Don’t support laws you are not willing to kill to enforce (2014)

The cigarette tax is interesting because this exemplifies a corporate entity/state which wants to protect its revenue at the expense of a person lower on the ladder trying to address a simple market situation, it's not one that I or you deal in, but this guy obviously did.

By making it illegal, the police must enforce the law. The guy then breaking said law is faced with a hard choice when dealing with the police in that situation, which is that he is going to be at a minimum fined or possibly worse. For a cigarette, which all sane people would say, "seriously?"

Our goal should be to have police enforce laws that we care about, and laws that actually matter. It reduces the chance for potential abuse of the law. Remember that most poor people are forced to work and live in more public areas, where richer people have more private property that shields potentially the same or worse incursions of the law from the police.

You are effectively, though not directly, threatening every law breaker with the possibility of being killed by a police officer.

Supporting some law could mean some cases interact with those of dubious mental resilience, or with unnecessarily deadly cops, which results in irrational escalation or death. It could also mean that, on the sum of all things, including people dying, society experiences net benefit.

Supporting a law which benefits nuclear energy and rejects fossil fuel or coal energy could mean people dying as well, but it could also mean a better world where fewer people die from energy policy.

Unfortunately, some people stop at the idea that an unjust death occurs, and only focus on that, without recognizing that more people may be already unjustly dying with a status quo policy. To borrow an example, people would rather a man made train barrel down its existing man made path to kill 3 people than to redirect the train to kill 1 person.

When I used to drive regularly I would often see cars with non-working lights. Most people probably aren't even aware that their light is not working. Anyone who can get the driver's attention and inform them of the problem is performing a service for everyone near roads.

This is a favored way of policing because it has a ton of advantages for the police and town:

1. You raise revenue. The amount raised more than offsets whatever costs you incur in enforcement. In some towns, it's the majority of their budget.

2. It allows you to screen for prior infractions. Warrants, unpaid tickets, etc. You can then take them into custody and impound the vehicle. The vehicle is extremely liquid and frequently worth quite a bit of $$$.

3. It is much safer than walking the beat in a dangerous part of town. The driver is frequently restricted within the vehicle and the officer has clear visibility into the vehicle.

4. The officer is frequently stationary in the vehicle with his laptop, internet, etc. This is much more comfortable than walking on the street or even actively patrolling in the vehicle. Why go to them, when they can come to you?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm

> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.

It's unsafe to drive around with non-working lights, mostly because it interferes with other drivers' expectations (working brake-lights and working tail-lights, light geometry allows guesstimation of car dimensions), but also because it can impair the driver's own visibility.

But presumably these could be dealt with friendly warnings, and not a cause for fines or arrest. However, once the traffic stop is made, the officer has wide berth on how to respond, making it ultimately very subjective.

I see cars whose bodies are 75% duct-taped garbage bags on a daily basis. I hear cars with nonworking mufflers on a daily basis. Our culture is that if you don't have the cash on hand or the inclination to repair your car after a devastating crash or serious failure (but it still drives), you simply keep driving it.

I'm pretty sure the extent of "inspection" in the handful of locales where it exists is "is it throwing any emissions-related OBD codes?"

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3681591/That-taillig...

[2] http://www.kare11.com/news/police-scanner-audio-1/267042738

Most of the problems with police/citizen interaction have to do with citizens not behaving in a manner that supports the severe information asymmetries of those encounters.

[1] I don't mean they ARE predators, but that the information processing they use looks like what predators use - a detail out of place will trigger interest in further evaluation.

It's a very common police tactic to start with a minor infraction then investigate to find any further violations. This isn't wrong, and is actually good police work. But it can be easy to abuse if applied with a racial bias, or some other prejudice. (And which is why independent police oversight is a necessity. Not just for high-profile killings, but also for monitoring how law enforcement operates in the community in small ways).

Gary Johnson is a neo-liberal to the core. To him everything comes down to how much it costs.

He's anti-mandatory vaccinations.

He's all about FairTax which hit the poor harder than the rich. Screw people that don't have rich parents.

He's anti net neutrality and believes incumbents should manage the network as they see fit. Of course he opposes government intervention to keep the internet "independent". Let's rely on network access providers, cause that's working out well.

He's all about the free market and anti government meddling until either argument get in his way. He says government should not subsidize or bailout industry but hey it should support building more coal (pandering to coal nation).

He supports the TPP, which is nothing but a gift to entrenched big business and the erosion of other nations sovereignty.

He's a Constitutional "originalist", which is basically code word for "screw letting people decide how to govern themselves, we're sticking to the flawed work of some long dead white guys."

In short, he's just as vague when it comes to concrete solutions, big on talking points, pro rich, anti poor, but worst of all driven by idealism versus reality.

Typical politician. Nothing new to see there.

Feloniously Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...

Accidentally Killed: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/leoka/2014/tables/tabl...

The line between being pulled over for a minor infraction, and making an officer fear for his life is a very blurry one.

And no one is killing to enforce laws against petty theft, no one is killing to enforce laws against almost any infraction.

The use of deadly force comes in effect when you have a portion of the population willing to use violence against cops, which makes cops very nervous that they will 'get the winning lottery ticket' next stop and overusing force back.

And there is no way around that - rules and laws are just words on paper, ultimately you always have to use force in one way or another if someone does not voluntarily honor the words, otherwise they will only be words on paper and nothing more.

If you want to enforce a law (it's always an option not to enforce a given law, but then you might as well not have it) against an offender that for whatever doesn't want to cooperate with the penalty decided, what do you propose doing?

    Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, 
    and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right.

    But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for
    official violence to get out of hand.