Unnecessary Laws

[Torch]

So the other day I got a ticket for riding double on an electric bicycle. It got me wondering what a country where the only laws were those that prevented people from causing harm to others (theft, discomfort, violence, etc) would be like. It seems like there are a lot of laws about personal safety that are better left to the judgement of the people, rather than the judgement of the government.

I would rather be the one who decides whether it is safe or not to cross the street or wear a bicycle helmet or buckle my seat-belt, instead of the government telling me what it has decided is the best for my safety. By extension, there may as well be laws about how late you can be outside or how many layers of clothes you have to wear in the winter. Personal choice is supposed to be promoted by democratic governments and I feel that there are a lot of laws that directly conflict with this.

Anyway, what do you guys think a country that doesn't have these kinds of laws would look like?

[Mr Pwnage]

Anyway, what do you guys think a country that doesn't have these kinds of laws would look like?

Paradise. All the idiots would be eliminated by natural selection. (or self-removal depending on how you look at it.)

[Jake]

It seems like there are a lot of laws about personal safety that are better left to the judgement of the people, rather than the judgement of the government.

I totally agree. Governments around the world feel like they need to keep passing more and more laws to protect society from itself, and it's limiting our freedoms in the process. It annoys me to no end when the people that claim they're for smaller government are constantly trying to impose artificial restrictions on our lives.

[Matty_Richo]

It seems like there are a lot of laws about personal safety that are better left to the judgement of the people, rather than the judgement of the government.

I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with this. However, I can understand it from both sides, yes we should be the ones in charge of our own safety but at the same time, not looking out for our own safety properly can have hugely negative impacts on others, if you decide to cross the street in the middle of a highway and get run over, sure, you die and it's your own fault, however, how is the poor guy that run you over going to feel (despite the fact that it wasn't his fault) living with the knowledge that he killed someone?

Like I said, I'm not saying either way is right or wrong, just that both sides do actually make sense.

[Lingus]

How far should that go? Should drunk driving be allowed? Technically it should be the personal choice of the driver whether they are safe to drive at any given level of toxication.

Even bicycle laws are really there to protect people. Helmets actually protect people from harm. If they're required, more people will wear them and therefore more people will be protected from harm. So these laws, from a certain viewpoint, fits your criteria.

It's really a gray area and it can skew to one side or the other depending on what you're talking about, or who you're talking to. There can't be a definitive set of laws where the government is in perfect balance with the will of everyone. The nature of personal opinion is that even if the laws were as lenient as you want them to be, there would still be someone out there who thinks they are too strict.

[Torch]

@matty: You make a good point and it's hard to argue that. I guess I'd say that while it is important that people are safe, it shouldn't be up the the government to determine what the individual should do to be safe. The government is just made up of people like us who don't know any more about the dangers of riding a bicycle than we do. It is a case of "I have a different opinion than you and I'm in a position of power over you, so I get to force my opinion on you".

@lingus: The reason drunk driving is illegal (it was legal for a long time) is because of the danger it poses to OTHERS, not the danger it poses to the driver. I'm talking about laws for personal safety with no potential harm to others.

One thing my housemate pointed out is our (the Canadian) health care system. Taxpayers pay for the treatment of everyone, including those with self-inflicted injuries. Regardless, I feel that freedom of personal choice is worth paying for the self-inflicted injuries of others. Again, I'll use my example about the government making laws about the kind of clothing you must wear in the winter. It may cut down on colds and flues, but noone will agree that it is worth giving up the freedom of being able to choose what you wear.

[Lingus]

@lingus: The reason drunk driving is illegal (it was legal for a long time) is because of the danger it poses to OTHERS, not the danger it poses to the driver. I'm talking about laws for personal safety with no potential harm to others.

I completely agree, I was using it as a further extension of what you are talking about. Since it's a gray area, it could extend beyond what you think makes sense, and move into areas such as allowing people to drive drunk.

In any case, I'll referrence the example of bicycle safety laws. They are only there to protect the person riding the bicycle. But, if they did not require people to wear a helmet, ride in bicycle lanes, and follow other traffic laws, then there would be many more people who get hurt riding bicycles. Sure, it would be left up to each person's judgement whether they are safe or not, but some of those people would be wrong. A lot of the time you can't control whether you are going to get hit or fall, and there are many cases where if you fall without a helmet you can get seriously injured.

So, while it might be nice to allow people to make whatever stupid decision they want and get themselves killed, it is also nice when there are restrictions and laws that generally help people from getting hurt.

[Torch]

@lingus: I think a more fair approach would be to educate people on the benefits of wearing a helmet and other safety measures in the same way that people are educated about the health risks associated with tobacco. The issue is one in which politicians get to make the the judgement calls for everyone else.

Sure some people may make poor judgement calls, but some politicians may also make poor judgement calls. Democracies are supposed to represent the views of the people. For decisions like this, how better to represent the views of the people than by letting the people decide for themselves?

Freedom of personal choice is extremely important. Again, would you like to have a law be implemented about the type on clothes you must wear in the winter to avoid sickness or frostbite? There would be much less sickness, but it isn't worth it because it impedes upon our freedom of personal choice, in the same way that bicycle helmet laws do.

[Matty_Richo]

Sure some people may make poor judgement calls, but some politicians may also make poor judgement calls. Democracies are supposed to represent the views of the people. For decisions like this, how better to represent the views of the people than by letting the people decide for themselves?

Freedom of personal choice is extremely important. Again, would you like to have a law be implemented about the type on clothes you must wear in the winter to avoid sickness or frostbite? There would be much less sickness, but it isn't worth it because it impedes upon our freedom of personal choice, in the same way that bicycle helmet laws do.

I think you make some good points there.

It's hard to determine what things will actually have an effect on other people. In some ways not wearing a helmet when riding a bike, whilst it may seem like it's only putting yourself in danger, what if a younger child saw you and decided that he wanted to not wear a helmet as well. It's just so hard to decide whether something is purely a personal safety risk or something that could harm others too.

But I do agree that politicians make stupid judgement calls, we currently have one of the worst governments Australia has ever seen and they have made a number of bad calls. But at the same time, who does make the rules then, if the politicians and government don't? I don't think we have created robots that can cover that job yet.

[crozier]

So if the government stops a person from injuring themself isn't that a good thing? Perhaps they are stupider than you or I, but they are still humans. Dumb people (ie jaywalkers and people who don't layer up in the winter) have families who care for them. Also, say, a single father dies because he didn't follow safety codes. Isn't his child effected by this too?
A government that cares for your safety is a good one. Its like when your parents told you not to eat sand or jump off your bunkbed or play with matches. It's for your own good.

Next, it was noted governments are out of touch with everyday people. Some politicians may be pathologicly lying egomaniacs. But most of them are somewhat educated, with at least a little knowledge on the surroundings. Believe it or not, these well-biased people are trying to help.
Not everyone agrees with everyone; there is always a minority. If the government passes a law forbidding riding a bicycle without a helmet, that means the majority of the politicians of whichever country voted with/for it. Likely the political decision reflects the opinion of the majority.
Unfortunately the Congress (the United State's democratic lawmakers) does has thiers faults (vetoeing, super majoritys, fillerbusting, etc). If politicians were less partial and less selfish perhaps more things could be done. The key issues with the US government is the lack of compromise among our main political parties. Not everyone is a Libertaria, and if Libertarian laws (bike helmets no longer required) are passed too many people have issues with that.

[DarkTrinity]

@lingus: The reason drunk driving is illegal (it was legal for a long time) is because of the danger it poses to OTHERS, not the danger it poses to the driver. I'm talking about laws for personal safety with no potential harm to others.

Ok, but you got a ticket for riding double on a bike, that's what you opened the topic with. That's potentially harming someone other than yourself...
Or you don't care about the ticket and are just wondering about stupid laws that only include self-harm?

[Lingus]

Freedom of personal choice is extremely important. Again, would you like to have a law be implemented about the type on clothes you must wear in the winter to avoid sickness or frostbite? There would be much less sickness, but it isn't worth it because it impedes upon our freedom of personal choice, in the same way that bicycle helmet laws do.

I agree... but we're both stating examples on opposite ends of the spectrum to show that one decision or the other doesn't make sense. The truth of the matter is that there should be some kind of effort to acheive a balance. It wouldn't make sense for laws to go in the direction you are saying. This is quite obvious. Most people would not want laws regulating every little thing they do. But it also wouldn't make sense for laws to be so lenient that it would allow people to do things that are obviously harmful to themselves. Most people would not want that.

And there's the key. "Most people". In this discussion you have been talking about politicians and The Government making all of these decisions for everyone. Now, I'm not sure how the system works in Canada, but I'm fairly certain that at some level laws are voted on by the people. And if not the specific law, then they vote on their representitives that pass the laws. And so, what you have is a democracy where the laws are based on the majority, whether directly or indirectly. If laws were passed that were too stringent, and the majority of the people didn't like it, they would either form a movement to have a law repealed, or they wouldn't vote for the representitives that helped pass the law therby allowing someone else, at a later time, to have the law repealed.

What you're suggesting is that the government should never be allowed to pass a law restricting personal choice. But what if the majority of the people want these restrictions. Not because they're stupid and can't decide what is best for themselves, but because they want to feel safe, and they want to know that the people they care about and others around them are safe. So how is it democratic to remove the ability for the majority to make this decision?

[Torch]

@Matty: I think parents should be responsible for their children, not the government.

@DT: It was a choice that my girlfriend made to ride double with me, she made a judgement call about the safety of riding double on a bike without the government interfering and telling her what is and is not safe.


@Lingus&crozier: I would argue that these kinds of decisions don't need to be a "majority decides for the minority". These are individual decisions that only affect the individual that makes them. This makes an "individual decides for them self" system more practical. Also, grown people aren't so stupid that because there isn't a law on it, they're going to go out and hurt themselves. When they do something that goes against a safety law, it is because they have determined that in that specific case, it is safe and beneficial to go against the safety law.

Further, these laws cannot account for each individual scenario. There are many situations where these laws do not apply, such as jaywalking across a street where there are no cars in sight and the nearest stoplight in half a kilometer away. These kinds of decisions need to be made by the individual at the time and cannot be accounted for by a no-tolerance blanket law.

[DarkTrinity]

Well on the far end of the scale, suicide isn't illegal :P

[Loganvz123]

I live in New Zealand. You're legally obliged to ride on the road if you're over the age of 11, otherwise your parents get fined.