> “The dangers of crime and slick surfaces described in subsection (3) of this section are enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility”

More here: https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-...

Safety is important but wet pavements are also a hazard when you leave your house or literally do anything outside. Laws that try to masquerade for progressive causes for the sake of your “safety” are rampant in Oregon. There are so many of these insane laws piled up over the years. A friend of mine who was an licensed Architect in the state of Oregon recently moved to Phoenix. Reason? Unbelievable mess of laws and regulations that make it impossible to construct anything but a bog standard house.

One consequence is that our state gas tax hasn't been raised in decades. That's why our gas is cheaper than across the border in WA. They pay a much higher per gallon tax than we do. My town has gotten around this by adding a $10 a month fee for road improvements to our water bills. Other cities and towns let their roads crumble.

I'd estimate that only a small proportion of stations in NJ are attached to any convenience stores that sell things. On highways, yes. Off of highways around towns, they're often attached to a mechanic's garage, and the only things sold beside gas is windshield fluid and a spare quart of oil.

It's notable that NJ and Oregon both have cheap gas relative to many other parts of the country due to close proximity with oil refining &/or transportation infrastructure, which means lower costs to get it to the gas stations.

Although in NJ that discount is slowly going away as the state gradually ratchets up tax on gas purchases. Without that tax they would have by far the cheapest in the country by roughly 16% or $.50/gallon. Now NJ is only cheaper than most when there's a spike in oil prices stemming more from transportation costs, or at least that's what I've observed.

While driving home, I remember thinking that Gas Station Attendant was looking at me funny.

It wasen't until a few years later I heard about the law.

(There's a stretch of highway 101 around Shasta that is a Speed Trap. The cops pull over four vechicles at a time and give everyone tickets. They supposedly use a plane, but I never saw one. They got busted a few years ago, but I heard they are doing it again.)

It is the worst possible way to create a 'jobs program'.

Not quite right: It makes buying gas more expensive.

The state of Oregon could, instead, increase gas taxes by a few cents and devote that wealth to some other economic activity. The net result of the law is waste.

Hemp definitely needs regulation, but the OLCC notoriously over-regulates for the sake of control and income. I'm pretty confident that is OLCC got control, they'd end up putting a lot of folks out of business through excessive red tape

Heck when traveling through NJ and there was a single attendant at a busy station, I got out and pumped my own gas. No one cared.

It would be amusing if Oregon required an electrician to plug in an EV at a public charger.

Do not mind if it is a jobs program. People need the work. Rain sucks. Handling gas sucks.

I get to catch up on a text, queue a show up for driving and pretty much never mind a wait.

Frankly, I would love a Federal and State based program to get more basic labor done. Think of the WPA and CCC from New Deal era times.

So many people need skills, an out from or alternative to service work. Not a thing wrong with service work, but many will want or need to do better. There are simply not enough better jobs for that to happen.

Our parks, roads, towns, many things need work. So, let's get that work done. People can get some real skills out of that stuff. Great! I happen to have many of them growing up how and where I did. I think nothing of building, repairing, whatever. It is familiar and I was shown the good stuff by skilled people. Frankly, these skills can be worth 6 figures in a life. Fix it, help others, improve it, build it, etc...

And when we have all that work in progress, maybe we can then discuss whether pumping gas is a priority or not. Nice problem to have, if you ask me. How can we have it?

That is the kind of what is worth what discussion I would welcome and require to reconsider fuel attendants.

To clarify:

I am part of society and value my time. Having fuel pumped is a great deal. I benefit significantly. Others do as well. Apparently enough of us do.

Besides, basic labors really add up in our lives. They provide great value and the people who do them should earn enough to live a reasonable, dignified life same as anyone else.

I do not want to do basic labors, but will when required. There are more interesting uses of my time. Getting the use of that time is how we should value basic labors.

I value that highly.

A little slack in the system is a very good thing. Think people with troubled past getting a start to build on. That is necessary, or we pay much harder in other ways.

Pay them to attend junior college or something. The payoff is a million times higher.

A while back, my kid was on a baseball team coached by a guy who included pumping gas in the set of things he does to exist, show up for work and do things in this world.

Who are you to judge and put such shame on work that has respectable value? I will answer for you: nobody, same as me, that's who.

And "attend college" = not waste? I must be frank: implying people who do basic labors are somehow wasted, or in need of education is not a reputable assessment. Not to mention, "who pays?" Are we going to put free college out there? I sure hope so, and support that idea. In that scenario, one could pump gas, live small and get an education. More of that in our society please!

The place I get my gas from does my windows, we sometimes catch up on a bit of local news, exchange a joke, "you want that to go?" got that started, and yeah, I chuckled. And more.

"Human capital"

I reject that idea entirely. There is no waste in any of this.

Lives break down into thirds, one of which is work, one is sleep, and the remaining one, ideally funded reasonably by the work and a healthy society, is for people to just be people. Maybe that means hanging out with family, coaching a team, making art, fixing stuff, who knows, and more importantly, who cares?

"A life", "wasted", why? Because you do not feel good about how other people live their lives? Let them do that, you have your own to manage.

I sure do not need my entire life judged by the work I do, nor do I care to have that other third be anything other than what I feel makes the most sense for me, mine, others who I value.

In the scale of things? Yeah, it is a little slack. Easy work. And plenty of people value it. I sure do.

Frankly, in light of the massive abuse, killing, poisoning of "human capital" we do globally, along with our general apathy when it comes to taking care of our own people, I find this line of discussion laughable!

Seriously.

In simple, priority terms, as in something we really should get after?

This does not rate. At. All.

shouldn't you not be watching shows while driving? Or do you mean podcasts or something?

I may abuse the general term "show", and am happy to own that as well as can't be arsed to improve. To me, it is all just a show.

Anyway, here they are. All very different styles, but all very good:

John Lee

William Dufris

Stefan Rudnicki

Scott Brick

In fact, if you enjoy scifi/fantasy, The Psalms of Isaak by Ken Scholes has a full cast with all of the above except for John Lee. (John Less

That series is a very thoughtful set of books, not easily placed into a nice category of high/low fantasy & doesn't romanticize feudalism societies with royalty, lords, etc being the only notable characters. That always annoys me about some types of fantasy: Taking a style of government that is brutal & freedom crushing for 99.99% of the population & focus on the lucky few who where fancy clothes and go to feasts, with a token peasant as "the chosen one".

Bureaucracy isn't that different from code. Some of it's dead legacy that needs to be removed, some of it's legacy that needs to be improved/replaced, some of it's legacy that's good enough, some of it's there for a damn good reason no matter how ugly it looks.

And when it comes to code, you probably trust devs who have specific insights into issues with code and promising replacements.

Some quick googling turns up nothing more than the state Department of Aviation, which looks serve the same purpose as other states' departments of aviation. Namely, to maintain state-owned airfields and support some planning functions.

Not saying it's good nor bad.

I don’t think that is the case for a redundant board.

Security jobs, and working at a gas station, allowed me to do all my homework.

But it would be nice if jobs programs produced more benefit.

Actual benefit comes when people get paid by other people voluntarily making the exchange

And all I can think about are the two attendants running back & forth trying to get as many pumps going as they can, running ragged for a completely bogus reason. Then sometimes the attendants don't even try and the wait is longer, yet those are making the more rational choice of not driving themselves crazy making shit money for a worthless task.

I live in a place with a severe homeless problem. I wish these people had pointless government jobs rather than be out begging on the street.

So we could take 5,000 of them and have them dig holes all day. And the other 5,000 could fill in the holes on the following days. That's about as productive.

Or, if we're viewing it purely as a jobs program, find meaningful work, even if it was just patrolling the town they would have pumped gas in & instead picking up any and every piece of litter and garbage they see, documenting potholes they see in the road or loose branches around power lines for the town's DPW to deal with proactively.

For every 1 soldier actually shooting bullets or 1 bonafide back-bending farmer there are 999 comfy desk jobs for college educated people in the same org chart. Many for whom college was paid for by that government. Is that good or bad?

I’m gonna go with bad.

I'd rather have people on welfare than in these bureaucratic jobs that actually hamper progress, because well they need to be 'involved'

Is that always the case? No, of course not.

- barbering

- cosmetology

- dietitians

- dyslexia therapy

- behavior analysts

- polygraph examiners (!)

- auctioneers

- etc. etc.

[Their site](https://www.tdlr.texas.gov/diet/diet.htm) says that:

> The Dietitians program licenses and regulates dietitians in Texas. A license is required to use the titles "Licensed Dietitian" and "Provisionally Licensed Dietitian." A license is not required to use the titles "Dietitian" or "Nutritionist."

Haven't checked the others, but at least that one seems pretty reasonable.

Also, hospitals tend to have licensed-dietitians to handle stuff like making meal-plans for patients, which is apparently a more involved process than one might think, especially for patients with multiple complications.

Yeah the polygraph one seem anachronistic, but if people still use them I appreciate the state trying to make sure the practitioners aren't more snake oil-y than the field at large.

What do you imagine you're getting from hypothetical oversight? It is not theoretically possible to be more snake-oily than the field at large.

Because hepatitis is real.

Same deal with an acupuncturist.

It does seem like quite a few of the things that require licenses in Texas would be just as safe with a certificate and random inspections (like they do with food handlers).

Well sure, we'd all like that. But those of us who have experience dealing with government regulatory bodies (even justifiable ones like building inspectors, fire inspectors, etc.) are skeptical for good reason. The competence of your licensing overlords will vary greatly.

Free-market dynamics require a lot of intellectual overhead.

For example, in a theoretical world with unbound computation and information-sharing, all stocks on the stock-market should be perfectly priced, and all doctors should be of known qualities. And all of those supplements in the pharmacy should be of known effect, and priced perfectly given that knowledge.

But in more limited contexts, where folks don't have infinite free information and computation, centralized authorities can help provide standards. For example, if you go to a licensed medical-doctor, then you may not know their exact quality, but at least you can generally infer that they're competent enough that the state hasn't yanked their license. Ditto for most other licensed professions.

Anyway, to answer your question: the government does it because it's too costly for everyone to do it themselves. When that changes -- this is, when consumers start to acquire a level of knowledge where they can make informed decisions and find government regulation stifling rather than helpful -- then they petition the government to change in response to such new circumstances.

> intellectual overhead

aka transaction costs.

Licensing, credentials, certification are just the cost of doing business. Open markets are built on transparency, accountability, fair rules, impartial referees, etc.

Sure, it all sucks. The alternative is worse.

You cannot hold someone accountable without a government, because otherwise there's no way to create consequences. Having a private certification authority only adds a layer of indirection.

You've completely failed to distinguish a legal licensure scheme from an independent endorsement scheme.

I mean, the key difference is that with a market solution you're policing one market with another that's even harder for consumers to evaluate than the first one, and consumer choice is what (supposedly) keeps markets in check, so all you've accomplished is making the situation worse. At least using government changes the mechanism by which we apply pressure to the regulators, and their incentives, rather than presenting a worse version of the same thing, so it has the potential to be an improvement.

A dietitian giving bad advice could cause serious harm.

A dyslexia therapist could provide no benefit to the patient.

A cosmetologist could cause someone's hair to fall out.

Like, having something deeper than yelp reviews to help make someone's hair not fall out seems reasonable...

My dad was a doctor who lost his license (nothing dramatic or gossip-worthy involved). He was primarily treating opiate addicts with something called Suboxone. It is sensitive enough that the state puts a hard limit on patients you can have - 100. This means people who need the treatment are often on waiting lists because the doctors who have the qualification to write Suboxone are often at their 100 patient limit. Father told the medical board they need to find placements for his 100 patients or they will end up dead WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. Medical board couldn't give two shits since that's not their problem, last we know at least three died within 4 months or so of not being able to find a new doctor.

All the other licensing requirements do is favor incumbents and restrict competition. Amazon was against paying local sales taxes - until they eventually figured it out; now they are a huge proponent for forcing all online retailers to have to collect all local taxes. Will squeeze out the little guys or drive them into their web store solutions.

Regulations rarely benefit small business or their customers.

Also who seriously pays attention to if someone has a license or not? You can still get a bad haircut or advice from a licensed person. What I find appalling is the more rigorous the licensing the less some people question the people who hold them. Indeed, it's now a thing to criticize any critical thinking around "experts" (such as the anointed one, Saint Fauci) - utterly disgusting.

See "Competition and Monopoly in Medical Care" by Frech.

What tends to happen, however, is that the requirements to acquire a license grow beyond basic health and safety to include a ton of formal education. This is probably due in part to the fact that practitioners are well represented among the people designing the licensing requirements, and they have a vested interest in erecting and maintaining barriers to new entrants.

For example, it typically takes 1,500 hours of instruction to become licensed to cut peoples hair in exchange for money. That amount of training might be reasonable for someone working with potentially harmful chemicals, but on the other hand I can give someone a pretty decent buzzcut and have approximately zero hours of training (but would still face civil penalties if I were to open Frankus' Buzzcut Studio).

It's also worth noting that licensing doesn't necessarily have to be enforced by the state, (although I agree that basic knowledge of the health and safety aspects of an occupation is probably a reasonable requirement to be state-enforced).

You could have a private credentialing agency that certifies practitioners who have completed additional study or exams, or have a certain minimum amount of experience (something along the lines of Microsoft's MCSE credential, but for, say, applying makeup).

I sometimes think they want to license everything because it brings in a fair amount of money in fees.

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/HB01560F...

And I had a mistake in my timing, it's every 12 years.

Texas takes government Texas Ranger seriously.

While in principle checking in on laws seems nice, a mandatory review deadline or it goes away would not be a viable solution in our current political climate.

But even in a more ideal climate, it seems that Congress would be tied up with the reviews and have no time to actually address new or contemporary issues.

Perhaps if it was structured so that a small percentage of laws were randomly selected and some check was enacted so that a minority couldn’t easily kill the law.

But potentially also the NFA, Marijuana prohibition, and much more.

Overwhelming congress gives states more impetus to solve their own problems instead of let the federal government be so bloated.

If something is disbanded, how often was it due to a legitimate issue of not being necessary, and how often to satisfy a political grudge, bias, or simple lack of understanding by non-expert politicians?

I like this idea in theory, but I'd also like to know more of what the results have been in actual practice because there seem to be multiple failure modes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions

The UK has an uncodified constitution that predates the US by over 500 years, originally founded on the Magna Carta, signed in 1215.

> The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

I think Thomas Jefferson is a reputable source for my assertion.

If the US were founded on this principle… it would have been part of the constitution.

If that were true, we wouldn't have had the first block of amendments. There's plenty of stuff that didn't make it into the original constitution because the founders thought it was obvious.

This largely ignores the rest of society and what they were thinking. From the first perspective, these are all ideas that got smuggled in.

They can also declare that legislation violates human rights, but that declaration is non-binding. They are effectively just asking Parliament to go back and fix the law.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...

You need more than one because the founding of the US was a group effort. Not all ideas pitched by any given founder made it in, and even when one did many of those who voted to include it had a different understanding of what it meant.

Every so often the foundations of common law get to be re-evaluated which could be disastrous. But in practice it's likely the foundations would be similar cycle to cycle. Further, to the degree that the roots of rulings change due to a new constitution, don't those ruling trees need to change? The constitution changing is a signal that the people, their needs and their values have changed and so should all rulings based on those ideas.

--As an aside, I'm biased against common law. I appreciate my ancestors but I question accepting all of their prior decisions as taken until proven otherwise.

It's easy to envision invaliding precedents that rely on things that have changed, but the process of creating those precedents takes so long nobody really knows what the new law means until it's tested. Furthermore, the arguments to invalidate them are also going to be in the form of more legal arguments, so you're adding another whole dimension to the problem. Given how opaque the law is to the average person right now, I'd say we're already at the limit.

FWIW I'm biased against common law too, because it seems to take what is actually policy and brand it as if it were universal truth.

I would like to see the feds do similar with executive offices.

I’d also like to see these for charities

I’d also like to see it for non-profits.

Often their original intent or charter does not reflect their current state.

Often it’s inertia and people wanting to perpetuate these organizations that keep them going morphing them beyond their original intent.

Texas Leg passed legislation in 2011 to have ERCOT reviewed whenever the PUC (its regulator) is reviewed: https://www.sunset.texas.gov/reviews-and-reports/agencies/el...

The longer a law has been in place, more care needs to be taken in changing it. (not that it should not be changed )

Realistically a law that requires a majority vote to continue the agency is better. That way if something in government cannot muster say 60% of the vote. It’s abolished.

More specifically, 20 years ago I remember learning Texas had some of the strictest laws on using the term "engineer". You could not call yourself a "software engineer" in Texas if you have were been licensed by the state. https://www.chron.com/news/article/Law-to-decide-if-programm...

Now, my knowledge is 20 years of date, and Texas law appears to now allow "engineer" in a business card of a software engineer[1], but my point is that the Texas Board of Professional Engineers would be the one to determine things like this, and I see no way that that board (a "self-directed semi-independent agency of the State of Texas") would be discontinued under the Sunset Commission.

Therefore, I don't see how that mechanism could be use to cut down on this specific type of abuse.

[1] The current laws are at https://engineers.texas.gov/downloads/enf_pub.pdf .

> Except as provided by Subsection (f), a person may not, unless the person holds a license issued under this chapter, directly or indirectly use or cause to be used as a professional, business, or commercial identification, title, name, representation, claim, asset, or means of advantage or benefit any of, or a variation or abbreviation of, the following terms:(1) “engineer”;(2) “professional engineer”;(3) “licensed engineer”;(4) “registered engineer”;(5) “registered professional engineer”;(6) “licensed professional engineer”; or (7) “engineered.” ...

> (f) Notwithstanding the other provisions of this chapter, a regular employee of a business entity who is engaged in engineering activities but is exempt from the licensing requirements of this chapter under Sections 1001.057 or 1001.058 is not prohibited from using the term “engineer” on a business card, cover letter, or other form of correspondence that is made available to the public if the person does not: (1) offer to the public to perform engineering services; or (2) use the title in any context outside the scope of the exemption in a manner that represents an ability or willingness to perform engineering services or make an engineering judgment requiring a licensed professional engineer.

It looks like (f) was added 20 years ago, and it allows someone to say they are a software engineer on a business card. Exception (f) does not allow a non-licensed engineer to say they are an engineer when an expert witness in a court case.

is there a Sunset Commission for the Sunset Commission? :-)