HILLSDALE, MI. Live a little. Unbuckle your seat belt. It’s the only state left where you can “un-click it and not ticket.” The other 49 have either primary or secondary seat belt laws. “Secondary” means that the gendarmes cannot pull you over only for failure to buckle; they can cite you for not wearing the device, but only if you have committed another offense first. “Primary” means they can stop you if they suspect you are not buckled up (they don’t have to have clear visual proof, since so many of today’s cars have tinted glass that would make it hard for the officer to be sure) and ticket you for no other reason.
New Hampshire has held out so far, but the pressure has been on since 2007, put on by the Feds and emigrants from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. The good citizens of the Granite State probably know they would have to remove their slogan (see above) from their license plates if they cave.
Having just had imposed by Congress what is arguably the worst single piece of legislation in the history of the republic, perhaps it is time to take a moment to reflect on what law is all about, using seat belt law as example because it 1) affects all of us, 2) is in most cases rather low on the liberty and limits laundry list, and 3) shows exactly how governments tend to make bad laws worse.
Restraint devices in transportation vehicles go back a long way. I suspect that somebody suggested them for war chariots, but the serious era of vehicular restraint begins in the 1950s, when almost no drivers thought that belts were a good idea. The aftermath of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed in the 60s produced Nader buzzers, those little screamers that went off a few seconds down the road if you failed to buckle up. We all learned to disable them within minutes of buying a new car. But Nader and his Raiders made safety a Serious Matter. When something becomes serious in a democracy, those-who-will-do-us-good take notice, and inevitably start a program of education that leads to legislation that leads to coercion.
Tocqueville noticed in the 1830s that in a democracy, “laws are almost always defective or unreasonable.” With a few exceptions, such has always been true under any form of government. Tocqueville again: “The whole art of the legislator consists in discerning well and in advance these natural inclinations of human societies in order to know when one must aid the efforts of citizens and when it would rather be necessary to slow them down.” The problem is, this requires considerable prudence, which democracies are not noted for, and it also assumes that legislators understand that there are indeed “natural inclinations of human societies,” or, more basically, that there is such a thing as human nature. Troublesome things aside, Tocqueville recognized that the legislator’s biggest problem is doing good; “that by wanting to improve everything around him, he will finally degrade himself (my emphasis).”
Many people since Aristotle have been convinced that good law can improve morality in the polis. While that may be true (and it is not my task here to prove or disprove it), it should be beyond dispute that bad law, like bad ideas, can have bad consequences. Bad law often leads to tyranny. Bad law erodes respect for law in general. Even good law cannot take the place of what Tocqueville calls “mores,” and bad law that tries to replace what should be the responsibilities of the church and the family also weakens them.
We might start with the definition of a bad law by saying that any law that is 2700 pages long cannot by definition be a good law. But, in practical terms, a working definition of a bad law is one that runs counter to the clearly accepted wisdom of the community, one that cannot be enforced except by extreme measures, or one that drastically changes existing arrangements for the sake of an anticipated goal.
Seat Belt laws came about entirely because legislators were convinced that they would improve things, namely, the safety of the general public. Death and maiming by automobile has been with us since the internal combustion engine put vehicles powered by gasoline on the roads. By the 1960s zealous reformers learned to focus on one aspect of the problem, the quickest fix and the one most likely to gain public acceptance if not public favor. Restraint, they reasoned, equals safety. They had no research to prove the theory; it just seemed right. It wasn’t until 1984 (!), despite millions of public dollars spent on “educational” campaigns, that New York finally enacted the first primary clickit law. In the quarter century since then, every state except New Hampshire has followed with some kind of law, although they vary wildly (see here for current status Safety belt use laws).
And guess what? Deaths by automobile, measured in millions of miles driven, have gone down. You can easily find dozens of websites that “show” how you are 63% less likely to die in a car crash if you are properly restrained. Last year the number of highway deaths fell to 34,000 (somewhere near the battle deaths in the Korean War) for the first time since 1954, when, of course, the number of highway miles driven was much smaller. Nobody does much research on the issue–it’s one of those, you know, “settled questions,” like global warming was about a year ago.
1954 is an interesting year to come up for comparison. It was two years before the National Highway Act (almost as big a transfer of power from the states to the national government as the current “Health Care” law) and just before the Volkswagen started to revolutionize the American car market. It was also twenty years before the oil cartel decided to squeeze us into at least a measure of gasoline thrift. In 1954 we could still work on our own cars (my friends could take them apart and put them back together blindfolded) and the new model year was an event as anticipated as the World Series. Cars ruled! By 1984 government regulation, big oil, technological “advances,” and early globalization had transformed a cultural icon into an international utilitarian commodity that required a mega-dollar computer to change the oil. Chevy v. Ford was important; who really loves a Toyota?
Now that GM stands for “Government Motors” who can love a Chevy? In many ways, seat belt laws paved the way for this transformation. Government straps me in, government keeps me safe. Government protects the air, so government mandates emission controls. The car companies get used to being in bed with government, so they both can keep me safe. They have improved everything around them.
People die in cars because they drive too fast and/or are distracted by tiredness, drink, drugs, or talking on cell phones. The latter will inspire the next round of “improvement” laws, and we will be even safer.
But has anyone asked hard questions about why death by automobile has gone on a downward trend, or what it has cost? I suggest that it is because of improved roads, improved automobile design (which is the history of the machines long before government got involved), improved understanding of safety principles, and, maybe, just a little to do with seat belt laws. Common law principles would have arrived at a similar position to the one we find ourselves in, and with much less cost to limits and liberty. Think about it: if seat belt laws as they now exist were to be strictly and uniformly enforced, law enforcement agencies would be increased by a factor of at least ten and we would be in a police state. Is this likely to happen? Probably not soon. Are seat belt laws likely to be repealed or significantly modified? Probably not ever. The Iron Law of Government is, once you’ve got it, it’s really hard to get rid of it. True of seat belts, true of much more consequential laws.
Meanwhile, drive to New Hampshire and unbuckle, and cheer the Granite staters on. They’ll probably cave soon, and pass a bad law. By the way, their death by automobile rate is very low.
142 comments
Booker
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on coercion. Regards
Marylou
Stop Drunk Driving Now’s President and Founder, Ron Bellanti, gives high school students the cold hard facts on drunk driving. Ron is dedicated to helping teenagers realize the consequences of drunk driving and have them make the right decisions as well. Learn more about drunk driving prevention, statistics and how to get your school involved at http://www.stopddnow.com
Recently, Ron spoke at Londonderry High School in Londonderry, New Hampshire educating students on the perils of drunk driving. Read more on what the Derry News thought of the drunk driving prevention event at http://www.derrynews.com/londonderry/x2073120501/LHS-students-hear-cold-hard-facts
david
John,
“Or do you just want to make laws that force me to behave the way you behave?”
Directly the contrary. You have not understood what I said nor the references. I am opposed to seat belt laws.
I directed you to John Adams’ work because I think you would find it interesting and because it would support your core argument against seatbelt laws. Bruce suggested you should have a reference to back up your criticism of others’ statistics and I thought I would be helpful to provide it. It demonstrates that the statistical claims of lives saved by seatbelt legislation are false. It is an unfortunate reflection on human nature that in many instances the inaccuracy can only be deliberate, i.e. they are lies.
Bruce, if you read Adams you’ll realise that’s wrong with the NHTSA study is that it is a reductionist model. It assumes that one can establish the impact of seatbelts by estimating the impact of seatbelts in each collision and summing the results. However, population-level statistical analysis of what has happened in the real world demonstrates that the predicted reductions in deaths simply have not happened. Why don’t seatbelt laws save lives? The phenomenon of risk compensation: the use of seatbelts changes driver behaviour.
What is most iniquitous is that seatbelt laws result in a transfer of deaths to pedestrians and cyclists.
john Willson
Yes, you did.
John Médaille
Well, I’m sure there’s an LJAA in here somewhere, but before we start the nominating speeches, could you explain to me why it is “on point” for you to bring up global warming, and “off point” for any one to respond? I missed that part.
john Willson
Gosh, John M, you are just devastating. I submit to your subtle rhetoric and pleasing personality. It would be nice, however, if sometime you could speak to the topic. By the way, do you have a place, or limits, or liberty? Or just ideology?
Mark Perkins
John G.,
You are probably correct. Over 50% does not mean a consensus, but, at the very least, there does not appear to have been anything close to a global cooling consensus. Some interest in the possibility, certainly.
John Médaille
Let’s see, You start talking about global warming, and object when others respond. You hurl insults, and complain that others engage in name calling. Asked for evidence for your preposterous claims, you say “give me a break.” As for your threat to cease responding, it is an empty threat, given that you respond mainly with petulance.
john Willson
John M,
Give me a break. The post was not about warming, global or otherwise. You know that, but want to make this an issue that you can control. Deal with seat belts, please, and don’t give me any more nonsense about who is “childish.” By the way, if you want to resort to name calling, this is the last, the very last, time that I will respond.
John Gorentz
Mark,
The article says the score in the scientific literature was 7 to 20 to 44. I hope you don’t call that a consensus. The article itself is careful not to.
John Médaille
John W., it may surprise you to learn that merely insisting on a thing doesn’t make it so, even if the insistence is surrounded by childish insults. This is an empirical question, solved by an appeal to the evidence. If there was such a consensus, then the National Academy of Science knew nothing about it, and said so. The articles that did talk about cooling were about 10 and 20,000 years cycles based on Earth orbits, not about imminent glaciation. If you have evidence to the contrary, I am open to hearing it. Otherwise, mere assertion is not persuasive, at least not to me.
And John, you brought up global warming, not me.
Mark Perkins
There was wide speculation about cooling but the consensus was global warming even then.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm
John Gorentz
I was around in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I remember the conservative press making fun of the global cooling hysteria. Dunno about any consensus, though.
john Willson
As usual, you don’t address the issue, but report a Time magazine crappola. in fact, there was a very wide “consensus” about global cooling in the 70s, and your assertion to the contrary is not credible. What do you want to report to the FPR? Is it that my argument about bad law is wrong because you think that global warming and Al Gore are sainted? As I remember it, the post was about seat belts.
John Médaille
John W., You repeat something that is widely reported, namely that in the 70’s, there was a “scientific consensus” about global cooling. Alas, like many things reported in the press and the blogosphere, that isn’t true. A survey of the scientific literature of the time reveals just the opposite, a growing concern about warming. What you will find is a Time magazine article on global cooling reporting such a consensus.
Like many things in Time, it turned out to be false.
john Willson
David,
You are a hoot! I watch TV commercials every day that are more convincing than “the greatest collaberation of scientists the world has known.” They usually say something like “I trust my heart to Lipitor,” or “ask your doctor.” Have you ever asked yourself why the earth warmed up in the middle ages, or cooled down just in time for Puritans to survive in the 1630s? Was it cows farting or not farting, and why have we had “scientific consensus” tell us in the 1970s that a new ice age was about to arrive? I think you should put great faith in seat belts. The “data” you present is foolish, and you should read it again. Or do you just get mesmerized by charts and grafts? If you read my original post, I said that I do indeed, most of the time, buckle up. But can you explain why New Hampshire has a very low death-by-automobile statistic, since you seem to like statistics so much? Or do you just want to make laws that force me to behave the way you behave? I am the least libertarian guy you would ever want to find, but you guys that make laws based on specious “statistics” brings out the anarchist in me.
John Gorentz
“Anthropogenic global warming is as solidly scientifically demonstrated as you can get.”
As solidly as you can get? It has a pretty good scientific basis — good enough for me, anyway — but it’s not as good as you can get. There are a lot of phenomena that have a more solid scientific explanation than that one.
David
Bruce Smith said:
“Presumably John you have a report tucked up your sleeve which specifically demolishes the bias of this NHTSA report and it would seem only fair to direct us to it.”
Unfortunately he appears not to. John Adams on the other hand most definitely has the evidence:
http://john-adams.co.uk/2009/11/05/seat-belts-another-look-at-the-data/
In fact it’s one of the major themes of his excellent book “Risk In essence he points out that humans often react to safety measures by behaving in a more risky manner. In the case of seatbelt laws the evidence is that they had no effect on total mortality have led to more deaths for pedestrians and cyclists.
Johm Willson said:
“there is no more evidence that seat belt laws are in themselves responsible for greater safety than there is that “global warming” is man-made and therefore requires drastic and unenforceable legislation.”
Anthropogenic global warming is as solidly scientifically demonstrated as you can get. I hardly need to link to the IPCC, possibly the greatest collaboration of scientists the world has known. As John Adams demonstrates quite the opposite applies to seatbelt laws.
Roger S.
Bruce S. said
“Suspending prior conviction and taking the time to think through the political and economic implications of this innocuous and obvious sounding insight will eventually prompt the realization that the ideologies of Neoliberalism and Libertarianism actually stand as obstructions to human progress and the ideas of distributism and balanced governance using the principles of associative democracy and subsidiarity do not.”
I am curious as to what you mean by “human progress.”
John Willson
Hey Folks,
I’m back home now on Tax Day, another famous pean to liberty, and have just caught up with all the very interesting comments that accumulated during my computerless days. My wife and I slept in five different beds in seven days (at hotels, with families) and wore seat belts on every segment of the drive, except when my cousin in the hills of western Pennsylvania said, “Nah, you don’t have to wear that damn thing around here.”
It’s still not clear to me that the “original intent” of my post was grasped by more than a few. Most of our (so-called) founders understood that society is antecedent to politics–although the real federalists, name-called “anti-federalists” by the nationalists–understood it better. The relation of law (instrumental law, as I said before, not the common law or natural law) to society is always a problematic thing, and those who would guard Place. Limits. Liberty. must always be vigilant about that.
Oh, well, I really enjoyed the many comments.
Bruce Smith
To further illustrate Christopher Boehm’s Human Nature thesis I would point out that Phillip Blond’s Rousseauian Liberal Individualism derives directly from the Hierarchical (dominating or domineering) aspect of our human nature. Within Rousseau’s Social Contract each individual is sovereign and is, therefore, entitled to refuse the dictates of another and the morality of doing so accordingly becomes relative. Here is Phillip Blond explaining this and the implications in more fast paced detail but splendid form:-
http://www.respublica.org.uk/videos/watch-phillip-blond-speaks-about-red-tory-rsa
Bruce Smith
You are absolutely right Wessexman. The point I have been struggling very hard to get over is that the cleavage is based on a failure to understand human nature. Nobody can now stop the traction from Christopher Boehm’s turning point insight that human nature is both egalitarian and hierarchical. Suspending prior conviction and taking the time to think through the political and economic implications of this innocuous and obvious sounding insight will eventually prompt the realization that the ideologies of Neoliberalism and Libertarianism actually stand as obstructions to human progress and the ideas of distributism and balanced governance using the principles of associative democracy and subsidiarity do not.
Wessexman
““perverse hidden agenda of some contributors to FPR”….? Wha? Methinks you are starting to see mere opinions turn into will-o-the-wisps. “Beyond Here Lies Monsters”….BOOO!”
Sabin obviously his rhetoric is a bit off but I think Bruce is simply recognising the Porcher, and general decentralist right, division between those close to libertarianism and individualism, whether of the Rand, Friedman and Austrian variety or the more transcendentalist variety, and the more traditionalist, communitarian and distributist sections. There is a cleavage or gap between these factions. The possible implications of talking indiscriminately about control freaks is not missed on one such as myself who believes in an established church, a certain link between religion and politics and who holds a general “conservative-pluralist” idea of society and social authority.
Bruce Smith
Here is my summary of what I think the arguments have been about on this post and why they are more important than just the specific one of whether a government has a right to make a law, or rule, making seat belt wearing mandatory. I believe there is a misguided attempt on FPR to perpetuate through the Localism enthusiasm the ideologies of Neoliberalism and Libertarianism which most thoughtful individuals hold responsible for the Financial Crash because of the deregulation mania and attendant inadequate regulation. John Willson exemplifies this attempt. He pinned his colors to the mast in his post by using the New Hampshire license plate slogan “Live Free or Die”. He then proceeded to tell us that Tocqueville said “laws are almost always defective or unreasonable” and that he, John Willson, agreed with this stating “With a few exceptions, such has always been true under any form of government”. I have argued against this attitude of painting the use of government as being the main source of our problems. I have attempted to make clear that whilst I strongly support a dispersal of power away from government to bodies making good use of associational democracy for the delivery of public sector goods and services human beings will still spontaneously create rule, or law, making bodies because they often need their support to resolve inter-personal and inter-group conflict and in many cases also have a need for uniform application of rules.
In support of this reasoning that there is a spontaneous need for rule making bodies I have used some of the arguments Christopher Boehm makes in his book “The Hierarchy of the Forest”. Amongst the most important ones are that human nature is naturally hierarchical but not necessarily in the sense that it is usually conventionally conceived. He argues that a drive for egalitarianism is a natural instinct in human beings but it is achieved not by attempting to completely remove hierarchy but creating a kind of reverse, or anti, hierarchy of the rank-and-file that jealously guards its rights not to be unduly dominated by domineering individuals or factions. The rank-and-file will use what ever means they can make use of to do this and the least physically aggressive but effective proxy means that has evolved is to use governing bodies to make the anti-hierarchical rules. Initially when societies were small it was possible to do this satisfactorily on a participative democracy basis. As population numbers increased the work-around became representative democracy which has been misused through corruption of government by the rich, unfair wealth distribution leading to state sponsored and delivered ameliorative welfare services which in turn have lead to Agency Theory problems with bureaucrats and politicians. These are not grounds, however, for pretending that governing bodies are useless, or the rules they make are always useless, or that somehow under Libertarianism these bodies will substantially wither away like the Communist ideological prediction, they are grounds for reform and for the development of fresh work-arounds that will diffuse power more effectively to maintain the anti-hierarchical checks and balances we know we need because of our innate hierarchical tendencies. In simple terms we use governing bodies to self-regulate ourselves and always will do. The onus is on the Neo-liberals and the Libertarians to provide a convincing account of how their ideology will work using Localism without these governing bodies.
Bruce Smith
Well here we go Neoliberal-Free Capitalism and Public Services:-
http://www.respublica.org.uk/blog/2010/04/dear-michael-merrick-your-virtue-ethics-neoliberalism-another-form
Bruce Smith
No! No! Today’s Don Quixote award goes to Polistra for her/his comment on Jeremy Beer’s post “Was the Movement Con Mind Ever Opened?”
Bruce Smith
Well I guess that puts me, Sancho Panza, in my place yet again bringing up the rear-guard!
D.W. Sabin
Smith,
“perverse hidden agenda of some contributors to FPR”….? Wha? Methinks you are starting to see mere opinions turn into will-o-the-wisps. “Beyond Here Lies Monsters”….BOOO!
There is just nothing like the ready talents of the more entrenched wings of both Right and Left to create monsters and demons out of anyone doubting conventional piety.
With humans, conspiracy is usually overkill and generally hoists the conspirators on their own pitard. No, with humans, one can scam them in broad daylight because humans are drawn to scam like moths to the flame.
Bruce Smith
Steve Berg. Many thanks for your comments. I didn’t intend that you should reply but now that you have I can say that I’m in broad agreement with what you say and would go further in saying I would want to see greater use of referenda using internet voting like the Swiss. The area where I would disagree with you is attitude to government and this has been the basis of all my comments on this FPR article. The volume of comments on this article I believe reflects this difference in attitude with regard to the role of government. It’s not so much the issue of seat belt law that has inflamed so many people more the right of any organization to do so and to intrude in people’s lives in such a comprehensive and intrusive way. I don’t have a problem in acknowledging the idea that the invasiveness may be too much or even wishing to personally see it substantially reduced in some areas but I do have a problem with the idea you could and should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not only do I think it crazy not to see the usefulness of government I just don’t think it will ever happen because of human nature. I read John Willson’s article several times and two things jumped out at me. Firstly, the New Hampshire license plate slogan “Live Free or Die” reminded me the state was in New England which reminded of Old England and the history of some of my English ancestors. Secondly, John Willson’s statement “Tocqueville noticed in the 1830s that in a democracy, “laws are almost always defective or unreasonable.” With a few exceptions, such has always been true under any form of government.” seemed in relationship to the history of those ancestors and American history also to be completely nonsensical.
Allow me to explain. If you are going to “Live Free” you need to have the means to flourish. My ancestors were distant great grand-parents with a family of twelve children. My distant great grand-father had what would be considered a fairly good job, he managed a large pottery manufactory. The only problem was pottery manufacturing produced a lot of dust which often resulted in people working there getting lung diseases. My family story was that this distant great grand-father got what my more recent family called a severe form of lung disease, pneumosilicosis, and as a consequence died of it at the young age of thirty six leaving my distant great grand-mother a very small pension to raise a family of twelve. They lived in great poverty as a consequence of this early death and could not really be described as “living free” in any full sense of the term. The history in the nineteenth century of dust related diseases and early deaths in factories and mines was that they came to understand that the dust was the problem and that dust extraction fans and ventilation fans were the solution. The only problem was the owners of the factories and mines fought a long running battle not to spend money on these fans claiming they could ill afford it and their businesses were very delicately balanced and always on the verge of going bankrupt because of the conditions of trade (Much like the Republicans declaring America can’t afford a universal health care system despite the statistics showing that the Republican Party has the worst track record for being spend-thrifts as a government since the ending of the Second World War). Of course, everybody could go and see the luxurious houses the factory and mine owners lived in and could see they were not short of money to spend on their own needs. Anyway there was a great campaign to introduce Factory Laws to change all this. Laws to stop the adulteration of food by businesses had also been passed earlier which had been another big health problem. One of my other ancestors had been a radical MP fighting for this cause amongst others. In the end it was the political suffrage Reform Acts of 1932 and 1867 which finally helped gain the majority for the passing of food and factory laws.
In the United States it was only through the passing of laws that the country was unified and able to throw off the yoke of English oppression. It was also only through the passing of laws that slavery was abolished and defeated in this country. A declaration that laws are always defective and unreasonable and that with few exceptions this is always true about any form of government shows great historical ignorance, profound disrespect for the efforts of our ancestors and a quixotic disconnection with reality.
We cannot disassociate the development of the Nanny State from the struggle of the wealthy to hang onto their wealth and to be able to continue to extract further wealth from the majority. The development of social insurance in Germany under Bismark in the nineteenth century was a good example of how the wealthy classes bought off the revolt of the working classes (No coincidence that Karl Marx was German). In the English speaking world I believe that the cementing of the move to the Nanny State occurred in England on January 8th 1909 at a meeting of the Fabian Society the leading intellectual and ideological organization for social reform. At this meeting S. G. Hobson, a distributionist, urged the Fabian Society to withdraw its affiliation with the Labour Party. This was opposed by the influential author George Bernard Shaw. A vote was taken and Hobson’s proposal was defeated. Shortly after in the next decade the Russian Revolution of 1917 took place. This turned out to be a disaster because of Marx and Lenin’s failure to understand that human nature is predicated upon the issue of dominance and that the oppressed always need to be able to make effective use of government to lift the oppression of the minority. In a climate of revolution the 1926 British General Strike took place which it is commonly believed was “betrayed” by the leadership of the Labour Party:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike
The “betrayal” was both fortunate and unfortunate. It prevented Communism but produced the Nanny State. Enter Phillip Blond with his diagnosis and this May’s result for their general election where if the Conservatives win there may start to be a reversal of the Nanny State if the Conservatives are willing to use government to facilitate a devolution of wealth to offset the welfare provisioning of the Nanny State. The United States is not immune from having to decide on the same compromise due to the decline in wage value and the enormous rise in personal debt to compensate. The desire of the wealthy elite to accumulate yet more capital/personal wealth by driving down wages is now deflating the American economy after the collapse of the personal debt bubble. The deflation is occurring because so many people can now longer afford to finance debt to fuel the expansion of the economy. Government laws will be required to permanently resolve this issue much the same as they were required to get fans in factories and mines and stop food adulteration in nineteenth century Britain. This opposition to law-making government is I suspect the real reason for the perverse hidden agenda of some of the contributors to FPR. Power is fine as long as it’s monopolized by the extremely wealthy.
John Gorentz
Mark, the point of a move to repeal would be to consume the energy and resources of the bad guys — the control freaks. If you let it consume more of your time and energy than theirs, then you lose. My hero, St Ronald, understood these things. Bill Clinton was a master of it. They never lost an opportunity to speak out in favor of positions that were not attainable at the moment or in the near future. But their rhetoric put their opponents on the defense and positioned their own sides for action when the opportunity was ripe.
Mark Perkins
I should have written more clearly. I’m saying that overturning seat belt laws is not worth the fight. Save the energy and resources for something more important.
John Gorentz
Mark Perkins wrote: “The nature of the comments suggests, however, that seat belt laws are not worth the fight.”
I think there are a lot of people who would disagree with that. If you don’t believe me, have your Representatives propose a repeal. It’ll flush out a lot of people who think it very much worth the fight to retain them.
That in itself would form a valuable public service. We need to identify these people, and perhaps set up a National Registry of Control Freaks to keep track of their whereabouts. It would serve much the same purpose as a National Registry of Sex Offenders.
Some of the more unbalanced characters among them might scream that such a move is creeping totalitarianism, but it seems reasonable as a preventative measure. And really, is it any more restrictive to register one’s whereabouts with the local gendarmes every week than to clip a seat belt around one’s body several times a day? The behavior of these people is costly to society and the public purse, so it seems a bit of regulation is in order.
I’ll bet Janet Napolitano would support such a registry. She is already on record as warning about the potential risks to our society posed by returning war veterans and those opposed to abortion and immigration. Certainly she would find control freaks to be no less of a threat than those groups.
Mark Perkins
I too find Albert’s post reasonable. Seat belt laws taken alone are completely innocuous. Being forced to wear a seat belt isn’t tyranny, even if you don’t want to wear one. But as part of a comprehensive set of papa-knows-best laws? Less innocuous. The nature of the comments suggests, however, that seat belt laws are not worth the fight.
There are 110 comments–many very heated–on a brief blog about seat belt laws. No wonder every law, no matter how insignificant, now requires a thousand pages of a law.
I reread the article to remember what inspired such fury and volume. Didn’t find much by way of inflammatory rhetoric, for the record.
Earlier I got caught up in some comments suggesting that the only things the law can deal with are actual tangible results (i/e you can plan a terrorist attack all you want, but by golly we’ll prosecute you after you carry it out).
What’s more interesting to me at this point is the fury and outrage the post provoked.
People are quite literally freaking out that Dr. Willson would ever suggest driving unbuckled for a second. Risk–any risk–seems to equal stupidity. Only idiots or monsters would ever drive unbuckled, ride a bike without a helmet, smoke a cigarette, drink a beer, run with scissors, eat ice cream, play rugby. I don’t have any brilliant insights about it, but it’s an interesting attitude.
Wessexman
But seat belt laws aren’t, on their own, much of an example of gov’t excess though Sabin, that is the point.
Anyway I think Albert’s post has settled this discussion in a balanced and sensible. way. I agree with him, on their own seat belt laws are rather benign though probably unnecessary, for adults at least, and don’t, on the surface, seem much of a jumping off point for new regulation. But being part of a matrix of legislation they are probably unhelpful in today’s climate, and generally unnecessary law should probably be avoided, so removing them for adults would probably be positive.
However it is worth pointing out that very communitarian ages have had plenty of pesky laws such as the medieval laws of sumptuary which regulated consumption and extravagant dress. But still I think it wiser to do without unnecessary regulation.
D.W. Sabin
“Libertarians can go to hell”.
Thats the spirit.
Might I add, “and take the Bureaucracy with them as punishment”, thus killing two birds with one stone.
One of the interesting summary ideas in Andre Gide’s novel “The Immoralist” is that independence and liberty can be paralyzing. This is precisely why any fundamental notion of genuine liberty can only be achieved through an understanding of the profound limits of liberty . Liberty, in the end, is only truly productive or spiritually and intellectually rich within a context of humility and fraternity. Still, fraternity without the chastening effects of liberty is an invitation to the deadening atmosphere of the herd. Morality, without liberty is playbook morality, something that eventually consumes the moral instinct and replaces it with the very immoral and gullible obedience of the automaton.
One can cast insults at the libertarians to one’s hearts content but there were few beyond them raising concerns about a government lost down a diminishing and punishing curve of over-extension, debt, bureaucratic gridlock, influence peddling, war mongering and fecklessly over-arching profligacy. Do I agree with every utterance of the Libertarians? No. Neither do I agree with every utterance of the Republican-Democrat Statists. However, what I do see is this cult of partisanship and prideful ideology dragging us downward into a totalitarian quicksand. Note how Nader tipped a hat to Ron Paul and I am quite certain Paul would tip his hat to Nader’s work against the corrupt machinations of power-politics in Washington.
One may readily see the logic in Medaille’s assertions about the unintended consequences of libertarian ideology resulting in precisely the big government abuses we now experience. However, It is equally true that there is a law of intended consequences that is just as bad and purposefully benefits the destructive totalitarian drift that consumes best intentions in Washington D.C. today. Too big to Fail becomes Too big to fail getting bigger and we dole out a billion dollars in cash a year as protection money in Afghanistan and Iraq, oblivious to the many historic examples of utter failure in this kind of empire cycle. We blow up a magnificently destructive bubble of consumer debt and yet still, after all this, the great minds in Washington are working on ways to continue China’s role as “producer” and ours as “consumer”. The fact that people might save rather than spend what they do not make strikes horror in the heart of the Bureaucrat and the globalist utopia schemes.
A Distributism that holds the full concept of liberty central to its subsidiary philosophy is something that may bear fruit. A Distributism that simply shuns liberty in order to replace it with an assembly line provincialism of drones following order will deserve the degeneration it has championed. Where is the fuller discursive capacity that unleashed such spectacular progress and technological advancement in this Republic gone didactic? Where is the skepticism that lent us good humor and a strong bulwark against creeping institutional decline? Where is the humility that saw multi-denominations thrive, thus insuring the continuance of varied and un-molested spiritual life?
I’d be perhaps more skeptical of the more narcissistic and paralyzing effects of liberty if we were anywhere close to a genuine fuller realization of liberty in this nation but we are not. We beg now for “leadership” and think more vigorous political action within a failed paradigm will see us through to better days. Reductive institutional thinking is a profoundly corrosive agent in a society that has become fatalist and exceptionally, blithely gullible. Again, those that question government excess are “extremists” while those that endorse it are good citizens.
Replacing good sense with law will insure that good sense becomes something enshrined behind a glass box that proclaims “Break only in case of emergency”. It will die there a long slow death…a musty museum piece…a relic of yore. Frankly, the project of modernity has successfully obliterated the authentic meaning of liberty because it has effectively quelled the discursive mind and replaced it with best intentions gone wild. Liberty requires a grounding in cause and effect and in this nation now, we seem to think causes and effects are shifting things, dependent upon the offices of a benevolent state.
Roger S.
Charles said,
“American libertarians and teapartiers are just pathetic. In France they don’t play. The socialists take to the streets and shut Paris down. And let me tell you, it rocks.”
I m sorry, Charles I think I understand now. You ve been to France.
Roger S.
Charles Curtis said,
“If you’re too stupid to belt up, you deserve the fine. Society doesn’t need to be liable for your idiocy when you hurt yourself, causing all the rest of our insurance premiums to go up..”
Now that is the thinking that scares me to death. Charles I like bacon but its bad for me. Should the government regulate bacon because I might eat it and our insurance premiums might go up. If you are overweight Charles then you are at a greater risk for everything that kills you and your idiocy makes our insurance premiums go up. Perhaps we need a few rules to regulate your diet. Getting enough exercise there Charles? If not maybe we need a little law to ensure you do. John Williams was simply pointing to fact that little laws to that take away little freedoms lead to big laws to take away big freedoms.
Steve Berg
Bruce Smith, I did not realize that you had a question, as I was off this site for some days. As I understand your question, you want my opinion of what level of government should be making rules that attack personal liberties. I thought I covered this quite well in my brief sketch, so here is another attempt on this question. Such rules should be made at the lowest possible level of government, preferably by those intimately involved in the proposed regulated activity. To my mind this should be at the township level, which here in Illinois is the only governmental entity where the citizenry can directly legislate ordinances. Like Jefferson, I tend to equate just government with consent of the governed. My consent is really only valid when I have a say and a vote in the matter. If I consider a local regulation oppressive, I am free to move to another township where the rules are more congenial to my beliefs. I have found that even at the local level, representation rapidly becomes imperfect. In my city, I am rarely in agreement with my so-called representatives, and they tend to represent political correctness far more than they do my views, or even fiscal prudence. At the county level it is worse, the state level worse yet, and by the time you get to Washington D.C. the average congressman “represents” about 800,000 people which is an obvious impossibility. Instead they tend to represent those who fund their campaigns.
In a repeatedly hard fought battle against Big Nanny, here in Illinois, we are not required to wear motorcycle helmets. I normally wear one except for those times where I have just rebuilt an engine, and I want to hear what is going on before there are any heart and wallet wrenching grinding and crunching noises. I would say that my hearing is not all that good, but since most of that is also service related, I certainly do not want to be again accused of whining. I also wear specially constructed riding apparel which has built in armor. I do this at my own initiative, as I understand that the beneficent and omniscient state government hands out driving licenses to complete morons on a regular basis, so in this instance, I voluntarily relinquish my liberties as a matter of personal choice.
This is a long winded explanation of what is essentially political legitimacy. To me, with an appreciation for real federalism and political subsidiarity, I prefer to be personally involved in the regulatory process. Those who like to promote diversity, which tends to be top-down imposed uniformity, would much rather have a one size fits all set of regulations, always reducing liberty, and always for the public good. Frequently, the people doing the regulating have only a slight acquaintance with what is being regulated. And, few if any of them personally know the people whom are going to be regulated. The top-down regulatory approach essentially uses “the death of a thousand cuts” approach to legislation. Each regulation may seem to be reasonable, and minor in importance, but the eventual effect is the death of liberty and local community. Communities can certainly be oppressive, but they are small, and they can be left behind. The world wide Hobbesian Nanny State does not allow this option, and so I oppose it. Hell, even Hobbes was known to flee what he considered to be oppression.
Albert
Albert I largely agree with you, but I will say I just don’t see seat belts being used as a jumping off point for more regulation, at least consciously. So we’re left with already enacted, largely unnecessary(I think for children they are a good thing!) but also largely harmless ones.
If we got a chance perhaps we could remove them but they hardly seem like anything we’d have to campaign against, particularly when there are many worse regulations. In Britain you can’t smoke in a bar or pub for instance, even if the owner wants to let you! Now that is a regulatory state action(it came from Brussels so what do you expect!). I believe several American cities have rolled out similar laws and some Australian councils have even banned smoking in public places altogether, not being content on just inside pubs, bars etc.
Wessexman, I also don’t see seat belts being used as a jumping off point for more regulation except, of course, in so far as citizens of New Hampshire are being pressured by those who point to seat belt laws in the other 49 states as justification for added seat belt laws in NH (despite low accident fatality rates). That seems pretty clear to me, although I agree that seat belt laws are not being used as a jumping off point for, say tooth-brushing laws.
I think what is going on is a bit more complicated; if laws do not exist or come into existence “serially” but in a matrix that constitutes a legal regime, then each law within the matrix supports and appears, through mechanisms of familiarity, to justify the existence of other parts of the matrix. In other words, just as it is not enough to point to an event in isolation to understand history, it is not enough to evaluate a single statute in isolation from the rest of the matrix of laws because of the way they reinforce each other. A statute needs to be evaluated in the context of the rest of the legal regime because that is how that statute will be experienced.
That is why I admit that in of itself, a seat belt law is not a big deal. For example, if that were the only law that makes safe driving associations or families less important to the formation of good drivers, then I wouldn’t argue against it. But because it is actually representative of the matrix of laws that makes other communities less necessary, little by little, and thereby undermines them, I do make a case against it. In sum, I think the main issue is that statutes are not experienced in isolated from each other, but as a part of a matrix, a legal regime. So in considering individual statutes, we ought not to consider them apart from the context of other laws (and, frankly, other cultural forces), a context which might be determinative if the adoption of a law is unwise in a particular situation, even when it would be wise in another. I’d suggest, furthermore, that in light of the legal regime at large which most definitely undermines the family, a seat belt law in NH ought to be opposed (along with other statutes more important in isolation, e.g. certain divorce laws or smoking bans in pubs for businesses).
As an aside, I think this is precisely why Tocqueville uses the work “network” in the passage I quote above:
If one simply looks at a single rule apart from the network, then yes, it’s no big deal. But that would misunderstand how laws and cultures function.
I suppose it is because I believe parents and older siblings ought to be responsible for making sure children wear seat belts in their cars that I would reject even State laws concerning children wearing seat belts. I simply will not drive unless all adult friends and children are wearing seat belts. Others should do the same because in doing so, communal ties are strengthened in ways that the State simply cannot achieve by means of fines, which simply teach that money is all that is lost when breaking communal ties. On the other hands, if someone disobeys me by refusing to wear a seat belt in my car, the breaking of communal ties is evident in the damage does to concrete relations in both the refusal and my kicking the person out of my car.
There is a huge difference between the “community” of the State and what it says about the nature of life by punishing via fines (and therefore contributing to a culture that reduces life to having more or less money), and real communities where the punishments are fully relational in nature.
Bruce Smith
John Gorentz I appreciate you starting to answer the question “How shall it be decided which liberties to allow and deny ourselves?” and I very much support devolved decision and rule making where individuals clash over objectives and in many ways the smaller the community, or grouping of individuals, resolving any conflicts the better as far as I’m concerned. However, we don’t live like we used to do two three thousand years or more ago when we lived in small communities. We have to contend with much greater complexity including the Financialization of Capitalism which is led by the United States and prone to produce such horrors as the recent Financial Crisis. Here is John Bellamy Foster on the subject of Financialization:-
http://www.skeptically.org/ecodev/id2.html
Bruce Smith
Thanks Charles for your hat tip on debt by party. Can’t wait for the right-wing bloggers on this site to tell us the figures don’t count because Sarah Palin told us they were produced by socialists (CommieDems).
Bruce Smith
John Gorentz I take notice that you and John Willson are typical Libertarians you always evade the difficult questions that people ask you. Your whole mode of operation is to moan and rail at government without ever taking the trouble to ask yourselves why it is there. Why it exists. For people like you two it’s as though it sprung out of the ground after the planting of dragon’s teeth. This is nonsense. Here’s why government came into existence.
Human beings are not naturally predisposed to live freely together as equals. They are hierarchical creatures. Their nature is to seek power whereby an individual, or group, will seek to dominate others who in turn will retaliate by seeking to counter their power and make egalitarianism prevail. It made sense to band together do this because egalitarianism worked better for survival purposes not only to defeat other threatening human beings but to defeat powerful animal predators and minimize hunger by sharing food found by hunting and foraging. Matters became more difficult with the arrival of wealth stored in the form of capital. Capital is the commoditization, or corralling, of nature. Its accumulation and use can make or break lives. To prevent the destruction and abuse of their lives by capital is why human beings seek to legislate egalitarianism and will now until change occurs always spontaneously seek to use the vehicle of government as one of the just, or fair, means to achieve this. It is why asking the question “How shall it be decided which liberties to allow and deny ourselves?” is so important. It is not just determining which liberties but which vehicles to do the determining with. Finally the issue of the true nature of human being’s attitude to power is why Communism, Fascism, Neo-Liberal Conservatism, Statist Socialism and Libertarianism don’t work as ideologies. This is because they fail to acknowledge the ambivalent attitude of human beings towards power. We like to dominate but hate to be dominated. It is why only an ideology that seeks to balance out power (including that of capital) by making judicious use of all the vehicles, or tools, at its disposal can ever hope to achieve some semblance of harmony amongst human beings.
John Gorentz
Charles Curtis, the reason I picked on those two sentences was because I am interested in how and why we make rules. The fact that the effect of a rule is innocuous is no reason it isn’t an important step in creeping totalitarianism. As as been mentioned over and over again by myself and others, the thing that’s of concern is the basis for making such rules. If the basis for the rule is the fact that our behavior affects the lives and costs of other people, then no rule is out of bounds. Some better basis is needed than that.
A few weeks ago I read Walt Rinderle’s book on The Nazi Impact on a German village. He tells about a lot more about village life over a much longer period of time than that title would indicate, though. He shows how when people lived right next to each other and shared scarce resources, they needed a lot of rules. There was a real community which did its best to ignore the state. They knew the larger state existed — how could they help but know when young men were drafted to serve in the Kaiser’s armies or when invading armies came through? — but for them life was a matter of the community, not the state. The making and enforcing of rules was a community effort — something that could be done only in a community where everyone knew everyone. Even in peacetime it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows — it could be hard to live in a place where social norms were upheld because everyone knew everything you did — and where the village officials could decide if your behavior really merited subsidized health care or not. But it was communitarian and not compatible with the Nazi’s attempt at totalitarian rule from the center.
(I read that remarkable little book just before staying at Walt and Anne Rinderle’s very nice little B&B in Vincennes IN for a week of bike riding, in order to get an early start on spring. I didn’t know before I got there that it included an invitation each evening to come downstairs for conversation about these things over a couple of beers, or that Walt and I had compatible tastes in beer. (Bitter taste and room temperature are good.) Walt’s father had come from the little village his son wrote about, and that gave Walt an opening to go back and do some oral history that wouldn’t have been possible for a complete outsider.)
John Gorentz
John Médaille said: “And the history pretty much bears this out: the more libertarian the rhetoric, the more statist the reality.”
John, I too have often noticed something along these lines. I hope we can compare notes some time, perhaps in another comment thread, to see whether or not we’re both talking about the same phenomenon.
Wessexman
“Best constructive contribution of the day: “Don’t be disruptive, if you have nothing of worth to add then don’t make a comment.””
And all to think your behaviour made it all possible 😉 .
Charles Curtis
And you’re spot on, I am writing like crap.. trop de vin, manque de sommeil.
Charles Curtis
John, I’m not sure we’re speaking the same language. My last post wasn’t written all that well, but those two sentences seem to make perfect sense to me.
I just got back from living in Europe, and I now find I have no patience for American political life. This website purports to be about liberty, small communities and localism. Well, let me tell you that Europe is full of far tighter and humane communities than any I’ve ever lived in Stateside.
And know they have rules. Lots of rules. I grew to appreciate them, along with the sporadic anarchism that they spawned..
American libertarians and teapartiers are just pathetic. In France they don’t play. The socialists take to the streets and shut Paris down. And let me tell you, it rocks. I just can’t take these libertarian milquetoasts whining sedition anymore. Put up, or shut up. As a former vet, I’ll take arms in support of my government.
Because I’ve had enough.
I think it really was my catching the tail end of the health care debate here, where I heard too many morons braying about socialist medicine being awful, when it was limpidly clear they had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.
Because as a veteran with a VA disability rating, and someone who has spent a deal of time in places with single payer systems, I have to tell you that socialized medicine is absolutely awesome. The US government runs itself a very fine medical system in the military and VA system. I’ve been in them both for a long while now, love, and so must defend them.
Anyway, that’s really all I have to say. It was my mistake to subscribe to this thread. I’m going back abroad as soon as I am able, so we won’t have to put up with eachother much longer..
Peace.
John Gorentz
If you seriously think a seat belt laws constitute creeping totalitarianism, you are not very smart. All you risk from the state by not belting up is a token fine *if* you get pulled over.
The above two sentences constitute a non sequitur.
Charles Curtis
I resolved to keep my trap shut online, but sometimes things just get too provocative..
On the trillions of dollars of debt we have, I’d simply like to point out that that debt has all been run up almost entirely under Republican Presidents.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
I smell a pig in the parlor, here folks. Libertarians like Greenspan and Friedman (and their whores in Government like Reagan and the Bushes) have an ideological goal to discredit government.
The rich want their taxes cut. They also like putting people in their debt. They call it investment.
But what better debt slave than the U.S. Public?
That’s what we’re seeing here. The rich are screwing the American public like a pooch, and intend to break the government’s ability to “redistribute wealth” by bankrupting us.
Note that what they call redistribution I call investment in the public good through education, infrastructure, health care and other public investments.
Discussions like this are really farcical to me, now. If you seriously think a seat belt laws constitute creeping totalitarianism, you are not very smart. All you risk from the state by not belting up is a token fine *if* you get pulled over. Any anarchist retarded enough to get a thrill of not wearing his belt ought to just risk it. Since he’s already risking his life anyway.
Because if you want a true libertarian regime, I say that we push it all the way, and say if you hurt yourself in an accident while not wearing your belt, we just ought to leave you in the ditch to die.
Your fault, you should suffer the consequence all by yourself.
I’m watching my father smoke himself to death. I’m trying to convince him to quit, knowing that he’s probably already done himself irreparable harm, from which he will never recover. He’s probably taken a couple decades off his life.
I’d like to strangle the CEO of the old Phillip Morris and every other tobacco company. That bastard is a criminal. Since I won’t indulge my fury due to Christian principle (the Beatitudes counsel me to love those that hurt me, and I struggle to do my best) I have to say that in lieu of that I will support every political move to restrict tobacco use.
Because my father’s illness due to smoking, and your injury when you fly through your windshield next time you have an accident, just doesn’t impact him. It will hurt us all.
And since I very likely owe my life to people like Ralph Nader. Because of them, I have been conditioned to wear my belt. Because of them, I have had a belt in my car to wear.
And as I said in the very first post in this thread, my belt has saved my life.
Twice.
Libertarians can go to hell. Ralph Nader is the man.
John Gorentz
Best constructive contribution of the day: “Don’t be disruptive, if you have nothing of worth to add then don’t make a comment.”
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