So, I'd rather put up with a hypocritical elite, which really is little more than an annoyance compared to the big disasters that we can expect.
The 20th Century shows us what an annoyance a powerful ruling elite can be, with about a hundred million dead from communist regimes alone, plus all the dead from World War 2. It was even annoying for those that weren't slaughtered. But I guess it'll be different this time...?
Versus predictions of gradually warming weather over the course of several decades. Again, I'll take my chances with the possibility of warming.
These effects aren't necessarily temperature increases; they are just as likely to be more energetic storms, or droughts, or floods.
Or a warn breeze on a late spring afternoon, spinning cottonwood tufts across a meadow through the waning Saturday's orange sunlight, bearing just the slightest perfumed hint of a distant orchard's cherry blossoms.
More for #0: The people shouting the loudest haven't given up air travel. They don't keep their (often multiple) houses at 55 degrees F in the winter instead of the 70 F they find comfortable. They don't run their washing machines on timers so the load runs at 3AM. They're typically a wealthy and self-styled elite class who, even if they aren't setup to directly benefit from AGW measures, are largely insulated from the hardships they would impose on the rest of us.
If the choice is between risking warmer weather and having our lives micromanaged by an arrogant, deceitful ruling class of elite technocrats who hold ordinary folks like me in contempt, then I'll take my chances with warmer weather.
I'm not arguing drunk driving. That still needs to be illegal and enforced (though the impairment standard needs to be set based on actual impairment, not based on politics or scare campaigns or phony statistics). The police should catch drunk drivers and criminals. Ordinary, sober citizens should have nothing to fear from a traffic stop, because it shouldn't be possible to casually or accidentally break a law.
The goal is not rule-making-because-it's-fun-to-tell-people-what-to-do.
I disagree. If that were not the goal, then the rules would be based on real life. But we had a 55 MPH speed limit for decades in the US for political reasons. It started as a silly energy policy. Safety was an afterthought. And it was finally lifted, also for non-safety related reasons.
Speed cameras and red light cameras are 100% for fund raising. This is well known. It's very profitable to tell people what to do when you can collect fines from them. Best not to do it in person. Then fewer people would speed and run red lights because they'd see the enforcement. Use hidden cameras and collect money by mail to maximize profits.
Traffic laws are not generally about safety. Sometimes they are about false perceptions of safety. But mostly they're about fund-raising, politics, and wanting to rule your neighbors' lives because you know The Right Way to Drive.
As I said, go ahead with that. You can define dangerous as "imperfectly safe" if you like. (Because you want to control everyone's every move and use "danger" as your justification, perhaps? More "danger" means you can control more things and justify harsher punishments for your disobedient subjects.)
My usage of "not dangerous" was based on normal everyday life.
I think you are forgetting about the law of deminishing returns. You are correct in assuming that a draconian police state will not eliminate all traffic accidents, however you cannot extrapolate backwards to assume that lack of any police will not have an effect on traffic accidents.
I wasn't doing that. It's not an extrapolation. It's an observation based on the idea that people don't want to crash their cars. Policing traffic is ineffective. It alienates ordinary citizens from police. It's a very poor use of government resources and it's an unnecessary application of law and law enforcement where ordinary social courtesy and manners would work just as well. (Note: It wouldn't work perfectly. It might not even work to the satisfaction of some. But it would work as well as the police enforcement we have now. And it would be cheaper and less unjustly burdensome on the innocent.)
No, I was responding to your post, which was doing that. If you want to split hairs on whether something is only 99% safe vs. 100% safe and call the thing that's 99% safe "dangerous", then go ahead. I try to avoid that kind of pedantic nonsense.
how can I know which cars contain safe drivers, and which do not?
You can't. Ever. Under any system, or in any situation, real or imagined. You're going to have to grow up and realize that everything isn't about you and your feelings.
There's also multiple views of "danger".
There's the phony, self-serving, control-oriented view that goes like this: "I perceive danger, therefore you must obey". And there's the real one involving crashes and injuries.
for instance, tailgating
Excellent example of something that is not policed. Police do not give out tailgating tickets. Policing tailgating has never prevented a crash. Policing traffic is entirely useless for tailgating.
We're all surprisingly good at it, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous, and the inevitability of human error means that nobody can claim to be "not dangerous".
In order to have a point, you have to define danger to mean something it doesn't mean. If everything is dangerous, then nothing is.
I'm not surprised people are good at driving. Driving is pretty easy. Policing it doesn't make it any easier, and it doesn't make anyone a better driver.
And policing is universally effective? What's universally effective? Nothing. Perfection is elusive.
"With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost like the police aren't solving the problem..."
The problem isn't going to be solved without mechanisms for RAPID detection of offenders and efficient enforcement, both of which you find objectionable.
The problem isn't going to be solved. Human problems don't get solved. But we can stop making new problems for innocent people who are minding their own business.
I'm all for rapid detection of people who are a genuine danger. Stop wasting time pestering, hassling, fining, and generally oppressing the innocent. Stop pretending that traffic enforcement is useful. Stop trying to micromanage everyone's every move. Don't condemn ordinary people as "offenders" if they fail to meet some arbitrary and constantly changing metric for ideal driving. In short, mind your own business.
I demand others be insured
I agree with this. But we need tort reform to make the insurance cheaper.
I demand they be deterred from dangerous actions by threat of punishment
They aren't. They're randomly preyed on by police to raise money for police salaries and benefits. They're deterred from dangerous action by not wanting to crash. Or they're not deterred at all.
and I demand they be punished where necessary.
Primates maintain order by deterrence and force. That is all.
You don't need to oppress the innocent to punish the guilty. We maintain order by focusing deterrence and force on criminals, not on ordinary people minding their own business.
I don't care what you do when you are off the road. But once you are on the road, you are a danger to ME.
This is false. I'm not a danger to anyone on the road. Almost no one is.
So if you don't give a fuck about rules, the police hopefully will fuck with you. And I approve.
"Rules" don't prevent crashes. Driving around people instead of into them prevents crashes.
I don't object to rules. My objection is to those who want to rule others. People who want to rule others are evil. They're a danger to everyone. That includes you.
You assume people Give the Proverbial Fuck without being reminded. Maybe you do, in which case congrats on your virtue but don't expect it to scale.
Why can't you just learn to mind your own business? It's none of your business whether anyone else "Gives a Proverbial Fuck" or not. I don't care what "scales" and what doesn't. I want you and the police to stop minding my business. Leave me and everyone else alone. We're trying to live our lives. We don't need you to manage our choices for us. We don't need a government mom or an government overseer.
Drunks don't try hard to avoid crashing and crash often.
So let's start by repealing every other traffic law so the police can focus on the drunks.
Many drivers crash but refuse to carry insurance.
With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost like the police aren't solving the problem...
Many drivers run expired license tags or swap them from other vehicles.
License tags are none of anyone's business. They're completely unnecessary, and only exist to tax people and coerce people.
Auto theft is common.
Auto theft countermeasures are increasingly effective. We can get Lojack. It gets turned on when the car is stolen so the police can find the individual car. We don't need to police everyone driving everywhere to find an individual stolen car that's broadcasting its location.
You are confusing the affects of cultural differences with the affects of policing. Bad drivers are bad drivers, regardless of police. Courtesy and manners don't come from police either. And police don't design roads to prevent gridlock, nor does the presence of police suddenly make a road built for 1000 cars per hour handle 5000 cars.
This type of thing is the inevitable consequence of policing road traffic. But here's the thing about that: road traffic doesn't really need to be policed. The road rules exist to avoid crashes, but no one wants to crash. People try very hard to avoid crashing. If there were no police on the roads, the exact same people would try just as hard to avoid crashing.
But roads are a police state, because you know The Right Way for everyone else to drive. Learn to mind your own business. And tell your neighbor to learn to mind his. Then we can move away from traffic laws and police enforcement to traffic rules and guidelines that are upheld due to ordinary social courtesy and manners (and because you don't want to crash).
And then you won't have to worry about police tracking your every move.
Lots of other things don't need to be policed either. Please learn to mind your own business. Thanks.
So you're really outraged that News Corp. makes money and doesn't hide that fact.
Meanwhile, Anonymous has unknown motives and makes an unknown amount of money (or receives unknown non-monetary value of some sort). So no outrage. They can eavesdrop and wiretap all they want. And "privacy" becomes just another front for some other agenda involving hate or fear or envy or whatever other bias you have against people who get paid. Got it.
So, by that criteria, about half of the News Corp eavesdropping was good then. Because about half of the people eavesdropped on by News Corp were government officials.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I'd rather put up with a hypocritical elite, which really is little more than an annoyance compared to the big disasters that we can expect.
The 20th Century shows us what an annoyance a powerful ruling elite can be, with about a hundred million dead from communist regimes alone, plus all the dead from World War 2. It was even annoying for those that weren't slaughtered. But I guess it'll be different this time ...?
Versus predictions of gradually warming weather over the course of several decades. Again, I'll take my chances with the possibility of warming.
These effects aren't necessarily temperature increases; they are just as likely to be more energetic storms, or droughts, or floods.
Or a warn breeze on a late spring afternoon, spinning cottonwood tufts across a meadow through the waning Saturday's orange sunlight, bearing just the slightest perfumed hint of a distant orchard's cherry blossoms.
Why are you guys always so negative?
More for #0: The people shouting the loudest haven't given up air travel. They don't keep their (often multiple) houses at 55 degrees F in the winter instead of the 70 F they find comfortable. They don't run their washing machines on timers so the load runs at 3AM. They're typically a wealthy and self-styled elite class who, even if they aren't setup to directly benefit from AGW measures, are largely insulated from the hardships they would impose on the rest of us.
If the choice is between risking warmer weather and having our lives micromanaged by an arrogant, deceitful ruling class of elite technocrats who hold ordinary folks like me in contempt, then I'll take my chances with warmer weather.
I'm not arguing drunk driving. That still needs to be illegal and enforced (though the impairment standard needs to be set based on actual impairment, not based on politics or scare campaigns or phony statistics). The police should catch drunk drivers and criminals. Ordinary, sober citizens should have nothing to fear from a traffic stop, because it shouldn't be possible to casually or accidentally break a law.
The goal is not rule-making-because-it's-fun-to-tell-people-what-to-do.
I disagree. If that were not the goal, then the rules would be based on real life. But we had a 55 MPH speed limit for decades in the US for political reasons. It started as a silly energy policy. Safety was an afterthought. And it was finally lifted, also for non-safety related reasons.
Speed cameras and red light cameras are 100% for fund raising. This is well known. It's very profitable to tell people what to do when you can collect fines from them. Best not to do it in person. Then fewer people would speed and run red lights because they'd see the enforcement. Use hidden cameras and collect money by mail to maximize profits.
Traffic laws are not generally about safety. Sometimes they are about false perceptions of safety. But mostly they're about fund-raising, politics, and wanting to rule your neighbors' lives because you know The Right Way to Drive.
Then don't ignore them. But don't oppress everyone in the vain attempt to correct the problems of a few.
Deal with the people who are the problem. You don't need to regulate everyone's behavior to deal with a tiny percentage of criminals.
As I said, go ahead with that. You can define dangerous as "imperfectly safe" if you like. (Because you want to control everyone's every move and use "danger" as your justification, perhaps? More "danger" means you can control more things and justify harsher punishments for your disobedient subjects.)
My usage of "not dangerous" was based on normal everyday life.
I think you are forgetting about the law of deminishing returns. You are correct in assuming that a draconian police state will not eliminate all traffic accidents, however you cannot extrapolate backwards to assume that lack of any police will not have an effect on traffic accidents.
I wasn't doing that. It's not an extrapolation. It's an observation based on the idea that people don't want to crash their cars. Policing traffic is ineffective. It alienates ordinary citizens from police. It's a very poor use of government resources and it's an unnecessary application of law and law enforcement where ordinary social courtesy and manners would work just as well. (Note: It wouldn't work perfectly. It might not even work to the satisfaction of some. But it would work as well as the police enforcement we have now. And it would be cheaper and less unjustly burdensome on the innocent.)
No, I was responding to your post, which was doing that. If you want to split hairs on whether something is only 99% safe vs. 100% safe and call the thing that's 99% safe "dangerous", then go ahead. I try to avoid that kind of pedantic nonsense.
Wanting innocent people to be left alone is "arrogance" now. Wanting people to mind their own business is "arrogance".
Using armed agents of government power to enforce your whimsical notions of The Right Way to Drive upon your neighbors: not "arrogance" at all.
US policy should be based on US culture and conditions in the US. Bangalore can solve Bangalore's problems. We'll solve ours.
how can I know which cars contain safe drivers, and which do not?
You can't. Ever. Under any system, or in any situation, real or imagined. You're going to have to grow up and realize that everything isn't about you and your feelings.
There's also multiple views of "danger".
There's the phony, self-serving, control-oriented view that goes like this: "I perceive danger, therefore you must obey". And there's the real one involving crashes and injuries.
for instance, tailgating
Excellent example of something that is not policed. Police do not give out tailgating tickets. Policing tailgating has never prevented a crash. Policing traffic is entirely useless for tailgating.
We're all surprisingly good at it, but that doesn't mean it's not dangerous, and the inevitability of human error means that nobody can claim to be "not dangerous".
In order to have a point, you have to define danger to mean something it doesn't mean. If everything is dangerous, then nothing is.
I'm not surprised people are good at driving. Driving is pretty easy. Policing it doesn't make it any easier, and it doesn't make anyone a better driver.
Lojack isn't universal or universally effective.
And policing is universally effective? What's universally effective? Nothing. Perfection is elusive.
"With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost like the police aren't solving the problem..."
The problem isn't going to be solved without mechanisms for RAPID detection of offenders and efficient enforcement, both of which you find objectionable.
The problem isn't going to be solved. Human problems don't get solved. But we can stop making new problems for innocent people who are minding their own business.
I'm all for rapid detection of people who are a genuine danger. Stop wasting time pestering, hassling, fining, and generally oppressing the innocent. Stop pretending that traffic enforcement is useful. Stop trying to micromanage everyone's every move. Don't condemn ordinary people as "offenders" if they fail to meet some arbitrary and constantly changing metric for ideal driving. In short, mind your own business.
I demand others be insured
I agree with this. But we need tort reform to make the insurance cheaper.
I demand they be deterred from dangerous actions by threat of punishment
They aren't. They're randomly preyed on by police to raise money for police salaries and benefits. They're deterred from dangerous action by not wanting to crash. Or they're not deterred at all.
and I demand they be punished where necessary.
Primates maintain order by deterrence and force. That is all.
You don't need to oppress the innocent to punish the guilty. We maintain order by focusing deterrence and force on criminals, not on ordinary people minding their own business.
I don't care what you do when you are off the road. But once you are on the road, you are a danger to ME.
This is false. I'm not a danger to anyone on the road. Almost no one is.
So if you don't give a fuck about rules, the police hopefully will fuck with you. And I approve.
"Rules" don't prevent crashes. Driving around people instead of into them prevents crashes.
I don't object to rules. My objection is to those who want to rule others. People who want to rule others are evil. They're a danger to everyone. That includes you.
You assume people Give the Proverbial Fuck without being reminded. Maybe you do, in which case congrats on your virtue but don't expect it to scale.
Why can't you just learn to mind your own business? It's none of your business whether anyone else "Gives a Proverbial Fuck" or not. I don't care what "scales" and what doesn't. I want you and the police to stop minding my business. Leave me and everyone else alone. We're trying to live our lives. We don't need you to manage our choices for us. We don't need a government mom or an government overseer.
Drunks don't try hard to avoid crashing and crash often.
So let's start by repealing every other traffic law so the police can focus on the drunks.
Many drivers crash but refuse to carry insurance.
With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost like the police aren't solving the problem...
Many drivers run expired license tags or swap them from other vehicles.
License tags are none of anyone's business. They're completely unnecessary, and only exist to tax people and coerce people.
Auto theft is common.
Auto theft countermeasures are increasingly effective. We can get Lojack. It gets turned on when the car is stolen so the police can find the individual car. We don't need to police everyone driving everywhere to find an individual stolen car that's broadcasting its location.
Did you see a police officer prevent a car crash in your state? No, you didn't.
Since the average driver doesn't crash his car every day, how does this matter? Even very bad drivers often go years without crashing.
You are confusing the affects of cultural differences with the affects of policing. Bad drivers are bad drivers, regardless of police. Courtesy and manners don't come from police either. And police don't design roads to prevent gridlock, nor does the presence of police suddenly make a road built for 1000 cars per hour handle 5000 cars.
With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost as if all that policing doesn't solve the problem...
Even though it's against the law? And with all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost as if all that policing doesn't solve the problem...
This type of thing is the inevitable consequence of policing road traffic. But here's the thing about that: road traffic doesn't really need to be policed. The road rules exist to avoid crashes, but no one wants to crash. People try very hard to avoid crashing. If there were no police on the roads, the exact same people would try just as hard to avoid crashing.
But roads are a police state, because you know The Right Way for everyone else to drive. Learn to mind your own business. And tell your neighbor to learn to mind his. Then we can move away from traffic laws and police enforcement to traffic rules and guidelines that are upheld due to ordinary social courtesy and manners (and because you don't want to crash).
And then you won't have to worry about police tracking your every move.
Lots of other things don't need to be policed either. Please learn to mind your own business. Thanks.
So you're really outraged that News Corp. makes money and doesn't hide that fact.
Meanwhile, Anonymous has unknown motives and makes an unknown amount of money (or receives unknown non-monetary value of some sort). So no outrage. They can eavesdrop and wiretap all they want. And "privacy" becomes just another front for some other agenda involving hate or fear or envy or whatever other bias you have against people who get paid. Got it.
So, by that criteria, about half of the News Corp eavesdropping was good then. Because about half of the people eavesdropped on by News Corp were government officials.
False. Economic scholarship on government spending multiplier effect is all over the map, from negative numbers to +3x or so. There's no "economics says" consensus number. "Economics says it's 2x" is therefore simply false.
When Anonymous does it: good. When News Corp does it: bad.
Selective outrage certainly is a useful propaganda tool, isn't it?