Sounds like the normal thing in China. Make something illegal, don't enforce it, if someone's saying something you don't like then enforce it specifically against them, keeps everyone else in line.
Quote stolen from another thread:
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
To me, it's like a literary Rube Goldberg device where it looks cool on the page, but seems impractical and kind of unhelpful as a way to live your life.
It always reminds me of fundamental Christians patting each other on the back about dinosaurs not being real and knowing better than to have to read the literature on it.
Rand has some great points, one thing that bothers me is when in Atlas Shrugged and her philosophy is that she always attributes everything to a single amazing person. It's like a 50's version of the Steve Jobs biographies.
The overall message is that laws and government is an obstruction to be ignored or demolished.
As i get older i learn that while it is good to question laws and regulations, many of them have actual factual reasons to exist. So blanket dismissal is as much a wrong as unquestioning obedience.
Government is a system, and like all systems it will require maintenance. And sometimes the job the system was constructed for is no longer there.
But just tossing the system out because it is in your way is as useful as throwing out a random server just because you need the rack space.
I see this with myself and people who are aging with me, we have so much to do as we get older that we have automated thinking around certain subjects.
I think the younger people lack this conditioning to things as they are and can see better methodologies for approaching the situation.
But we old farts have created our pattern and understand it, and so block the young from testing their theories, in a small community this would be a fairly ideal situation, but when scaled to countries, it's slow and inefficient.
We need a more scalable thought process when it comes to large scale humanities.
Way too many times the young dismiss existing conditions simply because they feel constrained by them, and lack the context for why said conditions came to be. End result is that they rebel against everything just because its there by (learned) reflex.
Yes, as one grow older one fall into patterns. But i think quite a bit of it is because of the work pace of modern day rather than some condition of age.
Edit: Again from personal experience, i have come to think that people need to experience something to really get it. So if you tell someone young that drinking is bad (in excess), they may or may not listen (and may just ignore you because you are old). But let them experience it under relatively controlled conditions, rather than some random binge hidden away somewhere, and maybe some synapses will connect up (and quite a few destroyed most likely) and the message will be received.
Of course, the same can't be said for the anti-trust regulation book.
I would say it is a book about the magically industrialists that she wishes existed in her youth when her family was disposed by the Russian communists. They have ray guns and invisibility machines and everything, oh and trains don't forget trains.
Here is the thread I copied the quote from, but I have read the book. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11088704
Nice movie, I also liked it.
Several of the towns which depended upon speed traps for their funding found out that the Internet is a good resource for letting people know to avoid an area.
This will be interesting when self-driving cars don't ever disobey traffic laws.
It will be even more interesting when the passed laws and administrative acts will be automatically checked and validated (by something other than humans) so that fining won't be for addressing some revenue deficit but for actually preventing harmful phenomena!
Just the other day I was driving down the narrow roads of a nearby hill and there is a section with single lanes with lots of traffic moving at 35 mph. One lady comes weaving down the traffic on both sides to get in front of the crowd with a net savings until when the lanes opened up of 30 seconds. So much risk to everyone for what little benefit.
The twenty minutes or so morning and evening, 35-40 minutes overall is not to be sniffed at. The round trip on public transport would be well over 90 minutes.
They dragged on the construction for more than a year making barely any progress so that they could keep the construction zone open. (2x fines) The bridge was crossing a ravine at the bottom of a hill so they just kept a couple cops parked there every day and pulled over everyone with an out of state license plate all day and the county made millions. Eventually people caught on and sued. Bridge was finished nearly immediately after that.
Google Street view: https://goo.gl/VwIadH
I have a neighbor (lives across the lake from me) who is a retired police officer...23 years on the job...
I asked him once if there was any truth to the rumor that traffic cops had to meet a quota...
He said, "Not in so many words...every now and then the Captain, during the shift briefing would say, "Boys, I need to see some paper" and we all knew what he meant."
It's technically illegal to make something with a round corner because that's Apple's patent. If you piss off Apple, they'll try to enforce it. If you don't piss them off, they won't care. The law will side with Apple because they have better lawyers than you do.
The above is just an article published to a government website.
And of course in Canada there are limits to foreign ownership of media outlets (foreign ownership cannot be majority), as well as foreign content in media.
"If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident."
These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their families disposed. These are fat and lazy billionnaires who have siphoned off local schools, hospitals, people, environments, and is about to abscond with riches. These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited.
"In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion. By comparison, the median wealth of American politicians was just over $1 million in 2013, according to CNN Money. " http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-...
463.8/(106+97) = avg of ~2.28 billion per china congress critter
Edit: as pointed out below, the math is more complex as there is 2987 seats in the NPC and I can't quickly find numbers for the number of total seats in the CPPCC, so the average is certainly drastically lower than the above.
To get the average per "congress critter" you'd have to get the total in each body, and get the net worths of the ones not on the rich list. I suspect it's less than 2.28B, but still a good bit higher than in the US.
Ummm... The NPC has 2987. Put in context 97 of 2987 are rich or 3%. That's a far better stat than you'll find for the US senate or congress. The CPPCC is larger.
Add to that the comparison to the median wealth all American Politicians, your comment is all smoke and mirrors. Compare likes to likes.
A senator averages about $3M, a house rep is about $800k.
For example, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... claims that as of 2009 the age of US House members averaged 57. I doubt they've gotten younger on average since.
I'm having trouble finding these numbers for our current congress, but in 2009-10, out of 435 House reps 168 had law degrees, 83 had a masters degree, 23 had a PhD, 17 had a medical degree. 32 had nothing beyond an associate's degree; that leaves 109 with just bachelor's degrees. All numbers according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_St...
Your typical person with an advanced degree in their late 50s probably has some retirement savings. And note that the cited article says some of the numbers (but not all!) include the values of the House members homes. It's really not that hard to hit $800k if you count home equity and retirement savings, assuming you have any reasonable amounts of either...
http://www.studychineseinchina.com/community/knowledge-base/...