The Purpose and Execution of Law

Q

It's a rigid law, like most of the automobile laws, and as such doesn't allow for much wiggle room as thely say, since the offender and the policeman judging the possible crime are looking through a personal perspective and retrospectively. Basically, they each have their own account about what happened when they look back at the scenario they were in, and as such neither is that reliable compared to taped proof. And even then the speed limit is what is of matter not the ability of driver, and seeing a number of those police video programmes you can tell a reckless and dangerous driver compared to and experienced and talented one.
There are people to fine and people not to, but in all honesty unless there is some highly accurate training for police to tell the difference between the two main drivers than I doubt it can be avoided.

However it is what is in place in many of the higher income countries, and as such, I can't wholly dislike it as flawed as it is, it likely saves more lives and heart ache than most laws. But I agree it is rigid and flawed but I don't see it as a negative law completely, just in need of improvement.

 

I honestly do not care about it very much either, however, I do not feel fines are necessary to make people stay in line. In the same way that stealing lunch money is not necessary to make people stop running in school halls.

 

This particular topic on a speeding ticket law just doesn't interest me enough to think about it. Maybe another law in such a way to analyse but Im not thinking properly at the moment.

 

Because to me the best freedom we could be given is the freedom of mind and speech. By sending people to school they give them the tools for seeing the game for what it is. Ultimately what they chose to do with these tools is up to them. We might be let on, but we' re also made very much aware that we are let on, at least I was. It is alienating, and yet at the same time it isn' t, which makes me wonder if things are as simple as "Is law X alienating or not ? Even slightly alienating to the nth degree won' t do at all".

Nope. In the end the money comes from the income taxes, poor people don' t pay those.

Public schools are free until highschool no matter how old you are (I wasn' t sure what was the right word). Technically even beyond that there are a few free available cursus.

They have more free reign that you give them credit for, at least here. When the state tries to meddle with school programs it always creates waves, the teachers-state relationship is in a love-hate dynamic.

No, it could have been much worse I suppose.

I ... uh ... ok, reset, I don' t know what you read between my lines but it' s all wrong. I should have stopped you sooner but I overlooked it. You asked what we thought of cops being turned into LEO. I think it somehow gets the job done and I wonder if a "no harm no foul" policy rid of any preventive aspect would be as successful at dropping crime rates.

No, I am not familiar with the enforcement of a "no harm no foul" policy anywhere (or with a flawless law enforcement really). The far-west maybe ?

So you would do something, just not a fine ? This is starting to make some sense, given what you said to Noroz I thought you would just let it slide.

 

What about the seat-belt laws or laws against suicide that I mentioned earlier?

 

I will agree that a government telling you that you can only die in a certain way and forcing you to do so is cruel and unusual punishment in some circumstances.

But are laws against suicide still executed in the US. Various states have classified it as a crime back in the day but even then, they were rarely enforced and today, I'm pretty sure there aren't any states that classify it as a crime. Just to make myself clear, I'm specifically talking about suicide. Not assisted suicide or euthanasia.

 

They made it clear that each example is its own beast.

 

You are not given that freedom. That is my point. Being obligatorily taken to a school with a state-approved curriculum is the opposite of being given freedom of mind. You would be better off with a library and nothing else. No teaching, no guides, no leading questions, no winners' history. Learning is better than being educated in every respect, and there is a well-defined difference between the two. In the case of a school library, they will stock with with state-approved material.

If you believe that your country is good, this is because you were not given information on why it is bad. There is no good country, and yet almost everyone seems to think that their country is good. You are not getting the full story if you are still optimistic about it.

Another discussion for another time, but I disagree with this as well. Not that it happens, but that it should.

Funny you use the word curses...

So, it is 'free'... And mandatory. Doesn't that already seem extremely suspicious?

... That makes little sense. If the schools are free, and government takes in income tax, then the government pays the teacher's bills. There is very little love-hate dynamic. Though I suspect most teachers get into it thinking that they like teaching, it is only a love-hate in the sense that an employer and employee relationship is love-hate.

It has been very bad with people that I know. Especially sexual assault.

It would not need to drop crime rates so much as not change them. Unless of course removing preventive policies would eliminate some crimes, in which case the crime rate would go down. I have little to no reason to believe that more people would get into wrecks if they were not fined for going over the limit.

The wild west had a policy like this, and the violent crime rates were roughly the same. I am fairly certain that 'no harm, no fowl' existed in most areas until somewhat recently (the last century). Drug laws were not rigorous, there were no road signs, and so on. 'Preventive' actions are fairly new in the case of law. Even compulsory education was not implemented in the US until the 1920s, and it spread to Europe from there, which can be considered the most intensive prevention program yet.

Of course. I myself tend to berate people and more often children for being idiots, or stop them and correct them when they are doing something that makes me nervous. What I do not do is lock them in a room, take their money or sit them in a time out. I would only consider those things if they actually caused a problem.

The principle applies to this forum. I will derep or talk to someone about a bad action or habit, but I would not infract them unless someone was actually offended. I am somewhat adamant about this, and it is had gotten me in trouble before. I honestly see making someone socially aware as good enough until damage is done.

There is also the point that, if I owned a road, I would want people to be careful on it. But I would sooner take away their license to drive on it than take their money for making others nervous. That is unnecessary and greedy at the best of times, and spiteful at the worst.

Given that members of this conversation reside outside of the US, and the purpose of law is not specific to any one state, I believe the debate would cover any country that had such laws in place.

What do you mean? Who are 'they' and when did they make it clear?

 

Before I go crazy, I just wanted to say that it's "No harm, no foul." You guys are talking about a bird if you're using a w.

Then how would a person be able to read the books that fill these libraries if they were never taught how to read? We don't come out of the womb with the amount of knowledge required to learn everything which is why we have teachers to help us. I am quite capable of thinking for myself and learning but I know that I probably wouldn't have developed to be as capable as I am today were it not for teacher. In my younger years, math and science classes intimidated me quite a bit with all those big numbers and the various equations but I was able to overcome that because I had a teacher to show how it was done. To this day, I find it easier for me to learn almost anything if I see it being shown to me in practice than by reading a book on it. Can you honestly say that you would've been able to learn everything you know without a guide?

Just to clear confusion, he meant courses.

Comparing current society to the past doesn't really work when the laws that you've mentioned didn't exist because they would've served no purpose. It'd be like making a law restricting teleportation nowadays when we are incapable of doing so. Speed limits only started to become more common with the advent of cars; drugs laws started to be implemented when the general population started to see the danger that they posed(although I agree that some drugs such as marijuana were mostly banned out of fear campaigns) and so on. Past society also had laws against suicide, laws against homosexuality and certain sexual acts and let's not forget the witch trials. All of these are victimless crimes yet people were punished for them.

I assumed he was talking about the US. That was my fault. My bad. Although I'm fairly certain that the only places where suicide is against the law are usually countries of a religious nature.

 

Ah yes, technically they don' t give it to us, but they don' t take it from us either.
Schools have internet now, is all the web content state-approved ? From what I' ve seen private schools teach exactly the same things as public schools, which doesn' t seem as brain-washing as you make it sound with extra-stuff (religious stuff). I still think making school available to everyone is a good thing

I stopped thinking in black and white terms a long time ago, I merely see gray nuances everywhere, advantages and inconveniences.

Aw crap, a "false friend" (cursus exists in English but doesn' t mean the same thing). "Lessons" will do.

Depends what you' re taught and how.

Looks like something was erased from American history books, or have I been taught lies ? ^^

Spoiler

Jules Ferry

Two important works are associated with his administration, the non-clerical organization of public education, and the beginning of the colonial expansion of France. Following the republican programme he proposed to destroy the influence of the clergy in the university and found his own system of republican schooling. He reorganized the committee of public education (law of 27 February 1880), and proposed a regulation for the conferring of university degrees, which, though rejected, aroused violent polemics because the 7th article took away from the unauthorized religious orders the right to teach. He finally succeeded in passing his eponymous laws of 16 June 1881 and 28 March 1882, which made primary education in France free, non-clerical (laïque) and mandatory. In higher education, the number of professors, called the "hussards noirs de la République" ("Republic's black hussars") because of their Republican support, doubled under his ministry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ferry

They = the examples, they looked like they each are their own beast to me.

 

... I hope I did not do this.

I was taught to read and write, and better than most, without ever setting foot in an schooling institution. I prefer the notion of private school like settings in which you also choose the courses at will. Compulsory education does not apply only to public schools. You must go through an approved curriculum and be able to past state-approved tests to move on in your life whether you are public schooled, private schooled or home schooled. This is something I disagree with. Private tutoring is best, but more expensive in the long run. A parent being able to teach the child is the best yet, but not everyone has that luxury. In any case, not being able to decide for yourself what 'education' means is a major flaw.

I agree, many things are easier for children to learn with teachers. I suppose what I have a problem with is the lack of unbiased curriculum. Math, Language Arts and Science are the only three subjects that I find to be more or less unbiased. However, these are not all that is taught, and I cannot expect it to be all that they teach. Even in homeschooling, the amount of bias for the country that you live in is astounding. Most children come out of a school, private or otherwise, supporting their country. I can only see this as a result of the state's influence. If you control the schools...

I know, I was just being troublesome.

Agreed. There have been many anarchist communities throughout history, however, and they would by nature hold a 'no harm, no foul' policy... For an (incomplete) list of them, see here.

Our country is generally of a religious nature, but that is aside from the point. If the purpose of law is corrupted, then it does not truly matter what it is corrupted by, according to this topic.

Wrong, I believe they do. Specifically, you are in a school for most of the day for great periods at a very young age. You are trusting of the adults around you. You have no wish to find truth on the internet, given to you or not. If you are raised from a young age to trust your country, when you are given the internet, you will not be terribly driven to search for things against it. There are exceptions, but most will be content with what understanding they had as small children, and what they got throughout their teaching in history. I suspect that most, and I mean a great majority, will not look beyond mainstream news if they bother to look at it at all. It is not simply that they do not provide you with information, but that they train you not to look for it. And you would not notice it because you have been trained since a childhood. They have built a familiarity and trust with the 'nation'. It is the same with your parents; you are not naturally inclined to look for things against them. Hard to break from old habits.

Let me put it this way: if you view your country as the best country, then [what I said previously].

Okay, then.

Not quite. Any compulsory action should be very shaky ground for a sane person. No one has authority to teach you against your will, and a compulsory service is applied regardless of your willingness. Let me put this way: no one has the authority to define what helping you is in spite of your own definition, and then to help you against your better judgment.

Rather, I was not taught this subject in my history books at all... But, thanks for the lesson? Still the most intensive prevention program to date.

The word free is impossible to maintain, I am afraid. You cannot build a school without funds. You cannot provide for school staff without funds.

And, indeed, mandatory. I would have been against this from the start. If it is not one religion, it is another; I would not trust any institution to teach me or my children. If a church will teach children to trust itself, then a state will teach them to trust itself as well. The larger and more influential the institution, the more dangerous to let them teach. There are no exceptions.

I find this to be wrong. When we speak of the purpose of law, there are no separate cases, no exceptions. A law is either in line with the purpose of law or it is not. I hold that the purpose of law is to settle disputes between two or more parties. I do not speak only of speed limits. The example is given as a very common one, not necessarily as a central point.

 

For more on my problem with compulsory education...

A compulsory public school system is just as wrong as a compulsory public press would be. What would we think of a proposal for the government, provincial or federal, to use the taxpayers' money to set up a nationwide chain of public magazines or newspapers, and then to compel all people, or all children, to read them?

Further, what would we think of the government outlawing all other newspapers and magazines, or at the very least outlawing all newspapers or magazines that do not come up to certain "standards" of what a government commission thinks children ought to read?

Don't you think such a proposal would be shunned throughout the country, and rightly considered an invasion on people's freedom of speech and communication?

Yet isn't this precisely the sort of regime that government has established in the schools?

A compulsory public press would rightly be considered an invasion of the basic freedom of the press; is not scholastic freedom at least as important as press freedom? Aren't both vital media for public information and education, for free inquiry and search for the truth?

In fact, the suppression of free schooling should be regarded with even greater horror than the suppression of a free press, since here the tender and unformed minds of children are more directly involved.

- Murray Rothbard​

 

I agree some of these laws are pointless to a capable person. Anyone who is going 80 in a 50 through a town should be fined . . . but if it's out of town, in the country, then it isn't as harmful. Also, you should be held responsible for your actions. If you crash because you were speeding, your insurance company should have the right to deny you a claim. It's your problem deal with it. Same thing with Jaywalking, if you cross the street safely without causing anyone else trouble then it is ok. Basically, you take care of the problems you make. You kill someone speeding, you go to jail/prison. That's how I feel.

 

I' m afraid you did. ^^

...
What do they teach you in history ? The subjective and flawed nature of my history lessons has been stated several times in very explicit ways. The fact that informations can be tempered with and/or be used in manipulative ways has also be stated explicitly and repeatedly. I also had philosophy lessons, "Let's deconstruct everything. I think therefore I am, where do we go from here ?"

Basically I' ve been taught I should second guess everything. Trust no one Mr Mulder. I' ve also been taught maths, science etc ... things that, as you agreed yourself, are unbiased. If people (at least in my country) are extremely gullible I tend to blame them for that, no one else. Also, from what I know, overall French are a lot less patriotic than Americans. I' m not sure it isn' t just a stereotype (maybe we' re just as patriotic in different ways), and even if it is true I don' t know if school is to be blamed.

How would I know that exactly ? Or anyone really ? I don' t even know my own country inside and out.

Then why would anyone have any authority on what you can or cannot do at all ? What if my better judgment tells me it' s perfectly ok for my husband/parents to beat me ?

I failed to mention that in my country we can be home-schooled, or get private schools diplomas that aren' t state-approved. The only thing that is mandatory is to school your kids somehow (well, more broadly you' re expected to raise them).

Overall employers tend to give more credit to state-approved diplomas, but it isn' t a golden rule.

I meant that harming yourself isn' t exactly the same as harming someone else (or both), and that harming and potentially harming aren' t exactly the same either. The examples he gave didn' t all fall under the same category.

Seat belt laws : it' s been proved that not putting your seat-belt is potentially harmful, not just to yourself.

Laws preventing our rights from being taken away : mandatory school comes to mind. To me it' s very different from forcing couples to mate. I can' t think of any reason to force couples to mate, but parents who wouldn' t want to school their kids in any way would look extremely fishy to me, they might as well not want to feed them. One seems potentially harming, not the other.

 

I edited my post with a more fitting example than murder, but you were already answering me.

I don' t know what the best country is, I just know they are all flawed somehow. Trying to determine which is the best one seems like a dick size contest to me. I wonder why you jumped to the neighbor loyalty thingy though ... I' m only loyal to people I know well, and their actions can cancel my loyalty to them.

A seat belt or seatbelt, sometimes called a safety belt, is a safety harness designed to secure the occupant of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result from a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduces the likelihood and severity of injury in a traffic collision by stopping the vehicle occupant from hitting hard interior elements of the vehicle or other passengers (the so-called second impact), by keeping occupants positioned correctly for maximum benefit from the airbag, if the vehicle is so equipped, and by preventing occupants being ejected from the vehicle. The seat belt is designed to stretch at a controlled rate to absorb crash energy and reduce the severity of the occupant's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt

If you' re ejected from the vehicle you might land into another person, or land into another vehicle' s trajectory and cause more mayhem.

Rights, as made-man a term it is, are the pillars of our law system. Taken straight from Wikipedia : In several different Indo-European languages a single word derived from the same root means both "right" and "law", such as French droit, Spanish derecho, and German recht. There is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights. It has been used by different groups and thinkers for different purposes, with different and sometimes opposing definitions, and the precise definition of this principle, beyond having something to do with normative rules of some sort or another, is controversial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

As far as I' m concerned in the sentence you quoted a right is a law.
As for liberty being a far better term :

Liberty is a contested moral and political principle that seeks to identify the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves. There are different conceptions of liberty, which articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways, including some which relate to life under a "social contract" or to existence in a "state of nature", and some which see the active exercise of freedom and rights as essential to liberty. Understanding liberty involves how we imagine the roles and responsibilities of the individual in society in relationship to conceptions of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty

You make it sound as if being forced into anything is necessarily the ultimate evil, regardless of what you' re forced into or why. Doesn' t parenting, as a general principle, take liberty away from children ? If you don' t want to school your kids in any way then what the hell would you want them to do instead ? Wouldn' t it severely decrease their options at picking a job they' d like to do later on ? Teaching children seems as basic a need as feeding or clothing them.

 

My argument does not change in any way. In beating you, they are exercising said authority themselves. Well?

I jumped to it because someone who does not pledge to a flag is a rare sight. In my experience.

Fair enough. But, again, my argument applies. Unless you actually get into an accident and you do cause damages, you should not be fined. Pulling someone over and taking their funds for not wearing a seatbelt only harms them if they do not get into an accident. Most people do not get into accidents, and even fewer cause damages by not wearing seat belts.

Yes, I understand the history of the word and its association with law. That does not stop it from being obsolete. Indeed, I hold that laws in any given nation have consistently been contradictory for many centuries. As anything can be made a law, anything can be a right as well. That allows you to deviate from the purpose of law. Rights have no underlying theme at all. A right to kill you is just as valid as a right not to be killed. There is no objective reason to prefer one or the other. Wars are waged based on rights, just as murder is made illegal by them. Liberty is what most currently lawful rights are based on. We favor the victim because liberty says that he should be free from outside aggressors. The same with theft, assault of various kinds, and most other forms of coercion. There is no reason to favor the right to live over the right to kill without liberty.

Indeed, that is why you get people claiming a right to kill, such as in war or the death penalty; because they believe in rights, a freedom to do something specific. They could never, under any circumstances, claim to be at liberty to kill, because that contradicts the principle. Rights are obsolete because we already mean 'the right to' liberty when most of us use the term, and it is far more consistent to just defend liberty itself instead of rights, which can extend to whatever you claim you have a right to do.

It is the only evil. It covers every single act that can be called evil. Do you disagree?

Not necessarily on the bold statement. I am in favor of the non-aggression principle. To put it in your terms, "No one has the right to initiate aggression against another party under any circumstances."

I do not believe that people have needs, including survival. As you have no authority to, say, spank (strike) your child for not doing something (behavioral conditioning), it is entirely acceptable to say that you will not give them dinner or new clothes if they do not meet your standards. After all, they are your food and clothes. I also believe that the child is at liberty to leave if you do not feed and clothe him. So you are both forced to be reasonable. I believe this begs the question of the point at which a child can survive without a parent, and at which point a parent stops being responsible for the child's success.

I am rather in favor of the notion that there is no such thing as responsibility in either direction. At which point does a child become an individual? I certainly disregard legal definitions. I hold that a child becomes an individual as soon as he or she says no. If you must 'punish' or coerce a child, then use ostracism. Do not give them what they want until they give you what you want. That is how the world works. And it should work fairly well; children respond by giving you what you want. That is something I like to call voluntary interaction. Literally forcing a child into things with violence and then telling them not to hit, steal, shove, threaten is a contradiction. When you coerce a child, it teaches them that that is not only how the world works, but how it should work. Perhaps you teach them that they should not do those things themselves, but you teach them that they should accept it when others do those things, show them that is what those in authority should do, and you make them more likely to do them if they ever get into a position of authority, such as parenting. I do not support it in the least.

 

Except mandatory schooling doesn't prevent your rights from being taken away. Do you know what it really does? It forces you to exercise your rights. Isn't that just as bad as taking away rights? It's like saying that everyone over the age of 21 with a concealed weapons license must have a concealed weapon on his or her person whenever he or she is in public. Is THAT a good law?

 

You said that the purpose of law is to settle disputes between two or more parties, but often beaten people won' t agree that there was a dispute at all. Not necessarily because they feel threatened, it can be out of love and they can genuinely don' t mind to be treated that way, kind of a sado-masochistic relationship. Would you still step in no matter the severity and nature of the beating is, against their judgement ?

I believe fines are bothering enough to make you think twice about breaking the law again without being nearly as unfair a physically harming someone who didn' t actually harm anyone. I' m not sure the fear of enduring a worded *****-slap would be just as dissuasive.
I' m not saying it wouldn' t be, I just have doubts on that matter. As for what you suggested before, impairing the driver' s license (which btw is even more harming than a fine), it is already enforced here, the fine is just the icing on the cake.

As I said depends what is being forced and how. I believe there is room for nuances here, I wouldn' t call forcing your kid into the car (phisically because you don' t have the time to bargain) in order to make sure someone keeps an eye on him that day "evil". So no, I don' t think it' s necessarily black on principle.

I do get where you' re going with this, but bargaining can be just as awful as beating your child, I can think of a few bargains that would be much worse and harming (psychologically) than a little slap. Personally I' ve been raised with a bit of both, but nothing that would traumatize me or actually injure me, just a slap if I was particularly obnoxious. Fun fact : one of my cousins, when he was a wee kid, often banged his head against the floor (even if it was marble) when his parents had the nerve to refuse him something. I don' t know how his parents dealt with it exactly, both bargaining and slapping were utterly useless. ^^

 

A dispute requires one or more both parties to define it as a dispute. If two people have an argument, and an officer comes up and asks if there is a problem, the two of them can say, "There is no problem, officer," and there is no dispute. What is the difference between stroking someone's face and striking it? The only difference is how much damage is done to the body. Now, what is the difference between sex and rape? Sex is not a dispute unless one of the parties says it is, and the same applies to all interactions.

Then the laws in your country are even more ridiculous than I thought. Why didn't you mention this before?

It does not matter if something is more unfair. A two week prison sentence may sound more fair than a two year one, but that is not the issue. You should not harm someone who has not harmed anyone else. It does not matter if you steal ten dollars or one hundred dollars. You are still taking from someone when they have not taken away from anyone else. You create an imbalance rather than correct one.

I believe it is. You have no responsibility to keep an eye on him. If he does not want to go with you, then fine. The same as if he did not want to go with a stranger. In fact, I have no reason to believe that if you used ostracism instead of physical coercion throughout the child's life up to then, that he would not go far more willingly, knowing that he would be punished later, rather than right now.

I figured that you would argue this. While I agree that the effects can be nearly as bad, at least you know that you did not initiate aggression against a child. If a child is going to be abused anyway, I would rather it be by not getting what he wants than by physical coercion. I have no reason to believe that this change in standard would increase the amount of child abuse. While you can still 'abuse' your children this way, it is certainly the more peaceful approach and results in less violence both during parenting and throughout the child's life. Because of its peaceful nature, I believe that a change in practice to this method would decrease abuse, making it even more taboo to hit children and similar things.