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The USA has a philosophy of having loose laws and occasional enforcement. This is partly cultural, and has a lot of negative side effects, particularly for min

by fizx 5y ago

The USA has a philosophy of having loose laws and occasional enforcement. This is partly cultural, and has a lot of negative side effects, particularly for minorites. It's pretty easy to do drugs or drive 5-10mph over the speed limit as a white person, but it's much more risky if not. Contrast much of Europe, where speed enforcement is done by camera. I got a $20 mailed ticket for driving 5kph over the limit. Fair, easy, scales with the offence, and there's not an excuse to pull over people for racial profiling. So yes, I would love to live in a world where people got tickets for jaywalking on an empty street. Because that would encourage us all to respect laws, and would also encourage reform of laws that aren't working. Unfortunately, reform takes time, and there's a lot wrong with the system. Until then, I'm not judging the "regular person snitching," particularly if they're complaining about behavior that's dangerous to others.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>So yes, I would love to live in a world where people got tickets for jaywalking on an empty street. Because that would encourage us all to respect laws, and would also encourage reform of laws that aren't working. I'd love to live in that world. Because that world would exist for a week at best before jaywalking stopped be a crime, speed limits went up by 20 across the board and stop lights and signs gained all sorts of complex rules allowing drivers and cyclists to not actually stop in many cases (and all sorts of other laws regarding other issues would be revised similarly). The laws would be changed to reflect how people actually live and that would make dolts who conflate legality with morality a much smaller problem for society. We have procedural mechanisms to make it harder silly laws from being passed. Authoritarians are far less of a danger to people when they have to force their shenanigans through those processes than they are when they simply need to convince enforcement to target this or that issue.

by fizx 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>So yes, I would love to live in a world where people got tickets for jaywalking on an empty street. Because that would encourage us all to respect laws, and would also encourage reform of laws that aren't working. I'd love to live in that world. Because that world would exist for a week at best before jaywalking stopped be a crime, speed limits went up by 20 across the board and stop lights and signs gained all sorts of complex rules allowing drivers and cyclists to not actually stop in many cases (and all sorts of other laws regarding other issues would be revised similarly). The laws would be changed to reflect how people actually live and that would make dolts who conflate legality with morality a much smaller problem for society. We have procedural mechanisms to make it harder silly laws from being passed. Authoritarians are far less of a danger to people when they have to force their shenanigans through those processes than they are when they simply need to convince enforcement to target this or that issue.