Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
by aalleavitch on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:18PM
(#17516042)
What we lack is trust. We lack security in each other, in many cases for entirely legitimate reasons. Reestablishing systems of trust is one of the challenges we’re facing right now.
Reminds me of the one common Freudian slip I notice in the wake of a scandal. If they talk of restoring trust as a goal they are so irredeemably corrupt they see only the bad PR as a problem and not the heinous abuses. Since trying to fix the problem doesn't even come to mind to them as something to lie about when they are in hot water!
In general I probably agree with you. But I seriously can not comprehend how that applies to the example given in the parent post.
I'll take a stab. People don't trust their government or their justice system to fairly enforce the law or to draft a law that, all legalese deconstructed, is fair in the first place.
On your example: are you sure there is nothing to debate? No possible harm? No possible unintended consequence?
One thing I've observed over and over is that there are unintended consequences to everything. It often takes years to figure them out.
No. Once upon a time we nominated experts to make most of those decisions. Groups like the EPA or the IRS were given a mandate to examine what was going on and ban behaviors that did harm. But today "regulation" is a bad word. Everything is political. The EPA and IRS cannot ban anything without massive public debate. In fact, most regulatory bodies are so under pressure to reduce any and all regulation that they rarely ever ban anything. Quick and efficient regulation of harmful behavior is dead.
Example: the recent bill to ban upskirting photography in the UK. Nothing much to debate. But the bill gets killed by the new breed of politicians who demand every new regulation be subject to the full public process in order to make the act of passing new regulations as difficult as possible.