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This is very slippery slope. It is not my friggin job to figure out the "spirit of the law". I can read letter of law and follow it. If law makers lack mental c
by FpUser 5y ago
This is very slippery slope. It is not my friggin job to figure out the "spirit of the law". I can read letter of law and follow it. If law makers lack mental capacity to "stress test" their creations and incorporate "patches" when bugs are discovered they should find some other job.
Otherwise everyone will be on the hook for some imaginary "not following spirit". Might as well hire shamans
- egypturnash 5y agoThere is a grey area between the letter and intent of the law but it takes a special sort of wilful misinterpretation to end up with "driving onto a little cart that goes about two hundred feet along a rail, then comes back" as "travelling by rail". Especially when there is apparently a whole pile of paperwork that had to be done to officially register this little cart as A Canadian Rail Line. These people know damn well what the spirit of the law is and put a lot of time and effort into coming up with a way to violate the spirit but not the letter of it. The only way you can get to that point via a slippery slope is to bring your own barrels of lubricant and spend a while clearing rocks and trees and other obstacles off of your slope. You might even have to put some effort into increasing the grade of that slope.
- FpUser 5y agoThis case is obvious. So fix the law, it is / should be easy to close the loophole and move along.
- egypturnash 5y agoHopefully the courts will decide that while this may not violate the precise letter of the law, it's incredibly obvious that it violates the spirit of it, and judge them guilty. But if they do, this company will probably try to push it back to a higher court, given that the initial fines are 90% of their revenue from a few years ago. I wonder how much they saved by doing this stupid game instead of using actual rail shipping for about thirty miles, and how much of it ended up in the pockets of their top-level staff and investors vs. the pockets of their employees?
- nicoburns 5y agoIt's a slippery slope in both directions. In one direction you give power to governmental organisations. In the other you give power to corporations. Neither of those things are good from the point of view of democracy. IMO the fact that US culture is utterly intolerant of any kind of "spirit of the law" governance is one of the reasons why America can't have nice things. It's regulatory bodies have other problems, but one of the main ones is that they are toothless because they generally aren't given any real power. Where they are (such as the FAA), they're often much more effective.
- FpUser 5y ago>"In the other you give power to corporations." Nope. Once caught bug in law, fix it. But don't punish people / corps for failure to "guess". One more time. Iam not law maker and it is not my job. >"that US culture is utterly intolerant" I am in Canada. Not the US. >"why America can't have nice things" I do not get it. Sure there is a lot of awful thing in the US. And an awful lot of good things as well. Just as everywhere (assuming developed countries).
- nicoburns 5y ago> But don't punish people / corps for failure to "guess". You don't punish people for failure to guess (you may warn them if necessary). You punish people for flagrantly violating the law. Do you really think the creators of the railroad in this article didn't know that this wasn't what the law intended? It's infeasible to update laws in response to every violation - the process takes too long - so we need a lighter weight process that can keep up. You keep that process in check by updating laws where it oversteps the mark.