There are times when texting is safe. There are times when it is not safe. The only ones who can really know the difference are the people behind the wheel. FULL ARTICLE by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/10958/a-penchant-for-controlling-others/
A Penchant for Controlling Others
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The basic reality is that everyone wants everyone (including themselves – initially) stuffed into the lower tail end of the distribution curve where perfect safety resides, and then proceed to exempt themselves in practicality because they are really of the timber that deserves the freedom the upper tail provides – “maximum control for everyone else who hasn’t proven their worth with maximum freedom for me where I prove it to myself everyday”. Extend that to every human endeavor and you’ve got today’s socio-political reality. Any attempt to show that there is plenty of safety AND freedom in a goodly chunk of the whole distribution curve is met with disdain and shock. They are so assimilated to a culture where Force is the default setting they can’t see a reality without it.
I agree with everything in this article. But I can’t help wondering if Lew is ranting because he was ticketed for texting and driving.
Another beautiful bout of Clarity. Can’t help but think about how folks drive here in China which has no “Yield” and very few “Stop” signs and where there is very little “gentlemanly” road behavior. There evolves a natural order to things even on the roads here. One learns to expect the unexpected and adjusts and somehow it all works out.
I agree with you, A. Nambiar, on one thing – L. Rockwell was ranting. No driver has the right to anything behind the wheel that diverts their attention from the road. Either you’re concentrating on your driving or you’re concentrating on something else. If you develop a condition where your faculties are no longer sharp enough to drive safely then you should tear up your driver’s licence and sell your car. Surprise, suprise, anyone who texts and drives will get the odd rude shock when they realise they’re off course and are lucky they weren’t in heavy traffic where they otherwise would’ve caused a crash. Even worse is drink-driving – not only you’re under the spell of a sedative and a muscle-relaxant, you’re also trapped in a false sense of heightened capabilities. Hence drunks think they’re suddenly good-looking, a cohesive speaker and a good fighter. On the upside there’s anectodal evidence that drunks survive crashes better than their sober counterparts.
The most stupid form of communication is texting and the majority of the population do not use it for important issues. State police have held driving test at many schools to allow students to drive through test area and proved that their driving was greatly hampered by texting and driving.
What I would do is administer a small fine for texting and driving. Then allow the court to pull up your text and if that message was not important, then your fine would be increased and you would loose your license.
Driving is not a right! You share the road with others. If you can’t play by the rules of the road, their is alternative transportation available. And if you are so damn important that you need to keep in communication with others, then you can afford your own driver.
This points up the fundamental flaw in the (democratic/nanny) state’s mandate. The state, in making these absolute rules to be adhered to irrespective of context, proceeds on the basis of a fundamental axiom:
‘People are too stupid to make their own decisions’.
This assumption underlies all interventionist legislation, not only cell texting while driving.
But , given that a vote is a decision, the inevitable corollary is that people are too stupid to vote.
So, the very assumption that rationalises State intervention in peoples’ lives, is the very same assumption that must necessarily negate government’s claim to legitimacy.
Yeah well Mushindo if private operators would place the same limits that the government does for the sensible reason that certain activities are just plain dangerous then you have lost no freedoms when the government restricts it.
It is an eloquent argument, Lew, and I find it quite valid, except perhaps for the comparison of restrictions imposed on drivers by government to restrictions imposed by private road owners. Is there really so much difference between a contract with a private owner and a government’s law in an instance of severely limited choices? No matter who owns the road, government or a private owner, I may have few, or no, route options to get from A to B. And in a privately-owned-roads environment, I may have few, or no, options as to which road owner’s restrictions I choose to to contract. Theoretically a choice of contracts would be available, but practically the choice is likely to be absent. Therefore, we wouldn’t enjoy a noticeable increase in freedom in a privately-owned-roads scenario.
Lew,
It is a good example to illustrate the insidious creep of interventionism.
The one issue I would quibble with is the example you give about privately owned roads, and the ability of the market to keep in check overly oppressive private road owners. A private owner of a critical path “toll road” could put a strangle hold on transportation in order to extract an outrageous toll for the convenience of the shorter route.
We have examples here in California if such results. For example, a train service between San Jose and Santa Cruz brought tourists to the beach. A competing bus company bought up the rail right of way and blew up the tunnels, forcing free-market consumers to take the bus.
The Blue line in LA is another example.
I agree with your central point regarding free choice and government intrusion. But I begin to resist when taken to its logical conclusion of “complete elimination” of all government regulation and abolition of all “public” property, as was recently articulated by Huerta De Soto on this site.
As with all large-scale systems, whether ecology or society, the “natural” state is one of diversity kept in balance through competition and “natural” laws.
The key issue for me is not driven by the vision of complete annihilation of government, but to return the function to a “natural” order, much the same as the concept of recession trying to bring the market back into balance after the boom. The boom is caused by something (well understood by Austrian’s), and excessive government intervention is also caused by something. Many of us can agree that it needs to be much smaller and less intrusive, and the choices we make about allowable roles should be driven by informed intelligence approaching the application of “free-market” forces. But abolishment of all “public” property and the absolute privatization of all property goes too far. It is a “tragedy of the commons” issue.
Paul,
You anticipated my argument while I was writing. I agree with your point. Well said.
For those spearing Rockwell about texting, reckless driving has been on the books for decades. They apply in any instance where a person is clearly endangering other people e.g. driving on the wrong side of the road while – tying their tie, putting on makeup, getting something out of the glove compartment, eating a burger, rolling down the window, lighting a cigarette, picking their nose, changing the radio station, digging ear wax out of their ear, talking on a cell phone, opening a soda can, yelling at a child, eating an ice cream cone, gawking at an accident, wiping condensation off the window, adjusting the defrost settings, putting in a cd, fiddling with their GPS, checking themselves in a mirror, looking at a map, putting on a pair of gloves, flipping off the person behind them, yawning, shall I go on? The OPERATIVE issue is driving on the wrong side of the road (or otherwise endangering anyone) while doing anything, and laws exist for such instances already. The point of the article is enhanced by such a list. If any of you can say that at ALL times you are bolt upright with hands at ten and two, then fine. If you can’t, you’ve proven the point (in more ways than one).
Seatbelt laws to keep me from hurting myself — wrong. Helmet laws to keep my brain in my head — wrong. Texting laws to keep me from ramming my car into you — probably right.
C’mon, don’t get too wound up in the idea that there must not be any laws. After all, the credo of the libertarian has always been to allow behavior that doesn’t harm someone else.
The act of texting while driving doesn’t hurt someone else. The act of running into them does. The law should be against running into someone else, not texting while driving.
Reminds me of the times when people killed themselves and others because they were twiddling their tamagotchi behind the wheel. Just don’t do it. Thing is, once you have killed yourself, the law is no longer applicable. But before you have killed others with retarded behaviour, it should be. There can’t be a law against retarded behaviour nor can there be laws that cover all possible kinds of retarded behaviour, but there can be laws that put lampposts into the enormously dark universe of retardedness that surrounds us. They have _some_ use.
On a total tangent (or maybe not so total), get a load of _this_:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/green-beliefs-win-legal-protection-1814180.html
Remove traffic lights or street signs, and see what happens to the much touted “spontaneous cooperation”…
People co-operate because there are well-defined, pre-agreed and enforceable rules that are designed to benefit the majority of the participants as a whole, and more or less are accepted by them… This makes not following the rules less beneficial to the minority drivers inclined to behave differently due to personal preferences (e.g. getting into the accident, and losing one’s license while driving drunk outweighs the benefit of letting oneself go for a change)…
After all, freedom is all about making the right compromises with the right parties at the right moments … Otherwise there would be nothing but chaos…
It is true though, that some traffic rules do not make any sense, but then those are generally lightly enforced, anyway…
to pbergn:
and yet…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18217318
Pbergn….’Remove traffic lights or street signs, and see what happens to the much touted “spontaneous cooperation”…
IN my experience ( In Cape Town), when traffic lights are out , I generally find traffic flow IMPROVES, as drivers revert to the convention of treating the intersection as a four-way stop, with first arrival at the line having right of way, and the driver behind him having to give way to the one already at the line on the perpendicular flow. Its all very gentlemanly.
It is impossible and, therefore, inappropriate to attempt to make the roads safer by prohibiting every possible situation that could contribute to making the roads less safe. The rule should be straightforward–each driver is responisble for the damage he causes, regardless of the contributing factors. On a practical note, when someone tells me that it is appropriate to ban talking on a cell phone while driving, I ask this question: what is the difference between talking on a cell phone held to one’s ear and talking to a passenger while holding a coffee cup? Or, how about my neighbor who lost an arm in a childhood accident? Since he cannot have both hands on the wheel, should he be allowed to drive? Instead of trying to control behavior, we just need to hold people responsible for their actions.
It is a good idea to avoid distractions when driving an automobile as the driver is ultimately responsible for his/her actions but every good idea need NOT be codified into law.
“There are times when texting is safe. There are times when it is not safe. The only ones who can really know the difference are the people behind the wheel”
Unfortunately, Mr. Rockwell, people often make bad decisions and the rest of us on the road should not be at the mercy of their bad behavior. We should not wait until the texter or drunk crashes their car and kills someone to hold them responsible, any more than we should wait until someone waving around a knive or gun in a public space starts shooting or killing people before we act.
“The act of texting while driving doesn’t hurt someone else. The act of running into them does. The law should be against running into someone else, not texting while driving.”
Again, it is better to prevent the behavior rather than wait until the damage is done and then clean up afterwards.
“Remove traffic lights or street signs, and see what happens to the much touted “spontaneous cooperation”…”
Actually I would have to disagree with this one. In Korea stop signs are non-existent except where necessary. Many intersections are three-way or four-way yields. These intersections actually work very well compared to placing a stop at every corner which is the practice here.
They also have very high urban speed limits (80km/h / 50 mph for any multilane street).
However, I do have to admit that their death rate is significantly higher especially for pedestrians, which is mostly caused by pedestrians trying to cross busy roads with high speed traffic or speeding drivers who take the speed limit as the speed they should drive at, not the speed LIMIT, as well as underenforcement by police.
Unlike in theory, in practice, people can and do commit bad behavior and when they can put others at risk, some loss of freedom is required (i.e. the freedom to drive while texting, or the freedom to drive at 100mph down a city street).
As they say, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’, but the point some people seem to miss is that legal prohibitions require enforcement, is usually done after the fact, not before, and if applied to actions that are not in themselves an initiation of force or fraud, may well have a limited effect on achieving prevention, or worse, result in perverse, unintended consequences. This is where a common or customary legal system makes more sense, as what is considered reasonable or unreasonable under the circumstances are discovered, as opposed to trying to legislate reasonable and unreasonable.
So while you have police stopping and harrassing people for texting while driving, I wonder how many real crimes aren’t being prevented or investigated. Limited resources means police have to prioritize their enforcement of laws. This is especially true during economic downturns, and tax revenues are down.
Once again, libertarians demonstrate their knack for defending the undefendable, using nothing but common sense.
I love it!
I am with Rockwell on this, 100%.
There are thousands of things you can do to make it less safe to drive, and we are all guilty of them at some time. It is precisely the fact that we know them to be hazardous that teaches us to take extra care.
Not just texting, but playing loud music so that you can’t hear the engine or surrounding cars well, driving when sleepy, driving after a large meal, having an animated conversation, driving when emotionally upset, driving when you have a headache or fever, driving when sneezing or coughing, batting a mosquito or spider who lands on you, driving when the car is too hot or too cold, and so on and so forth.
Give the government the right to snoop on texting drivers, and it will soon snoop on everyone’s activities, inside the car and out. That is the path to the Police State.
There is another reason why it is stupendously silly to fine people in an effort to make them drive more safely. Unsafe driving can kill you; it can leave you paraplegic. If corporal and capital punishment won’t deter people, what chance has a fine?
Another point. The statistics from seat belts in countries in which they have been made compulsory show the same incidence of injuries and fatalities before and after their introduction. Why? People take more risks when wearing a belt because an accident is likely to be less serious for them.
Similarly, a ban in texting may actually cause accidents. A man may speed to an appointment because he is not allowed to text that he is running late.
There are two ways to get people to drive or act safely. One is for the all-powerful state to micromanage their behavior, to breathe down their neck nonstop. The other is to give them complete freedom, but to make them pay full recompense for any mistake they make which injures others.
I purchased tamagotchi v6 game for my kids to keep them away from pc. It looks cute to even an adult like me.
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