Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Harming people or property is criminal, and has been in most societies, even when automobiles or firearms are used to cause harm. OTOH "drunk driving" and "weapon possession" and indeed any "risk"-based "crime" are the epitome of invention. (The criminality of weapon possession has a long and sordid history, but not in those polities that civilized nations would care to emulate.) If all felons are so fucking dangerous, why aren't they in prison? Of course, the vast majority aren't actually dangerous, but it's still fun to deprive them of Constitutional rights! [EDIT:] The main reason why "convicts with guns" has been on the rise is probably that the number of convicts is on the rise, period.

One notes when examining the timeframe of the graph you linked that MADD was formed in 1980. That explains the legislative inventiveness; nothing drives policy like fat stacks of nonprofit cash! Take a trip to any courthouse anywhere, and you'll witness the racket that MADD, prosecutors, and municipalities have engineered to employ lawyers by depriving the poor of the mobility that would make their lives easier.

So thanks for the info; clearly the answer to my question is "yes".

It's a very narrow interpretation of democracy that doesn't give people the right to mitigate risky conduct and requires them to wait for actual harm in order to react. It's also one without a sensible limiting principle: can't require safety inspections for aircraft, gotta wait for a bunch of people to fall out of the sky first!

> nothing drives policy like fat stacks of nonprofit cash

Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby. Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.

You've happened upon one of the main criticisms of democracy, addressed notably in Zakaria's The Future of Freedom. But I don't say that it's invalid for the people's representatives to unjustly oppress the lawbreakers we're discussing here. I only say that they shouldn't! You can dress it up in irrelevant appeals to democracy, but we're still locking up more people than any other society that has ever existed in history, and that's wrong.

...can't require safety inspections for aircraft, gotta wait for a bunch of people to fall out of the sky first!

Don't tell any enterprising nonprofit interest-group enthusiasts, but we have "special" and "experimental" airworthiness certificates, which amount to basically that. Of course, those certificates don't cover aircraft which are naturally subject to the regulation of the state.

Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby.

In fiscal year 2012-3, they spent $34,327,399, of which they spent 64.4% on actual programs. Nationally, 9 out of 10 charities spend a higher percentage. [0]

Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.

As I have observed every one of the five or six days I've spent in various courthouses over the last five years (and as any practicing lawyer with a conscience surely has observed much more often), these laws do far more to harm the poor than they do to make the roads safe. Perhaps you've heard about protests in Ferguson, MO? Predatory policing and prosecution was one of the main focuses of that.

[0] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...

> right to mitigate risky conduct and requires them to wait for actual harm in order to react.

Isn't that the way the judicial system typically works even when it is obviously broken? Isn't this the reason we have things like weird laws that are "unenforceable", because as a matter of policy we tend to wait for actual harm to occur before we expend effort to address it?

>can't require safety inspections for aircraft, gotta wait for a bunch of people to fall out of the sky first!

That's actually the way the FAA came into existence. The Wright brothers didn't have to send $5.00 to the FAA for a permit, or submit to safety inspections, or anything like that. Nor did anyone else, for a long time WRT the early aircraft industry in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...

>Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby. Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.

There's the appeal to emotion common to arguments in favor of harsher sentencing for DUI offenders. It appears to be the case however that more and bigger sticks aren't really reducing the number of sociopathic assholes driving drunk.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com