« Global Warming Credibility Problem
On Eve Of Film Festival, Tongue-In-Cheek Ads Poke Fun At Stereotypes »
Too Many Notes, Too Many Laws
Aug 4th, 2011 | 21 responses
it’s not like in the film Amadeus, wherein the dunderheaded Emperor pettishly snaps to Mozart about his newest composition, “Too many notes, too many notes.” The Emporerr didnt know what he was talking about.
But, a sizeable group of people in the USA do know when there are Too many laws, Too many laws!
I have been thinking for some time when our local congressman asked us to help find docs to live and work in rural areas…I thought shut down all the turf and trade protectionism laws, make medical school one year long for simple diagnosis, prescribing and treatment, make that year cost under 10 grand, graduate people and send them into the world. You will have doctors galore capable of dealing with 90% of all ailments. No malpractice payments, no law suits, no huge union called the AMA, no protectionist turfists, no bs continuing ed for docs yearly done wherever there is a golf course. Just helping the people get well and stay well. Old fashioned dedication.
Don’t get me started. Yesterday I spoke to an electrician working to help me set some porch lights. Four years to be a qualified electrician. Four years. Yet, I can, as a homeowner, go down and get a permit to wire my own house with a two week course of study. What insane state officials and local officials decided this? Never mind. I know. “The Somebodies.” As usual. Unless you can be glued to the tv or go downtown for the subterranean city council meetings, you have NO idea what laws, rules, policies, what maruauders, exploiters, naive people are being passed on with sceptre or sword.
THE SWEETWATER SPRING
There’s an old story told in my father’s family who are from the farms: I’ll tell you a bit of it here. It’s about a miracle spring, the water of which was so sweet. Everyone had access. But some came along and said, that needs to be protected. We need to license it so people dont use fake water to sell far and wide, conning people. So they built a house over the spring. Then they decided some people were taking too much water. The spring was not drying up. It was just that some were afraid it would dry up. So they locked the doors of the house and it was only open by permit. It was so easy to gain a permit, it had to be made harder, because too many people thought the freedom of the water, the free use of the water, belonged to them, as birthright or something. What were they thinking! They had to be stopped, disabused of that sick belief. And on it went until a group of foreign warlords heard of the spring, and overcame the house and the squabbling villages all around, and now had sole control of the spring. The warlords made sure to enslave the people into bottling the water and driving it worldwide, selling it at higher and higher prices, all profits coming only to the thugs. And somewhere, somehow, everyone forgot the sweetness of the water, and the freedom of the water –and themselves– for now life only revolved around how to slave or enslave.
From where I stand on the molehill, I see we are so clogged by laws, licenses, policies, rules, have tos, musts, that we can barely move to do what many of us believe we were set on earth to do… be free, free others.
To live any other way than free because one fears ‘the 29,000 perils’… to not be free to make, create, help, heal, write, hold, make, do with one’s life as one sees fit with no harm to others… seems to me to not be anarchy but gold plated assininity. Unless one believes all humans are infants who need to constantly be told what to do. I’ve been to law school, I know the essence of the law is as much peace between human beings as possible, as much clarity and justice as possible by human sights. The Law was never meant to be an ever increasing and pernicious pestilence that enslaves the best intents and interests of full-hearted humans.
21 Responses to “Too Many Notes, Too Many Laws”
Scenario:
1. Group of people find an amazing and desirable natural spring that provides “sweet” water.
2. “A” type personalities, (group dominant aggressive), contrive to create laws and procedures that make the sweet spring water as exclusive as possible, (natural “A” type primate/human behavior commonality).
3. Dr. Estes, (member of group) frustrated, finds access to spring water difficult with unnecessary regulation. Dr. Estes passive, accepts fate along with others of poor access to spring water, (“B” type personality), but communally keep the pressure on “A” types for access, rotating action groups in succession and resting in between turns.
4. Along comes plague from God.
5. “A” type personalities, (group dominant aggressive), having increased stress from the increasingly frustrating work of regulating the spring water have weakened immune systems, cardio vascular disease, weakened brains, and, other stress related health issues, cannot weather the plague and die.
6. Dr. Estes and other “B” type personalities having normal healthy immune systems, brains, ect., survive, throw away law books, share water freely. No one gets huffy, everybody lives longer because of unselfish adult behavior.
7. God looks down and smiles.
Your story reminds me specifically of the research work published by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D neuroendocrinology, (professor Stanford), regarding stress in primates and humans. (I saw it on PBS!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky
you have, I think, Allen, successfully morphed an ancient tale into a modern Tim Burton-like fairytale…
Say more about Sapolsky’s work… like to hear. Your comment about the overlords suffering from something seeming akin to overpop’d cage of rats wherein agression is multiplied out of propor. to space needs, and the rats suffer ill health as a result… is interesting. I wonder if Chainsaw Al ever felt those ‘stressors’. I think he claimed to have not icewater in his veins, I think he once claimed to have no veins at all. Sometimes I think power/aggression gives such adrenlin that person doesnt initially register the stressors. Veiled by the over and over again ‘feeling’ of ‘oh he__ yeah!
Thanks
It may be hard to quantity the negative effect of the sheer volume of laws, licenses, regulations, etc, especially when many of them arguably had good reasons for being put into place (or perhaps simply good lobbyists). But there is certainly some effect, although my bias towards small government might make me likely to overstate it. But I suspect it might explain, for instance, some of the differences in the unemployment rate between America and countries in Europe – if you raise the cost of doing business, you will have less of it.
@postlibertarian
“– if you raise the cost of doing business, you will have less of it.”
excellent point, right on the head: one wonders why so many cannot see this.
Dr. Estes-
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, and, family, was featured last night on PBS, (I think POV), documenting his work in the Masi Mara, Kenya, where he spent ten years taking blood samples from a baboon clan and observing their behaviors. He was essentially measuring their stress against their health, categorizing, freezing and storing their blood. What he discovered, astounds me.
He found that stress in the baboons had a direct effect on their health and long term survivability, (as it does in humans). He describes the clan in unlikable terms meaning he considered them socially as backstabbing, vindictive, conniving, little “bastards”, (his words), in behavior and perfect for social stress studies, (because primates are the only species that create their own stress). The assertive behavior started at the top of the clan with the “A” type dominate aggressive males and permeated the behavior of all the “A” type competitors, working it’s way down the pecking order on a regular basis. Those inclined to being jerks constantly asserted their status in the clan. The “B” types, the passive and more inclined to accepting their lot in life spent most of the time grooming each other and staying out of the way of the “A” types. (Note here that the “A” and “B” type is solely my own description because I cannot narrate the entire documentary for you exactly). In other words the leaders where jerks and jerk behavior was the order of the day for the dominate clan members against each other and any “B” types, (groomers) that didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Basically a tyranny.
Then something amazing happened. The food supply became tainted with tuberculosis. The entire baboon clan became sick and Dr. Sapolsky sort of figured ten years of painstaking research was going down the drain. He then discovered that ONLY THE DOMINAT “A” TYPE personalities in the clan could not survive the effects of the disease! Their immune systems were weakened by the effects of stress, but the “B” types, (passive groomers), all survived the illness!
Furthermore, the “B” types changed their overall clan behavior. With the Dominate aggressive competitors gone, no more were there attacks on one another. Even if a male came into the clan from the outside with these aggressive behaviors and tried taking over, within six months, the clan communally, changed his behavior into a passive “B” type! The clan grew and became stronger and overall longevity increased. Tyranny gone naturally selected, (my addition).
PostLibertarian,
Unemployment Rates Around The World
You may want to rethink that argument.
Anecdotal stories like this make my skin crawl, not so much because these rules truly are inane, but because they seem to justify a libertarian point of view.
The libertarian point of view scares me outright.
The problem with the libertarian point of view is it sees the government as the enemy of liberty. More accurately, it sees government as the ONLY enemy of liberty. This is patently false.
It is equally likely (I would wager more likely if you look across history) that other citizens, states, municipalities, businesses, groups, etc. can ALSO be enemies of liberty.
The man upriver can take too much or ruin what’s left and leave you dry or poisoned. Who’s to protect you then in a world of libertarians?
Well, we’ll all be gun owners, so maybe you could shoot him …
Bad laws, cumbersome laws, outdated laws, contradictory or unenforceable laws, they’re all bad. But let’s stop the notion that “government is bad”, instead work towards good, responsible, right-sized governance
that’s quite a remarkable study Allen, thank you for typing it all out cogently. I wonder if he’s written a book, it would be a fascinating read. I’ve often thought about how many of our nuns live so long, and often Buddhist monks and nuns too, at least if they dont live under the dictatorship of Than Shwe. Your synopsis gives much to contemplate.
Dear barky, I did cover the Libertarian convention for TMV, you might be interested to google it… and I’m not a libertarian, more of a pragmatist, though not sure with how complex society is, we can, any of us, actually be just ‘one’ viewpoint about all things and still be reasoned. I dont hold gov’t as ‘bad.’ But I do see, here in Colo where I live, for instance, having been a Chair of one of the State Regulatory Boards, how rule after rule, law after law is layered over the last many, year in and year out. We also are a ‘sanctuary city” so called, which is not the topic here, but I note how many break the law in having their little vending wagons because they cannot afford the steep prices for apps in licensing and excise. On the other end of the spectrum, I watch how white-eyed expensive it is to train in most any profession or trade, out of reach of many many gifted people. In my own profession, the cost of training is usury-like, I think… that is costing so much that money must be borrowed and borrowed at often unfav. rates, and paid back litearlly over one’s lifetime. That I can do something about in terms of keeping my fees reasoned for candidates, and not joining in on the ‘the more you pay the more it’s worth’ myth. But overall, there is some strange phenom going on since forever, that appears to equate high cost of ed. with high outcome of skill. Could be, but at least 50% are in bottom of class no matter how much or little is charged. Too, just as an aside, I am watching carefully the Pell grant fiasco, and its B’s of dollars to for-profit schools, but esp the fact that in 25 years, pell grants have risen so much, viz 25 years ago, pell $250. Today, near 6K. And looking suspiciously like a subsidy to universities, all of them, including University of Phoenix, a for-profit. Very interesting times to live in, as they say. I liked your term ‘right-sized’ governance. Just as many softwares have become open source, I’d like to see something similar occur in the trades and professions in terms of regulation, like you said, enough, but not a preponderance.
Thanks.
@Quelcrist Falconer
do you know what the unemployment rates were before the recession in France for instance. Some countries have had up and down rates for many decades now. In that sense, comparing cross-countries, I wonder what the rate were, say, before 2008, for instance. I was just looking at rates of unemployment in Mississippi, in Gaza and in Quebec earlier this week. Massive. But also, there is a long history of same in those and similar locales. I think over all my point in the article, though I appreciate your stats, was that the cost of learning/doing/ becoming in certain trades and professions, even hanging a sheepskin, has become astronomially laden with expense and gov’t regulation. Sometimes, having been on the ‘inside’ of DORA, I think people regulate because they can keep trying to create perfect protection of the public… which is the main reason for regulation… but I wonder if one can sometimes ruin matters, have unintended consequences, by overprotectionism. Just my .02.
thanks
just want to say, I’ve pulled a double night shift tonight and am heading to get some shut-eye here at 7am in the morning. lol. Will be back.
Thanks
In programming, we often have to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring” rel=”nofollow”>refactor code, which essentially means rewriting it to do what it did before, in order to make it more efficient or easily readable. It’s required because the fastest way to add a feature or fix a big is to simply change the part that needs it. After a while, those little fixes and changes start interfering with each other. It’s not long before you reach a point where it’s faster to rewrite the code from scratch to make changes easier again.
The point is, laws occasionally need to be scrapped and rewritten to make sense in light of changes to both the law itself, and the other laws that affect it.
It’s good you note a real-world item that’s not essential to the code or to the algorithm, but in the real world, essential: Making the code readable. (“Hit by a bus”: “What happens if you [the coder] are hit by a bus?” Can someone else easily take your place with your code?)
Quelcrist,
US unemployment rates are definitely high right now, but the crisis since 2008 has kinda thrown a lot of ideologies for a loop. At the very least there’s a whole bunch of variables going on. If you look at the long-term though over the last couple of decades US has much better looking numbers than a lot of European countries. (For example “long-term unemployment” rates of 1.51% vs. 2.8%-4.7% for Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. On the other hand, countries like Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland look pretty good. It’s complicated, and there’s a lot of factors involved. I believe raising the cost of business causes less of it, but I don’t know how much. I’m willing to admit it could be less than I think. It sure makes me personally less likely to start my own business, though.
I do agree with what Barky says:
“Bad laws, cumbersome laws, outdated laws, contradictory or unenforceable laws, they’re all bad. But let’s stop the notion that “government is bad”, instead work towards good, responsible, right-sized governance”
Unfortunately, lobbying and corruption seem to make these things hard to get rid of. For example, we haven’t even undone the ethanol boondoggle yet even though everyone (except farmers) from conservatives to environmentalists knows it’s bad bad bad.
DR.Estes-
I left his wiki link in my first post. The documentary is showing tonight again in my area. “Why Zebras don’t get ulcers” (2008)
$24 will buy a copy from PBS.
thanks allen, each reader can check their local PBS schedule. Unfortunately, not playing here, but will keep my eye out for it. I wonder, does PBS have replays on hulu or netflix? I rarely watch tv except for news feeds, but there are some very cool docu’s out there, Caught the tail end of one the other night on men in Finnish saunas, sounds odd I know, but actually very insightful about men speaking very candidly about their hopes, dreams, sorrows, happinesses… in the midst of all the rocks’ steam
@ProfE
“After a while, those little fixes and changes start interfering with each other. It’s not long before you reach a point where it’s faster to rewrite the code from scratch to make changes easier again.”
your insight into the ‘tinkering’ with the engines reminded me of my dad, an old country tailor, who used to say people were fools if they thought they could alter a vest without taking the entire thing apart and sewing it again from scratch… that it would never hang elegantly or servicably to take in or let out only one part.
Dr. C.:
So LOL at your reply to my post, simply because it shows you were tired when you wrote it. It’s all cool, though, because IMO you made your point tremendously in that sleep-deprived post.
I’ve been thinking about that, too. Education generally is now out of reach for so much of the citizenry. You either bankrupt your family or you guarantee bankruptcy for yourself for a degree, and, because most degrees don’t really teach you anything useful, you have to then go on for certifications, licenses, etc.
People talk about the “military-industrial complex”, but what we have that we should truly fear is the “profit-from-education” industry. It’s a huge impediment to long-term growth IMO.
THAT, hits it exactly barky
“People talk about the “military-industrial complex”, but what we have that we should truly fear is the “profit-from-education” industry. It’s a huge impediment to long-term growth IMO.”
Dr E
I am always the last one to comment, so here is my reply, after thinking about it last night and I wasn,t going to reply because it seems the other commentors covered all the bases, but this morning I heard on the radio something that I had always thought was just my isolated opinion and that was that if they the ‘corporations’ would bring all the industries back into the USA, that would solve the problem…well this Mark said the very same thing I always beleived. Plus he said if the corporations that are over seas didn,t comply with our demand, that they should have the hell taxed out of them as a penalty..well I was in for a surprise, the host of this program came back with “their is only one problem with that .. he was missing and that was OSHA the EPA and he listed a few other that stops Corporations from keeping jobs here in the United States with all the regulations and taxes they the ‘Corps’have to pay and that spells profits better made for these corporations that they don,t have to pay into- by doing business over seas. Regulations are hurting the economy and strangling its recovery. Hmmm? mouthful to be sure. But I say where would we be without these saftey measures put in place? Unions made our workplace “humanely” possible to live longer and enjoy a retirement. By going over seas to turn a profit is still COrporate Greed I don,t care how you slice it. certain regulationing is part of what made us different from other countries and a envy among our communist countries ..Oh yes it still lives and prospers..only under a new disguise. Red China..Russia are sitting back and enjoying our downfull as they and their Asian neighbors can say..” See they with their ‘Capital’ is now going into ‘Default’ Shame…they coul.ve spread it far and wide with nobody higher that their neighbor…in a word Sharcropping methodology reborn. Our future lies with treating everyone equally and somewhere ..we went off the path in the name of demi-god or [Profits] off the back of laborers in these poorer countries.
Dear Dr. Estés:
I regret that I must disagree with the sentiment (mostly) and logic (entirely) of your article. It appears to me that you are employing anecdotal evidence to support an underlying belief. Laws that you decry as being excessive are the only thing that prevents the wholesale exploitation of the masses by the most powerful. Escaping this treatment is one of the reasons America was settled in the first place. Ironically, under tyranny, where the masses have no say in the making of law, the population has many more restrictions than we currently experience.
Many laws and regulations were written, as you well know, reactively as the result of an accident. These laws protect us from ourselves as well as each other. Barky covered this perfectly in his reply. Some laws are written proactively by some perceived threat. These law can be overreaching — an anecdotal example is the proposed Florida law to ban riding in pickup truck beds even though no injuries had been reported. Other laws are written by and for the powerful in order to support their causes and line their pockets. For obvious reasons these laws should be prevented.
The solution, however, is not fewer laws but more educated citizens. Citizens who pay attention to what their elected officials do; act as a system of checks and balances; and provide guidance in the form of voting, petitions, and letter writing. Without laws, we must spend most of our time protecting ourselves, our families, our land, and our possessions. Freedom is not the absence of law, but the presence of cooperation.
Regards,
WW