How to tell if a Law is Good or Not?
It should be pretty obvious that in today's complex ecosystem of politics, almost nobody truly understands what the ultimate impact of every new law will be. Here's why:
- Today, it's common for legislators to not even read the law.
- It's common for a law to be motivated or opposed by a commercial interests or other corrupt intentions.
- It's common for legislators who actually do read the law to not understand it.
- It's common for multiple yet unrelated laws to be bundled together to help obfuscate the obviously bad or corrupted ones.
- It's common for those who transcribe the law into the practical US and State Codes and regulations to change it in someway as a matter of necessity, incompetence or ignorance.
- It's common for those who enforce the law to misinterpret or choose to enforce only portions of the law or twist the intent.
- It's common for those who adjudicate the law to twist the outcome or success of its intent.
- It's not possible to predict how future legislators, regulators, enforcement agents and judges will interpret and process the law - plenty of history on this starting with the second amendment, first and fourth amendments - then and now.
Given this gauntlet of improbabilities, that a law will even be in practice as it was originally intended, what is the possibility a law will actually even do most of what it is intended to do these days without other unforeseen consequences ala "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"?
Then, given all the incomplete, incompetent, misguided, obfuscated and corrupted information available these days, I believe that very few, if any people are actually qualified to determine that a law will be good. So with the impossible task
of understanding the necessary complexities and interactions of our huge
governmental ecosystem, in order to make finite judgments on individual laws, I’ve
concluded that a philosophy about new laws is easier to manage and just about as effective, if
not more, than trying to fathom the implications of every new law.
And I base that philosophy on personal liberty which many people feel is tied to the size of government. Indeed - as government grows bigger, individuals get smaller. But, it’s probably easier to show that the “size of
government” has decreased over this current administration rather than increased, so I wouldn’t even
attempt it.
Because, so much
redistribution of government resources has taken place in the last 12 years, it
really only boils down to how much liberty we are losing year over year. For example, decreasing the size of military
but increasing domestic agency enforcement officers could result in a net
effect of reducing the size of government but increasing the loss of personal liberty. Or reducing department size but increasing computational abilities, tools and intelligence could result again in more loss of liberty even though the number of personnel shrank. Basically, if we could show the increase in the power of government year over year, in its ability to invade and control the lives of its citizens, I think everyone would be seriously frightened. And new laws are often the justification for growing the size and/or powers of enforcement agencies.
And so, here's some of the statistics you'll never see:
A year by year comparison of:
·
The number of government employed or sponsored people
who are in enforcement positions.
·
A “liberty overhead coefficient” (for example, #
of regulations X severity of punishment)
·
Enforcement Systems Effectiveness (weapons,
control and intelligence gathering)
All I know is that I could do a lot more with a lot less
worry about being in “compliance” with something or someone, or the paper work to do it, the farther I
look back in time during my life. And there’s only one
organization that everyone always looks to for help solving the world's problems which displaces that level of personal freedom –
government.
So, in my opinion, the reach of the part of government which
invades my privacy and threatens my freedom has increased almost every year since
I was born. And this feels like and exponential progression,
not linear. So, with the impossible task
of understanding the necessary complexities and interactions as well as whose "facts" to believe, my philosophy has come down to this:
Anything that produces a
net growth in the government’s means of control or enforcement is further
detrimental to personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Since new laws generally make things more
difficult and contribute to the growth or reach of some form of enforcement mechanism. I feel it’s
statistically safer to be against any such law if you don’t have the time, resources or
knowledge to fully investigate it.
And, given the media’s incompetence, the purposeful obfuscation of
information by both government and industrial entities with their own agendas, fear
and omissions, I reassert that, it’s not possible for anyone to make these decisions
for the overall good in any consistent manner regardless of where they are in
or out of government!
And this is why of all the active politicians I’ve tried to follow,
Rand Paul is currently on top of my list. Rand Paul often has the fewest legislative proposals which increase the
invasive powers or corruptible power of the government. Of the legislation Rand Paul has sponsored or introduced, I would agree with at least 70% of it. No one else is above 30% in my
book. And at 70%, that's the best I expect to find. So what is the agreement percentage you honestly give your favorite politician in terms of HIS ACTUAL LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS (not what dribbles out of his mouth) which affect your personal liberty?
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