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United States News Title: Why Punish People for “Speeding”? Why should anyone be subject to punishment merely for driving x speed? Is it not of a piece with punishing someone for merely consuming alcohol? The justification usually given is that speeding might cause harm. Ok, sure. The same is true about drinking beer. Someone (generally) might drink beer and beat his wife. But we do not presume (for now) that everyone who drinks beer will beat his wife and thus, drinking beer must be forbidden. And violators of this policy punished. What about punishing (hold onto that thought) people when and only if they actually do cause harm? Not before and not because they might. Or because someone else has. Its a crazy idea, I realize. Imagine: Youd only have to sweat cops or face a judge if you (and not some other person you never even met) could plausibly be charged with having caused harm to an actual victim or damaged the actual property of someone else. Mark that. A flesh and blood victim would have to be presented. And it would be the obligation of the courts to prove that harm was done to establish guilt before requiring restitution (much preferable to punishing people, which smacks of house training a puppy). There would be an end to this business of people being put through the system whove harmed no one. Who are punished for manufactured offenses against the state. Can the state be a victim? Is the Tooth Fairy real? Its absurd and vicious. Do you feel guilty of wrongdoing when pulled over by a cop for not wearing a seatbelt? Who have you harmed? What justification other than its the law is there for punishing you? How about driving faster than an arbitrary number plastered on a sign? You get pulled out from a crowd of others doing the same thing; none of you harming anyone or even plausibly threatening it. Its merely your unlucky day. Your time to pay. As the cop slides in behind you, does your internal monologue run along the lines of, well, yeah
I did a bad thing
I deserve this. Or do you feel disgust, anger and resentment? Of course. This has serious implications. Laws without a moral basis are just arbitrary rules. They have no moral force and that makes people subjected to them feel abused. Which they have been. Meanwhile, it also makes it more difficult to deal with the relatively small number of people in society who actually do cause harm to others. If you doubt this, take a drive into a bad neighborhood; where are all the cops? Theyre manning radar traps and safety checkpoints in the nice neighborhoods! Remember the Drive 55" idiocy that lasted from about 1974 to 1995? Overnight and for the next 20 years it became illegal speeding to drive 70 when the day before it had been legal to do that and presumably (being legal) safe. How does it become unsafe to drive 70 on the same road today that it was (apparently) safe to drive 70 on yesterday? What was it Bob Dooole used to say? You know it, I know it, the American people know it. Millions of people were simply ripped off had their money stolen from them under color of law. The contempt and corruption this bred is incalculable. It festers to this day. Because while Drive 55" is history, the same rigmarole exists on secondary roads. Every day, thousands of people are pulled over and literally robbed. Issued what amount to ransom notes state-sanctioned extortion for driving at reasonable and prudent velocities that happen to have been codified as illegal speeding. The fact that virtually every one speeds this includes cops is the clearest, most inarguable proof that the laws are absurd. And their enforcement a sort of low-rent sadism that also happens to be very profitable. Whats the solution? Speed limits as such ought to be thrown in the woods. They are arbitrary, morally indefensible and most of all, one-size-fits-all. People are individuals and some people are better at certain things than others. This includes driving. Tony Stewart is a better driver than I am. But I am a much better driver than my mother-in-law. Why should Tony Stewart be dumbed-down to my level? And why should I be dumbed-down to my mother-in-laws? Imposing arbitrary, one-size-fits-all limits on anyone for anything is by definition unfair. Arbitrary man-made speeding laws based on a dumbed-down/least-common-denominator standard amount to ugly and stupid people punishing the good-looking and smart ones. The people who support such laws support anticipatory and pre-emptive punishment. That is, laws that assume something bad will happen if x is not punished. And which punish the offender as if something bad had actually happened. Even if it never did. Innocence of having caused harm is (currently) no defense. Its not necessary for the government to produce a victim. All thats necessary, legally speaking, is for the state to prove that the law was violated. Comrade Stalin would approve. Cue the keening wail that, absent speed limits, people will drive excessively fast and lose control. Yet they do exactly that already speed limits notwithstanding. Just as people still drive soused (and senile, too). The difference between the harm-caused/actual victim approach and the its the law approach is that the former only holds those who actually do lose control for whatever reason accountable. Everyone else is free to go about their business. To live as adults rather than be treated as presumptively unintelligent children. What a concept! Speed advisories would be fine. For example a sign letting you know that there is a sharp curve ahead and maybe reducing speed would be good. Drivers unfamiliar with that road and never having driven that curve before may find this information helpful. But why should the local who is familiar with that road and who drives that curve everyday be subject to punishment for taking the curve at a higher speed? Assuming, of course, that he does so competently, without causing harm to anyone in the process? That was once the American Way. Not do as you please the dishonest, demagogic bleat of Clovers. But rather, do as you please
so long as you dont cause harm to others. The false choice offered by Clovers is total control in exchange for total safety the risk free world. But this is a quixotic quest that can never end, because risk cannot be removed from this life. We all get sick and die eventually. Entropy happens. What can be excised, however, is the risk to our liberties, our peace of mind, our enjoyment of life presented by random and arbitrary interferences and punishments based not on what weve done, but on what someone might do. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 16.
#12. To: Deckard (#0)
If I were King, the speed limits would go, the drug laws would go, prisons would go also. People who killed people would be put to death. Other violent criminals and thieves would be indentured and would work at wages, and have their wages garnished, leaving them in the projects but working, until restitution and punitive damages were reached or 7 years, whichever came first. Violent criminals would be agricultural workers for six years. They would be microchipped and tracked if they escaped. The list of laws would be short, and regulatory agencies would be a thing of the past. Oh, and as a result, the economy would - for a time - shrink by about 50% and have to grow back organically. Because the fact is that the massive regulatory and police state, and government control of everything, allows a lot of otherwise unprofitable economic activity to exist and thrive, and through the multiplicative effect of money spent in the economy, to grow the economy beyond what it would otherwise be. The velocity of welfare money is extremely high.
A better idea would be to tattoo a number on their arm, Mein Fuhrer.
#18. To: misterwhite (#16)
That's permanent. Once the restitution is paid, you take out the microchip and let them go free. On the Jubilee, you wipe clean and destroy all criminal records, retaining no copies. At that point, men are completely free to start over. Because the Jubilee corresponds to the debt sabattical, one leaves the Jubilee debt free and criminal blemish free, a complete restart. Men need this. And God provided it. Men don't want to let men off the hook. If I were King, I would make them by proclaiming the Jubilee
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