The variable enforcement of laws (like my example, and also like the laws around taxi pick-ups) is something I'm very interested in from a formal economics view. Are there any studies showing the how the loose enforcement impacts different groups?
> “Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean 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 or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.”
In turn, that makes it feel odd that the prevailing opinion in these parts is often that the police enforce things too harshly, but the cure for every economic and social ill is always more Government micro-managing...
Now, what if someone has a perfectly trained dog, that will stay right at their owners side no matter what circumstance is presented, and that dog is walking without a leash on? Is it appropriate to give that person a ticket? They are breaking the letter of the law, but the intent of the law was not broken because of how well trained the dog is.
Yes, because that law was written for the convenience of law enforcement. The law should have been "You need to be able to control your dog at all times when in public, with a leach if necessary", or indeed, not there at all: There are plenty of laws on the books that penalises behaviour that hurts other people. But enforcing that is a lot more difficult than determining the absence of a leach and writing a ticket, regardless of whatever harm or risk is present in the actual situation.
You're suggesting that laws should be enforced in accordance with how they should have been written, not how they are written - and while obviously a good thing in this case, it also applies in the other direction: A policer officer might feel very strongly that beating unruly arrestees is what the law should be.
Rule of law means the laws are enforced as they are written, equally for everyone, not subject to the whims of law enforcement. Making stupid laws that implicitly demands law enforcement to be arbitrary is deeply corroding to the rule of law.
But this is exactly what police discretion is - the police officer is not some brainless automaton which enforces the laws with algorithmic precision.
http://thelawdictionary.org/article/police-discretion-defini...
Imagine being a cop who pulls over a poor black janitor for DUI. You know last week your colleague pulled over a rich white senator who was on his way home from the police union's fundraising ball, and let him off with a caution. If you arrest the janitor your department will look like a bunch of corrupt, racist, classists. And if you don't arrest any DUIs, all the problems caused by drunk driving will get laid at your department's doorstep.
Perhaps instead of passing laws that have faults then using enforcement discretion to work around those faults, instead we should improve the laws to be fault-free. (admittedly that might need a faster release and testing cycle than we have at the moment)
Same with Cannabis - how could sufficient people have experienced it and realized that it wasn't as dangerous as promised, if everyone who tried it was locked up?
It's hard to change an unjust law without breaking it in the process - and we want unjust laws to be changed. So therefore we should enforce laws, but not completely, and have some discretion in how they're applied.
However, the alternate situation is also bad - if you have lots of laws, as we do now, which are rarely or never enforced, then you have a powerful hammer the authorities can bring down on anyone they like, since everyone is a criminal.
Show a principle that is broader than introducing new micro-regulations but would result in better outcomes. Considering the complexity of our reality, I doubt it's possible. Edge cases, functional requirements of life are numerous, and sure, there are a lot of old policies on the books, simply removing them would also cause too much perturbations. And no one cares enough about abstract efficiency, elegance and such to propose and fight for a plant to gradually deprecate them. (Minor examples are various tax exemptions, major example is the whole social security problem looming on the horizon. And the whole problem of healthcare economics fits here. People are rational, but have nasty time-dependent preference inversions, just to point out a problem with going with a simple and general solution.)
And this not too surprisingly has nothing to do with too harsh enforcement of some laws. (You just guessed the war on drugs. And general over-militarization of the police and the hostility of the criminal justice system.)
The alternative to regulating what, how and when everyone should do everything is to let people do what they want, but allow anyone to sue if they damage people or property.
If it results in better outcomes is of course debatable, but it has a long and defendable track record.
That's the same as saying the only people who should get justice are those with the wealth and free time to file lawsuits for everything.
Consider, say, the case of a company over-billing you – are you going to take time of work, pay to hire lawyers, maybe retain an expert witness to attack the credibility of their billing system, etc. or will you just write it off and pay the extra $50? Companies which do things like that tend to do them on a scale where they can afford to pay for tons of attorneys to make that job as hard as possible.
(Oh, wait, bad news will spread and the invisible hand will correct that! That's sure worked wonders for Comcast…)
But you're of course right that perfect automatic justice doesn't arise in either system.
I'm a big fan of the "loser pays" system for lawsuits that's very common outside the US. That means that it's economically risk free both to file suits and to be sued if the court rules in your favor.
Your Comcast story is more about class action law suits, which I think can be a worthwhile feature of a legal system.
This becomes particularly obvious when you look at things which aren't extremely clear-cut cases. Say the company across the street is polluting. With a remotely-competent regulatory system, you can contact the local government and they [hopefully] have funding to investigate. With a lawsuit-driven system, you'd have to be prepared to pay for all of that out of pocket while trying to demonstrate direct losses for something which is rarely be more precise than a statistical likelihood in the hope that you'll eventually be compensated.
With loser pays, you now have the risk of having to pick up the tab for the company's top-notch legal team, too, which gives them powerful leverage to push you towards a settlement if the case isn't going 100% your way – after all, it's only your house that's on the line. If the company loses, it's not like the CEO has to pay for it personally.
The reason why we have the regulatory agencies we have is because we've already proven that the “do whatever you want and sue if it goes wrong” approach doesn't work well. The better question to debate is how to make those regulators more effective and responsive
I think most Americans would be shocked if, overnight, every law on the books in the US, from income tax on cash income to street vendor permitting, to casual, personal drug usage, to hair salon certification laws, to laws against home poker games, were stringently and consistently enforced across the board. Half of Americans would be in prison or in court before the end of the year.
You pay massive fines (3'500 EUR or so) when you're caught smuggling a fake Louis Vuitton (or whatever) handbag into the country.
Or do you talk of instances more like where the "good citizen" gets off with a warning despite breaking a rule that the "bad citizen" would be punished for?
The latter case seems more like sociology or ethnography to me, economists tend to not think so much of people as people after all.
Its a game of cat and mouse. And when the cat arrives the mouse loses out... But there are an awful lot of mice and very few cats...
The knowledge of the costs associated with being too slow to clear your stuff away acts as an incentive to stay small scale.