BlueCarp: Pass a law. Solve a problem?

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Pass a law. Solve a problem?

The Denver Post's front page headline, "Ban on driver texting," refers to Governor Bill Ritter's signing of a bill that makes it illegal to send text messages while operating a motor vehicle.

The story is written by John Ingold. His lede declares, "Coloradans' days of texting while driving are now officially numbered."

Even allowing for potential hyperbole or poetic license, the statement is absurd.

Unfortunately, all too many people would agree with the premise behind it.

The premise is that a law stops the behavior it prohibits. The premise is nonsense.

A law punishes behavior. It may, although I doubt it, deter that behavior. It does not and never has, stopped behavior.

Ifpassing a law stopped behavior there would be no need for a criminal justice system or prisons.

To blithely equate passing a law with solving a problem perpetuates the myth. Newspapers should perpetuate truth.

1 comments:

BillllJun 15, 2009 07:49 PM
To add insult to injury, the usual practice when a law prohibiting something is broken, is to demand another law prohibiting the same action, but especially when done in the manner of the latest transgression.
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BlueCarp: Without Apology

I believe in freedom. Without apology.

Taxes encroach on freedom.

State power encroaches on freedom.

I am not an absolutist. I am not an ideologue. I am not an anarchist.

I believe that taxes and the state are necessary.

Yet so is water. Too much of it, and you drown. You die.

Taxation and state power have grown far beyond any legitimate usefulness they might have. Our society is drowning in both. We have given ourselves a fire hose when all we need is a Dixie Cup.

The United States government is the single largest employer in the country. This is obscene.

The government produces nothing of value. Nothing. Why are so many people necessary to produce nothing of value? They are not.

They are wasteful. Would that it were that was all. But they are worse than wasteful. They prevent actual production of value. The government makes it harder for people that wish to produce to do so.

Unreasonable licenses, fees, regulation, red tape and bureaucracy make it so.

Without the production of value, there are no jobs. There is no food. There is no shelter. People produce these things. Government does not.

Indeed, oftentimes people form corporations to produce things. Yet corporations are nothing. They are legal fiction. Corporations are nothing but the individuals that comprise them.

True, government is nothing but people that comprise it. The difference is that people are free to purchase things from the people in a corporation or not, yet people are forcibly coerced into giving money to the government.

To some, this government coercion is fine. To me, it is not.

I make no apology for being anti-government.

I am tired of being criticized for lacking compassion because I am against the government and against the forcible confiscation of people’s money. It is not the government’s job to provide compassion.

It is mine. It is yours.

By sloughing off the responsibility of “compassion” over to the government, some are relieved of the moral burden of being compassionate themselves.

If they vote in favor of government force to take other people’s money to help the needy, they are compassionate. They care. At least that is the fiction under which these misguided people operate. It is so much easier to believe in fiction than reality.

It is not compassionate to take someone else’s money for a cause, no matter how worthy. It is compassionate to voluntarily give money to a cause in which one believes.

Some say charity will never be sufficient to provide for all the worthy causes. That government taxation is necessary to provide for all of these worthy causes. I say these people’s definition of “worthy cause” is overly broad.

If people do not wish to give money to a cause, the cause is not worthy to that person. It is immoral to force that person to give anyway, because government deems it necessary.

It is so much easier to force others to donate than to ask nicely. If one has to ask, then the answer might be “no.”

The faux-compassionate, pro-government faction can not stand for that. They deem themselves too compassionate to give others that freedom.

I am anti-government. I am anti-tax. I am pro-freedom. I am pro-liberty.

And I make no apologies.

BlueCarp

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Pass a law. Solve a problem?

1 comments:

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