money than you actually have in back taxes plus penalties and interest, which someone wouldn't have who filed the same tax return as you but didn't raise the ire of anyone in power. > Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality. If only all of the complex laws actually worked that way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jmnicolas 6y ago

I always felt the GDPR was this kind of law. I'm not sure if it's even possible to be fully compliant.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Don't use information for any purpose you have not gotten explicit permission for. Provide a way to get and delete user data. Bang, you are now GDPR compliant.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  And then somebody emails you with a request to all of their data you have on them. Now you must respond to this email and you must figure out a way to find out whether they are who they say they are. Then you have to either refuse the request or extract the data and send it to them. Now repeat this x amount of times depending on how many people want to mess with you at the time. What happens when spambots start using these requests?
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    If you find it hard to do that (have a defined way to recognise a customer; make a db lookup to get their data) then it's very simple you don't acquire nor keep that data. This means you have to have a level of competence - across your organisation (including how you store, retrieve data, and how you recognise customers) - before you start storing their data. Really if you can't established a way to recognise customers how can we (as customers) expect you to competently do 2FA and competently store data without losing it. It's like complaining that your kitchen shouldn't have to keep track of expiry dates of meat; if that's too onerous for you then you're showing you're not competent to run a kitchen.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      ISTM the system you describe could lead to more data collection. I.e., a site like HN knows emails, pseudonyms, and posting history. What if they got a request like this from someone who claimed not to have access to the email they used to sign up? HN couldn't possibly comply. Maybe that doesn't matter because posting history is public. One could easily envision another site that had some non-public data associated with email address, pseudonym, and no other PII. That site definitely violates the requirements you describe.

marcrosoft 6y ago

It’s also a way of collecting revenue. Oh, you followed 99% of the law but not this obscure piece. You now owe 5MM as a penalty.

roywiggins 6y ago

It's really hard to criminally break the tax code; usually you have to break it willingly. If you just make a mistake you'll owe a penalty, but it won't be a crime. Other laws are much easier to break.

golemotron 6y ago

> I think this is used as an intentional strategy of control, at least somewhat. Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, that way you know everyone is a criminal if you want them to be. It doesn't have to be intentional for the effect to be real.

ryandrake 6y ago

I'm not a Rand fan at all, but if the quote fits... “There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

WilTimSon 6y ago
This seems like a very pointed view of a certain kind of government, not government as a concept. If the people are willing and willingly choose a government, it's most certainly possible to govern them as long as that government actually listens to the population, doesn't indulge in corruption and earns the respect of people, not demands it. Whether this type of government will ever come about in our modern world... Let's not get depressing.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > as long as that government actually listens to the population, doesn't indulge in corruption and earns the respect of people, not demands it. Charitably, I think Rand's point would be that such a case is only possible if that government is not actually ruling the people, but merely providing services. (Not sure how much charity is actually justified, though, given what I've read of hers.)
- unishark 6y ago
  There are so many laws because what started out as rule usually gets expanded out into detailed regulations that cover vastly more than just illegal behavior. Perfectly legal things that fulfill the spirit and letter of the law are nonetheless outlawed to achieve the goal of the law. A law that employees must pay withholding taxes on their pay, gets extended into a regulation that contracting is banned because in some cases this might hide sources of income and be used to dodge the law. Enough layers of this going on and no one except major corporations with teams of lawyers can keep up with the "right way" to operate. Despite everyone having good intentions.
srtjstjsj 6y ago

zionic 6y ago

What is the functional difference from the “law” being the whims of a king, and the “law” being an incompressible mess where you are always guilty, but selectively prosecuted?

anm89 6y ago
Lots of things that are the same in some outcomes are very different in process. A totalitarian dictator and democratic judicial system could come to the same decision on any given ruling.
guerrilla 6y ago
In the former case, there's only one person and a court to please, in the latter case, there's millions of people who can violate you. (Not intending to argue for monarchy here, ha, just came out that way.)
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>What is the functional difference from the “law” being the whims of a king, and the “law” being an incompressible mess where you are always guilty, but selectively prosecuted? Marketing, plausible deniability and the ability of the higher levels of the system to tell the lower levels of the system to knock it off when they're being jerks under the color of law. Monarchy worked so well for so long because the king didn't want to see his resources pissed away using the government to prosecute crap that didn't actually matter in the grand scheme of things.
unishark 6y ago
That's why both are described as "rule of man" rather than rule of law.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I think this frog is still in the early stages of boiling.

Bombthecat 6y ago

Except you are the president. Then its:do whatever you want.

duncan_bayne 6y ago

> Then if someone is acting up, it's only a matter of figuring out which unrelated laws they are already breaking. Rand was writing about this in 1957: "Did you really think we want those laws observed? ... We want them to be broken. ... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt."

skissane 6y ago

> Make a jillion tiny little laws that are impossible to keep track of or follow, that way you know everyone is a criminal if you want them to be. Reminds me of Alex Kozinski and Misha Tseytlin's classic essay "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal" – http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_Criminal.pdf http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_C...

mikulabc 6y ago

In Belarus the Regime/Authorities jailed 12.000 People by simply giving them the "Did not listen to the Authorities" fine, you can just use that one on every citizen once it exists.