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A major difference with regulations is there’s no guaranteed executor of those metaphorical lines of code. If the law gets enforced, then yes, but if nobody enf
by gessha 11mo ago
A major difference with regulations is there’s no guaranteed executor of those metaphorical lines of code. If the law gets enforced, then yes, but if nobody enforces it, it loses meaning.
- estimator7292 11mo agoIf the law is code, then law enforcement is a JITter (joke)
- dijit 11mo agoOptimised compiler makes sense though. Unenforceable laws go unenforced, undefined behaviour is undefined and varies based on compiler (law enforcement agency or officer).
- mr_toad 11mo agoA jitter is like a lawyer on retainer. Law enforcement is more like the OS that segfaults you when you fail to follow the lawyers advice.
- KPGv2 11mo agoLaw enforcement is more like a toddler holding a glass of water over your CPU and saying "stop transistoring!"
- Kostchei 11mo agoThe problem with laws that both the enforcer and the subject (enforcee?) agree are bad, is that enforcement is variable. And that leads to corruption. Every damn time.
- KPGv2 11mo agoThe fix for corruption is vote the bums out of office. It is not to go whole hog into blind application of the law. Think about how hard it is to write code that has no bugs. Now imagine you're using English and working with a system with so many parameters and side effects that you can't possibly anticipate all eventualities. And now you want to rigidly apply your operators to this parameter space? Selective enforcement is necessary for justice, because no law is perfectly just, and selective enforcement helps move toward justice. It unfortunately also means there is the eventuality of corruption. So you just have to keep vigilant. Because a rigid system with no selective enforcement has no fix for injustice other than "live with it."
- nandomrumber 11mo ago> The fix for corruption is vote the bums out of office. That doesn’t seem to be working. I argue there’s an acceptable level of corruption, only the particular flavours change from time to time. Come out of government better off than when you when in. Fine, good on ya. No need to tells us about how you’re going about it while you’re going about it. Learn to be at least a little bit discreet, and at least do something occasionally that comes across as good for the average person.
- int_19h 11mo agoThe worst possibility is selective enforcement.
- malfist 11mo agoThere's a reason we call them judges. Selective enforcement is there for a reason. Lawmakers can't anticipated everything. Just look at how bad of an idea zero tolerance policies in schools have been with thinks like getting expelled for biting a sandwich into the shape of a gun. The world isn't black and white. Flexibility, including selective enforcement, is necessary in a just system.
- btilly 11mo agoThe reason that selective enforcement exists is that it is very hard to avoid having rules selectively enforced. But the history of selective enforcement strongly suggests that it does not usually lead to just results. It is often instead something that unaccountable officials find themselves easily able to exploit for questionable purposes. For a notable example, witness how selective enforcement during the War on Drugs was used to justify mass incarceration of blacks, even though actual rates of drug usage were similar in black and white communities.
- nandomrumber 11mo agoYou’re arguing that the mass incarceration of more people would have been better?
- erikerikson 11mo agoBad law enforced perfectly is also undesirable.
- croon 11mo agoI'm not convinced. Perfect enforcement would be a great signal exposing bad law much more clearly, so it can be rewritten/scrapped.
- klez 11mo agoSure, but what about those who got hit by that bad law in the meantime?
- amanaplanacanal 11mo agoUsually laws are created because of the people being harmed because the law doesn't exist. So it could go either way.
- nandomrumber 11mo agoUntil a bad law takes your friends and family out of the gene pool.
- pbh101 11mo agoNot only in the executive/enforcement, but in the actual impact of the regulation in practice as applied by millions in a distributed system. Regulations influence decision paths as opposed to encoding deterministic code paths.