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Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality?
e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."
Do stupid laws and frivolous lawsuits make you too afraid to help someone in trouble? No problem, we'll just pass another ill-thought law! What could possibly go wrong?
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
This is the result of more than 20 people watching a minor (15) year old girl being gang raped during a school dance and not a single one calling 911 to report it. Unfortunately a law like this needs to be enacted so that such people can be punished. It's a shame that such basic morality is lacking in society these days but it's come to this point. We have to legislate that if someone is so devoid of such basic morality, that they can't call the police when witnessing a gang rape, that we need to start putting people in jail for not doing such basic acts of humanity, so that there is at least a threat of jail to inspire people to do the right thing if their conscious is devoid of inspiration to do so voluntarily.
Its not a federal law in the US, but I know certain states require you to give help in life threatening situations if you are capable of doing so.
CPR is a perfect example. In Florida for instance, if someone dies in front of you and CPR had a good chance of saving them, don't let anyone find out you are CPR certified (which every highschool student is at some point) as you will be punished.
I really don't have a problem with it. Too many people will stand by and watch someone die or get mugged and do nothing to help, not even bother to call the cops, but they'll take pictures on their phones. And yes, I've seen that happen, I have pictures! Mind you, my friend was calling the cops while I was snapping pictures of it.
On that same note, let something happen to one of my loved ones while you stand by and watch and you better prey to whatever god you worship that I don't find out. I have no problem with revenge against useless fucks too lazy to do anything to help others. No, I don't expect an unarmed person to go after some guy with a knife or gun, but I do expect an appropriate response such as calling for help or calling a doctor. Not everybody is a hero, but everyone SHOULD be a responsible citizen.
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Why should such people be punished? There's a lot of evidence that they are acting out of normal and fairly standard psychological patterns. Humans are less likely to help in large groups. This is known as the bystander effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect. People have tested this in many different contexts, these include having people pretending to have heart attacks, as well as more controlled lab settings. One good example test involved a lab setting where people were supposed to be answering a set of questions, then the experimenter would go out of the room and something loud and bad would happen to the experimenter who would cry out for help. The key issue is that all but one of the people in the room were actually actors. The actors all just kept taking the test. The one almost never helps. This works with as few as one actor and one real person. But if there is a single individual and no actors, more often than not, they will help. And if one of the actors gets up to help, then the person generally will also. You shouldn't punish people for following their basic herd instincts as righteous and moral as it might make you feel.
Not everybody is a hero, but everyone SHOULD be a responsible citizen.
And that's the crux of the matter. The fact that someone SHOULD do something does not mean that anyone (not even the government) has the right to FORCE them to do something.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
It's just a test to see who reads the article before sharing their enlightened opinion.
It's like that instruction test in school:
1. Read all of the instructions.
2. Clap your hands.
3. Shout out that you are at step 3.
4. Jump up and down.
5. Do not perform steps 2-4
6. Finish test
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
You shouldn't punish people for following their basic herd instincts as righteous and moral as it might make you feel.
Then let's make gangrape legal too, shall we ? Talk about your basic herd instinct.
The whole point of morality, religion, and by extension laws and such is that we can do better than these stupid instincts. Modern society (or any city with more than 50 people) would be utterly impossible without actively punishing people for following their instincts.
Then let's make gangrape legal too, shall we ? Talk about your basic herd instinct.
Sorry, but a HUGE difference exists between actively committing a violent crime, and choosing not to report the same.
Try applying this to situations you might disagree with. Failure to report your friend smoking weed? Failure to report your mother speeding? Failure to report your uncle cheating just a bit on his taxes? Failure to report your coworker for circumventing the DMCA to do what your mutual boss ordered?
This amounts to the worst of slippery slopes. Even in the best of applications, someone might simply not have noticed (I, for one, get very disoriented in large social gatherings, and yes, you probably could rape someone in front of me without my noticing). And in the worst, this amounts to criminalizing a refusal to obey potentially intolerable laws (Failure to report anyone who violates the "We love George Bush" law).
It's just a test to see who reads the article before sharing their enlightened opinion.
Honestly, would it really have surprised anyone if it was true? California seems bent on a destroying itself with stupidity, to the extent that many of the smart and talented people are getting out of Dodge, so to speak. The reason why surrounding states have been more competitive politically this past decade (after mostly being solid GOP) is the sheer number of Californians getting the hell out of their state. Everything from California... costs, product liability laws, fuel standards, etc, is stricter and more expensive than most of the country. Buy a mouse or keyboard, and many of them will have a tag on it warning you not to do something stupid, like eat the cord. The small print explains that this little reminder was brought to you via a product safety lawsuit in California.
California, with it's bust-ass budget and spiraling social program costs is a preview of what might happen to the rest of the country. They're still $21 billion in the hole, and yet now they want to enact a statewide universal health care program, with costs upwards of $200 Billion over the next decade?
Again, when you hear something ridiculous about California... true or not... does it really surprise you?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I'm not so sure this law is 'stupidity'. It only applies to violent crime, and it only requires that the witness report it, not intervene, not even make a scene. Just make a discreet phone call. I'd like to see more debate before labeling this a 'bad' law.
That's not to say the rest of your rant doesn't ring true, though.
Especially if you live in an area where gang related violence is high, the perpetrators know who you are, they know you're the only witness, and they have lots of friends who can make sure your family suffer if you ever testify. You're right, I can't see a single problem with criminalising people who fail to report crimes.
And this was without a "Good Samaritan Law".
People are inherently stupid. They see things that simply aren't there. They perceive things though their own past traumas and the like. If they get a silly notion in their heads, sometimes all logic is thrown out if the silly notion really bugs them. Such simple logic as "did I really see this guy do anything?
The "Good Samaritan Law" may have "good intentions", but we all know what the "road to Hell" is paved with!
I have to say, I am now glad I don't live in California, which up till now was looking good as a state I might want to live in. Now, "no way in hell" are the words that come to mind.
Gotta love our culture of hyper-paranoia. A child-abuser behind every door, a terrorist in ever-other plane seat, and now this.
I do have one solution to this mess: expatriation. Even China is beginning to look like a better option.
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You were trying to prove your point, to prove your point.
So was his teacher. Don't give a dumb test to smart kids and then be surprised when they call you on it.
Not correct -
Consider the following:
1. Read all of the instructions.
2. Clap your hands.
3. Shout out that you are at step 3.
4. Jump up and down.
5. REPEAT steps 2, 4
6. Finish test
And now consider the original:
1. Read all of the instructions.
2. Clap your hands.
3. Shout out that you are at step 3.
4. Jump up and down.
5. Do not perform steps 2-4
6. Finish test
So, at step 5... do anything at all (including nothing) that isn't steps 2-4. Done.
Nowhere does Step5 claim to have scope over the entirety of the process; in fact, giving step5 a global scope flatly contradicts the scope YOU give to the other steps. You stop clapping at the end of 2, you stop shouting at the end of 3, jumping at the end of 4... but 5, well, let's treat that action differently.
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1. Jump off a cliff.
2. Don't do step 1.
3. Do the opposite of step 2.
4. Don't do step 3.
5. Don't do step 5.
6. Do step 5.
7. Skip step 2 and 5.
8. Perform the steps in reverse order.
9. Do step 4.
10. We're just fucking with you, throw the test out.
11. No we're not, finish the test.
12. Clap your hands if you reached this step.
13. Don't clap your hands at any point during this test.
14. There will be cake.
15. The cake is a lie.
Suppose you witness a crime, but for various reasons (like wanting to continue breathing) you don't want to report it or testify about it. Suppose further the cops figure out you were a witness, and you're subpoena'd and ordered to testify. Since you didn't report the crime, and not doing so is a crime, you can now simply take the fifth and not testify!
the first instruction is to read all the insctruction: while you are executing it, you read the other but don't execute them.
When you finish reading everything, you finish executing instruction 1, and can safely go on and execute instruction 2.
As a teacher, may I say, I would have considered stapling your lips shut.
Your science teacher most likely knew you were right.
Knowing the student was right, a competent teacher would never engage in such an abuse of authority and abuse of a child in giving the "test" in the first place. Any teacher with power and control issues should consider a career change and leave the students alone.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
You were trying to prove your point, to prove your point.
Making a purely academic objection to a test in school?!?!? the audacity! beat that student down.
It has to make you think about what kind of society are we living in today that legislators would even have to consider putting forward a law like this.
Let's review: Twenty teenagers watched the gangrape of a 16-year-old girl outside a high school without doing ANYTHING and your primary concern is a fucking good samaritan law eroding your freedom?
I am a little more worried about the how those spectators will be the future of America.
And if you could, in any way, justify not reporting a violent crime in action (even anonymously), you have some serious issues. That's the problem nowdays, we've been reduced to sheep who don't want to get our hoofs dirty, so we just watch and wait for someone else to fix the problem.