It isn't the neighbors job to be mentally functional. It is, however, the police's, DA, and CPS's job.
I'm not sure I agree. One of the requirements for an adult citizen in a civil society is to be reasonable in your dealings with neighbors.
> It is, however, the police's, DA, and CPS's job.
"Mentally functional" does not necessarily mean "giving citizens a break". The criminal law that the mom was charged with is a law, it's on the books, and law enforcement is supposed to enforce the law. They do have a certain amount of discretion, but the incentives they are facing, particularly in a community which is strongly in favor of "law and order" (which I suspect the one in question is), are against their exercising discretion in favor of a citizen. And putting the "sex trafficking" thing into the mix just makes it worse.
The only real way to fix this is to remove things like this from the discretion of law enforcement by not having a law like this in the first place. (Unfortunately, it appears that when the law was revised to allow kids more independence, they only revised the family law code, not the criminal code. They should have revised both. So I would say the ultimate fault here is the legislature, for being incompetent when making law.)
I do agree that the neighbor should not be let off on this, nor am I trying to excuse their behavior. But there are always going to be Karens that call the cops for no reason and the system has to be able to deal with that.
Speed limit laws should not even exist in the first place. They are a paradigmatic example of laws that are unreasonable and should not exist. The fact that it is impossible to enforce them as written, or even with light-years of as written, is one reason for that.
> I don't really think officer discretion is avoidable to a certain degree.
To a certain degree, yes. But it should be limited. In the system we have now, it's not; the scope of laws on the books is huge, to the point that all of us are probably technically violating multiple laws every day, and we are all relying on a huge amount of discretion on the part of law enforcement to allow us to go about our business without continually being interrupted. That's not good.
> there are always going to be Karens that call the cops for no reason and the system has to be able to deal with that.
Yes, and the way to deal with it is to have the law be reasonable. It is not to have lots of unreasonable laws on the books and then hope that law enforcement exercises discretion in practically all cases, only actually prosecuting the "really serious" ones. It's to not have unreasonable laws on the books at all, so when a Karen calls the cops for no reason, the cops can just say "Ma'am, that's not against the law, nothing for us to do."
I have said no such thing. Do you really believe that the law is the only thing that defines what's "wrong"?
> Speed limit laws are clearly flawed in many ways but there is a clear reason why they should exist.
No, what is clear is that the law should be written to penalize actual harm. Speed limit laws don't do that. They penalize people who have caused no harm, and because they can only be enforced arbitrarily--who gets stopped for speeding has nothing to do with actual risk reduction--they reduce people's respect for the law in general.
A properly written law for "rules of the road" for speed would be something like this: The posted "speed limit" on any public road is advisory; you cannot be stopped or ticketed simply for driving faster than the posted limit. However, if you are in an accident and it is found that you were exceeding the posted limit, you are presumed to be at fault. (You can still rebut the presumption, but that requires going to court and presenting evidence and having the judge rule in your favor based on that evidence.)
I have said no such thing. The only implication of my position for drunk driving is that the law should not be able to punish you for it if you cause no harm. But that in no way means that, for example, a cop who sees you driving erratically can't pull you over, give you a breathalyzer test, find out that you're too drunk to drive, and lock your car, making sure that it's safely parked, and then ask you who to call to come pick you up and take you home. He just can't write you a ticket that forces you to either come to court or pay a fine.
It also in no way means that other people have to let you drive drunk. Bars don't have to sell you drinks if you're going to drive. Friends don't have to let you drive drunk. And in a sane society of responsible adults, those kinds of preventions work better than any law possibly can. The fact that our society has so many nanny state laws that micromanage all aspects of life is a sign that we don't live in a sane society of responsible adults.
> I think doing things in your car that have substantial and easily preventable risk to other people should not be allowed
I think you are way too ready to give power to the government, which will abuse it, and the costs of that abuse of power will far outweigh any possible benefit from such laws.
First, if a cop pulls you over for speeding, it's not for "traveling at an unsafe speed". It's because you were going faster than the posted limit. The law says nothing whatever about such a speed being unsafe. In practice, cops usually don't pull people over just for speeding, but only for going significantly faster than the general flow of traffic. But that's only usually; cops in most jurisdictions have monthly or quarterly ticket quotas, and if it's getting close to the end of the quota period and they're behind on tickets, it's simple to go out to places where people routinely speed and start pulling everyone over. I have seen this happen.
"Driving erratically", unlike "going faster than the posted speed limit", is always a subjective judgment on the cop's part (in most jurisdictions it's something like "reckless driving" or "driving in a clearly unsafe manner"), but the whole point is that it's supposed to be rare; by definition most people on the road will not be driving recklessly and this kind of law can't be abused in the way I described above just to make a ticket quota.
However, the important difference I was talking about was not between speeding and "driving erratically", it was about under what circumstances the cop can write you a ticket that forces you to either pay a fine or come to court. Under our current laws, a cop can do that whenever he pulls you over--there will always be some traffic law you were violating. ("Driving erratically", or something similar, in itself is a traffic violation under current law.) Under the libertarian system I have been describing, the cop could not write you a ticket that forces you to either pay a fine or come to court unless you actually caused harm. He could take steps to prevent you from driving if you hadn't caused harm but were clearly not capable of driving safely, by an objective test (such as a breathalyzer), but he could not impose a fine or court appearance on you.
Don't get me wrong, I would love it if people everywhere acted rationally and only stuck their nose into other people's business when it is actually necessary and useful to do at. But it's not realistic to expect that we can "fix" everyone, so we should focus on the things we can fix instead.
I agree, but this is perfectly consistent with what I said. Not every adult meets the requirements for an adult citizen in a civil society. That doesn't mean those requirements don't exist.
> What we can control is the law, and law enforcement response.
To the extent this is true, it does not preclude also expecting adult citizens to be reasonable. Indeed, the more we can count on that, the less people will feel the need to invoke the law. Which makes it much easier to make the law more reasonable.
Ironically, more rural Texas regions tend to ha√e more independent kids; after all, you'll see 10 year old kids driving the family truck on farms and ranches.
Genuinely curious. How did you manage to type '√' rather than 'v'? It this a keyboard or locale issue?
More often (but still rare), I'll end up with a † instead of t. As someone below mentioned, it appears to be (on Mac) opt+key.
I use a Razer Blackwidow something something mechanical keyboard, and it sits pretty tall. Only just now I figured out how I think this opt thing is happening. The side of my left hand appears to sometimes sit low enough that it may be bumping the opt key. Prior to this moment, the whole † thing had been a mystery to me :P.