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The lack of a license doesn’t necessarily prevent people from driving. Making it harder, or more severe punishments for poor driving, would not only result in f

The lack of a license doesn’t necessarily prevent people from driving. Making it harder, or more severe punishments for poor driving, would not only result in fewer drivers on the road but also more “undocumented” drivers.

rsj_hn 5y ago
> The lack of a license doesn’t necessarily prevent people from driving. OK, but you need to first decide whether the state should require a license to drive in the first place. And if it requires a license, whether this license should be required to identify you or not. Because you are going to have a hard time with a licensing system in which the license cannot identify the holder. Maybe it shouldn't. That's a useful and honest discussion to have. What is not a useful or honest discussion is whether we should require it but not really enforce the requirement. If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good. If it's really true than enforcement does more harm than good, then don't require it. But this idea that group X should meet some standard, but group Y can meet a lower standard, is lawless and discriminatory. It violates the principle of equal treatment before the law, and it destroys the willingness of society to abide by laws. It creates a population of lawbreakers that can be the victim of selective enforcement, e.g. to punish enemies, while it rewards friends by promising to not enforce the laws. This is basically institutionalized corruption in the sense of the old machines like Tammany Hall. It's when you get to a situation where government can destroy enemies by deciding to enforce laws against them, because there are so many laws whose enforcement is arbitrary. That goes for every aspect of controlling our borders and deciding who can come here. If you want to make an argument for open borders, go ahead. There is legit intellectual case to make for that. But don't say, well, for one group we should enforce things but for another group we shouldn't, because then law abiding people end up waiting for years (my parents waited for 10 years to be able to come to the U.S. legally) while others just overstay their tourist visa (my mother's relatives did that). That's discriminatory and lawless, and sets you up for a system in which those who obey the law are recognized as suckers and forced to subsidize those who do not.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  I’m not sure I 100% follow. By “undocumented” I mean that their license has been revoked (and thus they have no insurance), or they never got one. They lack the document to legally drive. > If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good. There’s a third situation: that enforcement is difficult. The last time I was pulled over was 19 years ago. If that situation had resulted in my license being revoked, I could have continued driving without my license for the next 19 years with no consequences (maybe registering my car under a family member’s name). But regardless, how would this be enforced on a wide scale? The authorities don’t have the resources to check that every person behind a wheel is carrying a license. So, these checks generally occur after an infraction. My point is simply that revoking a license doesn’t necessarily take those people off the road.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Indeed and this is yet another aspect of the car dependency trap. It's so hard to move around in the built environment without a car that individuals will rightfully ignore licensing requirements to tend to their own affairs. Once you force all of your infrastructure to be dependent on a single mode of transport, this mode becomes essential to functioning of the system. This is why it's so difficult to encourage multimodal transport in the US.

rsj_hn 5y ago

> The lack of a license doesn’t necessarily prevent people from driving. OK, but you need to first decide whether the state should require a license to drive in the first place. And if it requires a license, whether this license should be required to identify you or not. Because you are going to have a hard time with a licensing system in which the license cannot identify the holder. Maybe it shouldn't. That's a useful and honest discussion to have. What is not a useful or honest discussion is whether we should require it but not really enforce the requirement. If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good. If it's really true than enforcement does more harm than good, then don't require it. But this idea that group X should meet some standard, but group Y can meet a lower standard, is lawless and discriminatory. It violates the principle of equal treatment before the law, and it destroys the willingness of society to abide by laws. It creates a population of lawbreakers that can be the victim of selective enforcement, e.g. to punish enemies, while it rewards friends by promising to not enforce the laws. This is basically institutionalized corruption in the sense of the old machines like Tammany Hall. It's when you get to a situation where government can destroy enemies by deciding to enforce laws against them, because there are so many laws whose enforcement is arbitrary. That goes for every aspect of controlling our borders and deciding who can come here. If you want to make an argument for open borders, go ahead. There is legit intellectual case to make for that. But don't say, well, for one group we should enforce things but for another group we shouldn't, because then law abiding people end up waiting for years (my parents waited for 10 years to be able to come to the U.S. legally) while others just overstay their tourist visa (my mother's relatives did that). That's discriminatory and lawless, and sets you up for a system in which those who obey the law are recognized as suckers and forced to subsidize those who do not.

ryantgtg 5y ago
I’m not sure I 100% follow. By “undocumented” I mean that their license has been revoked (and thus they have no insurance), or they never got one. They lack the document to legally drive. > If you require it, then you should enforce it, and you should not refuse to enforce it because you think that enforcing it does more harm than good. There’s a third situation: that enforcement is difficult. The last time I was pulled over was 19 years ago. If that situation had resulted in my license being revoked, I could have continued driving without my license for the next 19 years with no consequences (maybe registering my car under a family member’s name). But regardless, how would this be enforced on a wide scale? The authorities don’t have the resources to check that every person behind a wheel is carrying a license. So, these checks generally occur after an infraction. My point is simply that revoking a license doesn’t necessarily take those people off the road.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

Indeed and this is yet another aspect of the car dependency trap. It's so hard to move around in the built environment without a car that individuals will rightfully ignore licensing requirements to tend to their own affairs. Once you force all of your infrastructure to be dependent on a single mode of transport, this mode becomes essential to functioning of the system. This is why it's so difficult to encourage multimodal transport in the US.