Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

My god, this is amazing. They marketed their anti-litter campaign as a state-pride manly-man issue to great success. I love it. Very intelligent hack.

This is also a very interesting story about the importance of diversity on a team. While TXDOT wanted to go with "Please Keep Texas Beautiful", this guy knew the kind of guy he had to convince wouldn't listen to that stuff. Brilliant.

There's another one (less successful though still successful) which I remember just because it's so catchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_It_or_Ticket . When I had family visiting from elsewhere you could just say "Click It or Ticket" and they'd get it. Sure the real reason I want them to wear the seatbelt isn't because of the ticket, but the slogan combined with the fact that I can outsource the argument to the state is great.

View on HN

I had a friend who had been in the Army. She really identified with "Be all that you can be", but thought the later "An Army of One" campaign sent the wrong message.

(Looks like it was short-lived [1])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogans_of_the_United_States_A...

As I recall, the Army of One was sort of part of the zeitgeist of the moment and, yeah, it fell pretty flat in the context of suggesting military loners rather than teams.

I recall my friends in college praising it at the time. To them, the biggest downside of joining the military (besides, obviously, getting killed) was that your individuality would be beaten out of you. This marketing campaign tried to show that wasn’t necessarily the case.

I'm not American and i've always thought it odd how many 'join the army' ads you guys have on your channels, watching cartoons as a kid on the american vs the Canadian channels we got, the american ones always had at least one join the army ad per day, while I think I could count the amount of canadian ones I remember seeing. But i'll agree I remember even then thinking the army of one ones were pretty dumb and made no sense...I also remember the be all you can be ones...that's really how great your guys state propaganda is honestly. I remember these things, still. That says something.

In fairness the Canadian army doesn't really need you and to get combat you really need to put in your time and volunteer for the post. In the US army depending on the timeframe you could be through basic training and in a combat zone in less than a year.

I'm not certain how easy it is in the forces to get cushy stay at home jobs, but Canada actually contributes disproportionately highly to armed conflict when compared to the US, it has participated heavily in quite a few recent actions[1]. Both armed forces have logistical and bureaucratic arms along but only the US (AFAICT) has a dedicated stay-at-home path via the National Guard.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada#Pos...

What source do you have that Canada has disproportionate contributions, compared to the US? The Wikipedia page doesn't say that.

Canada spends disproportionately low compared to the US. It's been a source of major compliants in NATO.

1.2526% vs 3+%

Canada does join many more conflicts than it should. But sometimes doesn't have the equipment to get there/back to survive (wearing green camo instead of brown in the desert is a major disadvantage).

> dedicated stay-at-home path via the National Guard

I thought last decade that dedicated stay-at-home path meant you ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan. In other words not so stay-at-home.

Indeed -- many National Guard units have done 4+ deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq.

There was an article a while back about how the Guard used to be fat-ass weekend warriors with gear that was EOL or falling apart. After damn near 20 years of Afghanistan and Iraq most of those Guard units have been multiple times and are equipped and trained to something that resembles actually full-time line units. The Active Duty troopers still get better gear and training, but the Reserves & Guard are a completely different creature than a few decades ago.

There is zero guarantee as National Guard that you won’t be deployed. You can be activated at the state or federal level anytime.

Source: I’m an active duty Army veteran and have extended family in a guard unit that’s currently deployed OCONUS.

The war business needs lots of dedicated people, therefore fueling nationalism and military pride becomes necessary to have a constant influx of applicants. This happens pretty much everywhere, although to different degrees.

The US army spends about $700 million on recruitment [0]. While that number has been higher recently since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.

[0]https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/11/07/to-draw-...

Just to clarify - Canada doesn't have forced conscription, it also has an entirely voluntary armed forces.

What are you clarifying here?

I think the supposition is that Canada also has a volunteer army, but does not spend as much on recruitment. I am not sure if that is true or not, but anecdotally it feels like there is at least 10x the amount of military recruitment ads in the US as there are in Canada.

Well I would think the Army as the road out of poverty thing is not as big in Canada as in the U.S

Bingo. There was a awful lot of screening at MEPS -- where you go to process for the US Military, regardless of Marines/Army/Navy/Airforce -- for medical stuff. Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

I served with a dude who entered to be a diesel mechanic (even though he had no background/interest in it) because he got his GF pregnant and didn't have a way to take care of a kid at 19.

These are less of an issue in Canada, the UK, etc. where they have universal healthcare and better safety nets.

> Lots of implied "do you secretly have a medical issue?" questions, as the military is responsible for paying for your healthcare.

Basic training was the hardest exercise that I'd had in my life up until then. They don't want you dying from an asthma attack on the obstacle course or something similar.

Or, if you have a heart condition, they don't want you dying on the operating table from it when they go to remove a piece of shrapnel.

Yup. And if you have a knee problem, back problem, etc. you will get chaptered out for medical reasons, so why waste time and money if that's the eventual outcome? Does the military want to pay for the healthcare of someone who went to basic training with a bad knee and made it worse due to being in the military? No! That isn't their purpose and we should never expect otherwise.

Sometimes I think people are just looking for a boogeyman.

Right, but does Canada have the same global police mission that the United States does? I’m not sure why it would be the default expectation that the U.S. and Canada or other NATO countries would have the same amount of recruitment advertisements.

So I guess I’m unsure about what was being clarified given the OP’s statement and then the following response.

original post said:

> since becoming an all volunteer army recruitment has been an expensive challenge.

Implying the issue is a volunteer army. If that's the case, Canada would have the same problem as it's also a volunteer army.

If your argument is that it's not about being a volunteer army, it's about the scale of the military, you might be right... we'd have to compare the personnel number to recruitment budget ratio between NATO countries to get a sense of that.

Standing military in the US is also 0.4% (1.38M/328.2M), v.s CA's 0.17% (67,000/37,894,799) of population.

I've heard (but never actually verified) air shows basically come out of the Air Force and Navy's recruitment budget.

That wouldn't surprise me. As a kid, airshows and movies like Top Gun & Iron Eagle certainly gave me a pro-military view. I did end joining the army after high school. On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)

My favorite memory of an airshow was seeing the SR-71 fly. Oh my gosh that thing was cool. It was so loud that its vibrations set off what seemed to be every car alarm in the parking lot. At the end of its performance, the pilot just pulled back on the stick and just flew straight up into the clouds. I don't know if this video is the airshow I went to, but imagine a kid with a love of military aircraft seeing this thing up close --https://youtu.be/aV82gbriMc8.

I also have fond memories of seeing an A/V-8B Harrier do a vertical take off and landing. The funniest memory I have was seeing the label on an Apache helicopter's 30mm cannon that said "do not aim at personnel on base".

My favorite first hand experience was getting to fly in a vintage WW2 B-25 Mitchell. I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft. This was in 2012. The owner said that all of the parts he ordered to keep the plane flying came in the original WW2 packaging. As of 8 years ago, somewhere out there was a warehouse full of WW2 era spare parts for 70 year old bombers!

Airshows are cool :)

On another tangent: there are also collectors of WW2 (and older) combat rations, and some people open their contents for review and sometimes consumption today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA6u-sYhFi0

> On the first day of basic training, I also have very vivid memories of drill sergeants mocking us recruits for having bought into the "be all you can be" propaganda :)

Supposedly it's more like "Full Metal Jacket."

I sat in the glass bubble where a gunner would sit at the front of the aircraft

It's rare that I'm envious of anyone, but I'm literally drooling right now :-)

I did a bit of Googling. Here's an article about the B-25:

http://warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-news/memoriam-milan-mike-pu...

If you really wanted to try and take a flight on this plane, or a similar one, I could try to get you in touch with the guy. It's a friend of my Dad's friend.

Here's a video from 1992, which will give you a sense of what is event is/was like, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt10M55Z2JU

This might help you: https://youtu.be/-YQmkjpP6q8

I'm not sure but it wouldn't surprise me. The DoD pays major league sports to have the anthem and the presentation of colors before games.

The US has pretty much been at war with someone somewhere since WWII. President Eisenhower's military war complex warnings shows it was already apparent at that time. Stockpiling weapons is only so effective at keeping the complex running. It's much better to constantly be depleting the stockpiles requiring them to constantly being replenished while also needing new toys to be created. I don't know/think/research that the neighbors to the north have been involved in nearly as many conflicts.

Edit: corrected the actual president. thanks ethbro

Eisenhower's?

Doh! Thanks for the correction. I also had it in my mind that Truman did the Highway Act, but that was also Eisenhower. Shows how much I paid attention in history class.

Yvan eht nioj.

The 'Army of One' ads also had people with helmets with visors wherein you couldn't see they eyes of the person, they looked like storm troopers - it's the only military ad I've really taken umbrage with.

There were 'pre-movie' recruiting ads in Texas movie theatres with knights fighting dragons that turned into Marines that I though was really hilarious and pathetic, but it wasn't 'bad' just tacky.

There were some other ads something along the lines of 'They called me a loser High School, but now I'm doing this and this' or whatever - which is in some way ok (most people feel like 'outsiders' in HS and teens yearn for self improvement), but maybe a little sketchy.

The Army is really serious stuff, it's ok to hint at adventure, self-improvement, fraternity but at the core it must appeal to 'duty' and or kind of communitarian obligation/commitment or it's the wrong message.

The individual tactics used by some recruiters are kind of deplorable, I do think however recruiters should be allowed in schools legally, just like any other employer.

>The Army is really serious stuff, it's ok to hint at adventure, self-improvement, fraternity but at the core it must appeal to 'duty' and or kind of communitarian obligation/commitment or it's the wrong message.

https://i.imgur.com/tzG3VXq.jpg

If that is a real Ad I love it.

I also think more mundane army portrayals like this helps to defuse US separatist extremist groups while visor down or active combat portrayals fuel that fire.

Once I read the "because we say so" part, I was convinced it wasn't legitimate. Also, the paragraph below that is quintessential mumbo-jumbo.

Why exactly would 'US separatist extremist groups' ( how many of these can you name? ) and secessionist groups be interested in joining the federally run US army? Wouldn't mundane army portrayals just appeal to their sense of dissatisfaction with a society that many already see as far too passive? Or, as you so smugly put it, 'fuel that fire'. You forgot to mention Cheeto Hitler in your post. There's still time to edit though, so it's okay.

Many separatists groups believe the federal government is too powerful and is aggressively conspiring to oppress them. A vicious looking well equipped military just feeds into these notions.

On the other hand, portrayals of the army as merely builders and farmers in uniform would defuse their fears.

I sure hope that on the day China puts boots on US soil, there are enough people left who aren't as much of an intellectual titan as whoever made this picture.

More recent versions have kids in high school being highlighted as leaders in their school going on to being leaders in which ever military branch it is running this campaign. Or the version of the kids having the conversation with their parent trying to convince them of their decision to join the military in the juxtaposed positions. Essentially, they've gone from being a broad "look how cool we are" to a much more personally identifying position of the younger recruits. I think they learned a lot from the "Army of One" fiasco and took marketing/PR seriously.

I have no experience with the Army and even I knew that "Army of One" is a dumb as shit slogan. The entire military functions only because of chain of command and submitting to the organization rather than the individual. Otherwise how else would you get someone to risk their life for something as nebulous as a "mission"?

> Click It or Ticket

I've always hated this one because there is a significant contingent of people who disagree with seatbelt laws -- even if they themselves always wear their seatbelts -- because it's a central example of a law that shouldn't exist when the role of criminal law is to save innocent people from bad people and not idiots from themselves.

And then the campaign feels like a direct attack on the people who don't agree with the law, which encourages defiance, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect. With the further effect of making people angry while they're driving a car, which dangerous in itself.

The cynic may also notice that such laws are commonly passed in order to generate revenue, in which case stimulating defiance could be fully intentional because more defiance generates more revenue.

I'll try to help reframe it into a context were it is harder for you to disagree

> the role of criminal law is to save innocent people

e.g. Law abiding tax payers, companies that hired the people who didn't want to use seat belts, their families and anyome else who would suffer if they were injured

> from bad people

in this case careless drivers who'd drive without a seatbelt.

Not related to you but possibly mildly interesting and somewhat related to reckless driving and reckless behavior generally :

Around here I guess we are the spoiled brats of the world, so when quarantine laws went into effect employees in permanent positions who were quarantined still get full pay.

Then it turned out a number of people took advantage of even this, crossed the border into Sweden (who has a totally different approach, they still -last I heard - go for "herd immunity now" it seems)

After all, food is cheaper on the Swedish side and then you get a paid holiday, right?

So we recently changed the rules to make sure that wont work anymore ;-)

Seriously: some people amaze me in how little personal benefit they have to have see to put everyone at risk.

You are using a line of argument that would justify prohibiting meat, cheese, corn syrup, skydiving, mountain climbing, NASCAR, sailing, tobacco, alcohol, pizza, Coca Cola, desert foods and non-procreational sex. They all risk your life for a momentary personal benefit when someone else might prefer you not and then live longer.

It's also essentially arguing that no one has a right to intentionally end their own life no matter how much they're suffering if their continued existence is beneficial to any third party.

You don't owe the benefits of your continued existence to anybody else, so whether risking your life is bad is a determination you get to make for yourself.

> So we recently changed the rules to make sure that wont work anymore

Naturally. But there are two problems with that.

First, it's not really analogous to seatbelt laws, because if you don't wear a seatbelt then you could die but if you get a virus and spread it to five other people who each spread it to five other people etc. then thousands of people could die.

And second, those people are then in a different country which is making its choice in a different way. They may be wrong, but they're sovereign, and it's the people who live there and intentionally go there who suffer the consequences. What you should do is not let those people come back without being quarantined.

We might not end up agreeing today but I'll admit you argue well.

I'll note though:

- In both cases one persons carelessness hurts others, only to a much stronger degree in the original version.

- I agree, and it is obvious to me that one persons relatives or employer cannot have a say in everything and that some risky behaviors should be allowed as for example skydiving might actually be healthy.

- I agree that maybe it shouldn't fall under criminal laws, I mean I see no reason why a person shouldn't get a visa or a gun permit because they were caught without a seatbelt, but I still want a way to make more people use it. (On a side note, I don't think seatbelt goes on permanent record around here.)

I also guess people with tax paid health care might care more than people who have individual insurances pay for their health care.

Regarding my other example:

the rules are for Norwegians that leave the country to buy cheap meat or booze and then come back - fully aware that they should self quarantine.

With the previous rules they would enjoy a complementary free holiday, paid for by their employers and taxpayers.

That won't be tolerated anymore.

As for the Swedes yes, I agree, they are free to do whatever they want and I think I was careful to not judge them, I'll wait with that until we see the end of this pandemic.

You are implying that the consequence of not wearing a seat belt and having an accident hurts only the idiot? That's not the case. There's a cost to society (we have to clean up the mess) and to the family (if any). It's incredibly selfish and irresponsible to take such completely pointless risks.

From my perspective, I have to wonder if I don’t already pay enough taxes for the government to scrape my blood off the pavement after an accident without having to act as if it incurred more of a loss than me (who is a corpse in this scenario).

That's the cheaper outcome. What if you survive and are badly maimed and unable to work?

As usual the solution to this type of problem exists in insurance. If you get into an accident and you weren't wearing a seat belt then you pay correspondingly higher insurance premiums for the rest of your life sufficient to pay for the claims filed by other people not wearing seat belts who become disabled.

Assuming they want to be able to file a disability claim, because the problem is caused by the insurance to begin with -- if the problem is that people will be more likely to file an insurance claim then the solution is for those people to pay a higher premium if they want the insurance.

I'd say the better solution would be to deny insurance coverage for people that were not wearing their seatbelt for the damages that they suffered.

That's theoretically a possibility -- make it like smoking for health insurance. You have to answer the question up front but if you say yes you pay higher premiums and if you lie then it's justification for denying your claim.

A lot of people hate that because it means people can choose not to be covered and then have a Very Bad Time when they can't file a claim. But it's not like they have anyone to blame but themselves.

As far as I know, smoking isn't illegal. Operating a motor vehicle without a seatbelt is illegal in 49 states in the US and around the world.

You wouldn't need it to be illegal if you solved the insurance problem that causes people to want there to be a law against it.

And yet there are still a large number of people who disagree with you, take the campaign as an affront and respond with defiance, which still makes use of that campaign instead of a less threatening one inherently dangerous. Notice that this is true even if you're right about the seatbelt law.

> There's a cost to society (we have to clean up the mess) and to the family (if any).

The cost of cleaning up the accident site is de minimis. The cost to the family is an internal family matter -- if you care about your loved ones, get them to wear their seat belts.

>And yet there are still a large number of people who disagree with you, take the campaign as an affront and respond with defiance, which still makes use of that campaign instead of a less threatening one inherently dangerous.

Do you have figures to back that up or is this conjecture?

You can find polls of popular support for seatbelt laws anywhere. The numbers depend on the poll but generally some large plurality of people (e.g. 30-40%) disagree with the law, sometimes more.

It's obviously basically impossible to measure how many of them respond to the campaign by not wearing their seat belts, but out of what would be something like a hundred million people who disagree with the law, do you really expect the number to be zero?

Well, if I need to guess how many of the 30-40% people who disagree with the seatbelt law would use seatbelts if not mandated, and are now not using them to spite their own face, I am guessing a very low figure (not a large amount of people). Lower than the amount of people who were not using seatbelts and are now using them if for no other reason than to save themselves a fine at least.

It doesn't have to be larger than the number of people who use a seat belt because of the law, only the number of people who use a seat belt because this campaign was more effective than an alternative campaign that isn't so antagonistic, e.g. one that emphasizes the risk of death rather than the risk of fine, which you would generally expect to be a bigger motivator anyway.

And the better campaign may in particular be more effective at getting the people who weren't wearing their seat belts originally and still don't under this campaign, because they're more likely to be the defiant ones to begin with, so they're more likely to be receptive to a less antagonistic campaign.

How many people disagreed with the campaign then?

You're asking for something you have to know nobody has polled on one way or the other.

But the number of people who disagreed with the law to begin with is probably a pretty good approximation for the number of people who disagreed with a campaign which is effectively promoting the law.

>You're asking for something you have to know nobody has polled on one way or the other.

Yeah, since you're arguing that the campaign was bad because people disagreed with it and stating it as a fact.

>But the number of people who disagreed with the law to begin with is probably a pretty good approximation for the number of people who disagreed with a campaign which is effectively promoting the law.

In what way?

> Yeah, since you're arguing that the campaign was bad because people disagreed with it and stating it as a fact.

It is a fact. I've met people who do this.

> In what way?

There are people who disagree with a law that orders them to do something they think should be a personal choice. There are people who disagree with an ad campaign that orders them to do something they think should be a personal choice.

If you had to propose a hypothesis about whether a correlation exists between these two groups, what would it be?

If the only reason why people react badly to the campaign is the fact that they disagree with the seatbelt law in general, then the whole argument about whether or not the campaign was too aggressive is moot. They hate the campaign because of the law, not because of what the sign says.

> The cost to the family is an internal family matter -- if you care about your loved ones, get them to wear their seat belts.

That's a nice ideal, but you have to contrast it with the systems-level view: people indeed are idiots, barely a step up from a chimpanzee, and absolutely need to be protected from their own idiocy. We all do, some to larger extent than others. We often don't notice it, because we've been born into a complex world, and have internalized many rules that protect us without even thinking about it.

Note that risking the lives of you and other people in the name of hurry is also a form of idiocy; a very common one with otherwise smart people. We're creatures of emotion after all, and the thinking mode that processes impatience isn't good at cost-benefit analysis.

>it's a central example of a law that shouldn't exist when the role of criminal law is to save innocent people from bad people and not idiots from themselves.

Do these people also disagree with drinking/smoking age laws?

Some of them do. Some argue that that's different because then it is someone bad (tobacco company) hurting someone innocent (child who doesn't know any better).

Adding to that, age laws are also a far more complicated topic than it might seem at first glance. Young people will generally lack education and experience, while chronic exposure to some chemicals can have drastic effects on physical development. Worse, developmental issues appear to overlap extensively with the previously mentioned "bad people" that criminal law is hypothetically supposed to protect us from. Personal liberties aside, there would be significant consequences to society if we couldn't reliably produce at least marginally functional and healthy adults.

Related to that, in many countries there seems to be some expectation of the government looking out for younger people to at least a limited extent. Compulsory education and foster care come to mind among other things.

I guess what I'm getting at is that raising healthy children seems to be much closer to a serious public health threat (ex pandemic) than to engaging in a risky activity (ex white water kayaking) when placed on a continuum.

Smoking, drinking and driving without seatbelts all cause health risks to third parties (in form of second-harm smoking, crime&domestic violence, and bodies flying around the vehicle during an accident, respectively).

I think it would be better to discuss the "protecting idiots from themselves" angle using activities that harm only the people engaging in them.

> it's a central example of a law that shouldn't exist when the role of criminal law is to save innocent people from bad people and not idiots from themselves.

Seatbelts increase the chance of remaining in your seat - and thus in at least partial control of your vehicle - mid-accident. That protects more than just the idiots - it protects any passengers, and it protects the pedestrian wheeling a stroller on the sidewalk, when the idiot's car goes flying towards them during an accident, by giving the driver a chance to steer elsewhere.

> And then the campaign feels like a direct attack on the people who don't agree with the law, which encourages defiance, which is the exact opposite of the intended effect. With the further effect of making people angry while they're driving a car, which dangerous in itself.

Wikipedia has references suggesting it's done more good than harm on at least seatbelt wearing rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_It_or_Ticket#Success

This doesn't measure anger induced traffic accidents, but anyone that easily angered on a regular basis will probably find some excuse to be angry no matter what if you ask me. At least if they direct their anger at a billboard instead of a fellow driver, they might be slightly less likely to get our of their car and start a fistfight?

> The cynic may also notice that such laws are commonly passed in order to generate revenue

This resonates with me, though, especially when prosecutors are... lax with evidence requirements.

> Seatbelts increase the chance of remaining in your seat - and thus in at least partial control of your vehicle - mid-accident.

Is this just speculation? Without a seatbelt you get thrown from the vehicle when you hit something, but by that point it's by definition already too late to avoid it, and then you're just in butterfly effect land. Maybe having someone in the car helps because they keep their foot on the brake and the car stays where it is, maybe that's bad because another car that hits the smashed car has to absorb a harder impact when the other car is held in place by the brake instead of being pushed away.

> Wikipedia has references suggesting it's done more good than harm on at least seatbelt wearing rates

This is not the right comparison because the thing to be compared is not seatbelt use prior to the campaign, it's seatbelt use under a different seatbelt campaign, e.g. one that emphasizes the risks to your life rather than the risk of a ticket -- which may actually be more effective regardless, because dying is a lot worse than getting fined.

> This doesn't measure anger induced traffic accidents, but anyone that easily angered on a regular basis will probably find some excuse to be angry no matter what if you ask me.

That's just a rationalization. Volatile individuals exist. Removing triggers for their volatility while they're engaged in a dangerous activity is an advantage.

> Is this just speculation?

Common sense / official government propaganda:

"In addition to protecting you from injury as a driver, seat belts help you keep control of the vehicle. If you are struck from the side or make a quick turn, the force could push you sideways and therefore you cannot steer the vehicle if you are not behind the wheel."

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/seatbeltuse....

For some reason there's a lack of double blind studies on the exact statistics of if low/medium-speed T-bone impacts disloge the driver more often with a seatbelt vs without a seatbelt, but don't let me stop you from volunteering...

> Without a seatbelt you get thrown from the vehicle when you hit something, but by that point it's by definition already too late to avoid it, and then you're just in butterfly effect land.

Many lighter side tbone impacts might simply throw you into your passenger's lap, or even just into the center of the vehicle. Are you really asserting that in such impacts, being behind the wheel of your vehicle is no better than leaving it up to chance? I don't think you're that bad of a driver!

> This is not the right comparison because the thing to be compared is not seatbelt use prior to the campaign, it's seatbelt use under a different seatbelt campaign

Fair.

> That's just a rationalization.

So is what I'm initially replying to.

The UK used fear to spread the message, with great effect. The thought of being in a car without a seat belt terrifies me:

https://youtu.be/mKHY69AFstE

There are external costs when someone doesn't wear their seatbelt. First responders are kept busy tending to their needs when they are injured. Ambulances and hospital resources are kept busy when they otherwise wouldn't need to be.

Rear seat passengers not wearing seatbelts can directly injure front seat passengers who did not consent to the risk.

To argue that the seatbelt law impacts on personal freedom seems shortsighted to me.

This was an interesting hypothesis. I enjoyed the idea so I wanted to see what probability I should assign the idea that the defiance-effect overrules the compliance-effect. Interestingly, there is one state which does not have a mandatory front seat adult passenger seat-belt law which gives us the ability to test what effect that has.

New Hampshire: No adult front-seat passenger seat-belt law. Beltedness: 67.6%

Lowest beltedness (any law): Massachusetts (73.7%), secondary enforcement (i.e. if you violated another driving law then you can be cited for the seatbelt thing too)

Lowest beltedness (primary enforcement): Mississippi (78.8%)

Regardless of the paternalism angle (which I'm sympathetic to because I would like drug use to be permitted, etc.) this would appear as evidence that the defiance-effect is overruled by the compliance-effect. Certainly, it is sufficient enough for me to not look further into the subject.

Standard HN disclaimer so we don't get into some Internet war: Not attempting to refute anything you're saying. Just sharing my conclusions. Your priors and your weights to evidence may yield different posteriors. I do not require you to convince me and I am not aiming to convince you. The hypothesis I wanted to test may slightly vary from yours due to my interests being different and to aim for easier falsification. The existence of this disclaimer is not intended to be evidence that I believe you will engage in an Internet argument.

> to save innocent people from bad people and not idiots from themselves.

But you are also saving the idiots fellow passenger from the idiot when the idiot becomes a human missile in an accident.

There are SO many scenarios we don't think about when we go about our daily lives that others happen so see on a daily basis. I ended up going to a seatbelt class because I got such a ticket once. It was led by a nurse who got involved because she was sick and tired of having people come into the emergency room absolutely destroyed.

I will also mention: I would imagine it's much harder for a driver without a seatbelt to continue maneuvers (and trying to avoid hitting people/things) when they are not properly secured and getting bounced around.

Dallasite here. While the marketing campaign was very catchy, it has fallen on hard times. Take a walk or drive through Dallas, and you’ll quickly become crestfallen with the amount of litter constantly flowing with the breeze. It’s a disgrace.

H-E-B also uses state-pride in their marketing campaigns and store branded products.

https://www.eater.com/2018/12/11/18133776/heb-texas-origin-c...

> They marketed their anti-litter campaign as a state-pride manly-man issue to great success.

I don't know why people don't do this with environmental issues at large. In my experience, conservatives care about the environment more than anyone. They live in the woods and hunt and fish and enjoy nature daily. But it's become a partisan issue so they don't listen.

Surely someone can come up with a clever slogan to get convince conservatives to conserve nature.

Nuclear: zero-carbon energy. #headduck

Unfortunately, despite prominent climate scientists like James Hansen advocating that Nuclear be considered a tool in the toolbox for combating Climate Change, it's been regularly dismissed by many activists it seems. Foolish, it would have been an excellent talking point to communicate that environmentalists were serious about this problem and weren't simply trying to leverage it to push their personal wish list of policy proposals.

Missed opportunities.

US Energy interests did a really bad thing in the 70s, 80s and 90s that's lead to this bull-headed knee-jerk response from a lot of otherwise environmentally minded people.

At the same time... in Vermont the Vermont Yankee[1] plant destroyed anyone's ability to reasonably advocate for safe nuclear power by repeatedly violating the public trust to make a quick buck and saddling the state with a heavy burden, specifically:

> In December 2014, Entergy submitted the Post Shutdown Decommissioning Report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This report estimated that the total cost for decommissioning the reactor would be $1.24 billion. The same document reported that only $665 million had been collected in the 42 years of operations of this plant for this purpose. Entergy hopes to raise some of the shortfall funds through "external financing".

The sorta TL;DR here is that nuclear power, at the tech level we had in the 70s/80s/90s is incompatible with capitalism and the greed that goes with it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...

There's a lot of assuming there. As a conservative of course I care about the environment, and of course I love nature.

There is such a thing as over regulation though and the "green" issues get convoluted with political agendas on both sides.

I disagree with your assumption that conservatives need convincing to conserve nature. Texas is a great examples of green policies done in a practical way. Our wind energy will outpace coal soon.

The problem is people like to put people in a prison of two ideas. Either you believe in science/climate or you don't, which is ridiculously simplified, furthers no discussion, and usually results in insults.

We call the un-reprovable science, scientism. #caring

In my experience, conservatives care about things that directly affect them, or things that they believe directly affect them. Their local environment is important to them. The global environment and climate are far away and someone else's concern.

An example of a libertarian, market based approach to environmentalism is carbon taxes.

Taxes are explicit market intervention. How are they a libertarian approach?

Pollution is an "externality", meaning the cost of it is dumped on society. By taxing it, one "internalizes" the externality meaning it is only done if the cost of it is justified. It causes market forces to work on polluting activities.

The tax rate is adjusted to reflect the true cost of it. For example, an amount of CO2 emissions for the country per year can be set, and then CO2 taxes adjusted until that target is met.

Import tariffs can be added to reflect the amount of CO2 emissions the originating country is generating.

Ok, I agree to some extent. CO2 emissions are analogous to a madman releasing a slow-acting airborne poison. The government should use its force monopoly to stop the madman.

Unfortunately, any tax is another dollar toward government expansion. The madman should directly compensate his victims.

Commensurate with pollution taxes I propose reductions in taxes on productive activities, so that it is revenue neutral.

Keep in mind the maxim:

1. to get more of something, subsidize it

2. to get less of something, tax it

The CO2 tax proposal failed in Washington State because it was perceived as a money grab by the state. If it came with a corresponding reduction in the sales tax, it likely would have passed.

A revenue neutral tax still lets the government do new stupid things. eg, they can choose winners and losers by taxing industries at different rates. And once we have a tax, we have it forever.

CO2 pollution is unique because the damage to private property hasn’t “happened” yet. But waiting for it to “happen” is waiting too long. If a factory dumps toxic waste in my field, I’ll sue for destroying my soil and crops. If a factory’s air pollutant gives me lung cancer, I’ll sue for assault. CO2 emitting factories hypothetically cause coastal asset depreciation, but what do the courts think?

"Don't mess with God's Earth." ?

My mother worked on the Keep Texas Beautiful campaign. It played a role as well in reducing the littering in Texas.

[I was wrong, ignore]

It says on the linked wiki page:

"The campaign is credited with reducing litter on Texas highways roughly 72% between 1987 and 1990"

So it seems to have worked very well!

Apologies I stand corrected! No idea how I missed that. Thanks!

1980s kid & have lived in Texas my whole life. The slogan had a instant impact on behavior. Litter was a pretty bad problem. I remember it was common behavior to just toss stuff out the window while driving. Drink can/bottle, wrappers, cigarette butts, pretty much anything; some people would even dump trash on the side of the highway. It got a lot better and fairly quick so I believe the 70%+ stat mentioned.

While I'm on this train of thought. Most/many trucks in Texas had a gun rack with a rifle or two hanging across the rear window. Nobody wore seat belts until kids my age were taught to go home and nag their parents through PSA/Sex Ed/DARE style school lessons. It ended up being pretty effective.

Yeah, I noticed these signs along the highways in Texas when I was driving around the US.

And I chuckled at how they used the "Don't mess with Texas" phrase despite having much lower littering fines than most other states.

Like with everything else in this country, it's all about the marketing.

Texas seems on the heavier side of the fines/jail time, at least normal.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resour...

Interesting - you learn something new every day.

I guess my trip was probably biased towards states with lots of parks and forests, who probably had more incentive to protect their local environments.

Out of curiosity which states did you visit?

Texas has amazing (and clean!) state and national parks as well. Definitely worth a visit, especially Big Bend.

Oh, mostly the forest-y and nature-y states - Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, California...I would've liked to see more of Montana and Michigan, but it gets cold up there in the winters.

Mostly I drove through Texas to avoid Oklahoma (one of my least favorite states), but the Guadalupe Mountains were very nice.

I'm not sure I'd call it 'clean' though; the air seemed awfully smoggy and I saw almost as many flaring wells as I did in North Dakota. But there were lots of open spaces and the people were friendly.

Washington, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Utah get my vote for the best places to do a parks/forests vacation, depending on your interests.

The air was “smoggy” driving through Texas? Uh huh... I’m going to go ahead and put that on the same level as your claim about Texas being lax on litter penalties.

By the way, Texas has more acres of forest land than every state you mentioned as being nature-y and forest-y and having more incentive to care about the environment. The only state with more forest than Texas is Alaska.

Like someone else said, Texas is too big to make generalizations.

I don't believe your smog claim. Texas is massive and has wide open skies. You'll find smog in big cities before you find it anywhere in Texas.

All of those states you listed have really lax litter laws...

This is... not a great generalization to make about the second-largest state in the Union.

I moved from Texas to California, and shortly after crossing the border into California, I saw my first litter warning sign with fine amount posted. On this sign was also the fine for abandoning an animal. The litter fine was significantly higher than abandoning an animal. I was kind of appalled at the fact.

They also have "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" signs, that almost scare you into behaving.

Primary school in rural Texas. We'd spend an hour a day singing songs mostly about how much God blesses Texas, America, and the Marine Corps, then finish off with The Eyes of Texas song.

In our version, The Eyes ended up in the kitchen watching Dinah. She was about to blow her horn, thus ending the mandate of The Eyes. We would plead for her not to do such a thing, for her sake, for our sake, for goodness sake! The Eyes would know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com