Streamlining laws

Every year new laws and bills are created.  Many stay with us for decades until a conflict or discrepancy draws attention to them.  Others have complex loopholes or work negatively in combination with other bills.  Those involved in Law must study and memorize countless volumes of laws that accumulate each year.

Why can't the government take a step to streamline their backlog of laws and bills, taking out redundancies and obsolescence.  The more bills that get added, the more government turns into a manipulative bureaucracy of stagnant tedious paperwork.  Like Canada.

>>1
  let's put practicality aside for a moment, and I'll just say that yes, I wish they could generate a more harmonious code in this country.  I wish that they had scholars whose sole function was to read code with conflicts in mind, and to read with an imaginative point of view.  Moreover, I wish they would spend more time reviewing law in the abstract, without necessarily needing an actual case in order to make certain judgements about the law (beyond whether it is constitutional).  This seems to imply a greater power for the Judicial branch, so it would be necessary to have a tradeoff with the Legislative.....

>>1,2

The purpose of government is to tap the intrinsic power of human coalitions, this is why bureaucracy is and has always been more arcane in the most powerful countries.

It's important to have this tap, to prevent human beings from ever reaching the fruits of their labors, because when human beings get what they want right when they want it, inevitably they get genocide.

No matter how nice you are, the inevitable result of all of your "productivity" is the necessity of more of Earth's limited resources, and you will get them the same way everyone else through-out the history of the human race has gotten them: by taking them from someone else. Another historical lesson you can learn is that people don't like giving their stuff up, usually they'll kill and die for it, and maybe resent you for a couple of hundred years afterwards.

A stream-lined system is one step away from an autocracy dictatorship, and an autocracy is one step away from a dictatorship. Confusion, selfishness, Eris: it's the only thing that keeps us from all getting together and deciding that we just *need* those trees more than Canada, and we *need* that oil more than Iraq.

Even the most skeptical individual here has to admit that what g.w. did is a far-cry from what he could have done, had he had dictatorial power.

This would be one of the core ideas behind a well-functioning socialist government of the future. Decades from now, intellectuals will be saying "how could people believe they had rights in a country where they knew not their rights nor their limitations?" or some shit.

But before we address such gargantuan issues like law inorganization, it would probably be best to tackle shit like- I don't know, unilateral insurrections upon unthreatening foreign countries and human rights violations on a massive scale?

You won't see this idea executed within a really capitalist country like the US, but probably smaller ones with a lot of government control and high taxes who focus more on the people and the state than like missile dev and property value. The US doesn't have time to fuck with its lawbooks. When it starts caring more about that than economics, it'll go under within years and will cease to be what is now known as the US.

But you're not alone. If you develop that idea and publish it, maybe it will be the basis for a government in the future.

>>4

Arg, read a fucking book you stupid motherfucker.

Most countries have had the concept of expiring laws for centuries. "Develop that idea and publish it"? That's clever, next he should write a book about how to make automobiles and agitating washing-machines, those would be great ideas. Maybe they'll be a basis for some fantastical future invention!

Vast and abundant sources, proceed!

Irish historical note of an established system of expiring laws from the early 20th century:

http://acts2.oireachtas.ie/zza5y1922.1.html

James Madison discussing allowing a piece of late 18th century legislation to expire:

http://www.constitution.org/rf/jm_18310625.htm

Wikipedia article on sunset provisions, a common device in anglo-american legislation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_clause

>>3

You're saying we need to limit our own progress by being innefficient?

>>6

Well... I'm not sure I'd call genocide progress... but yes, that's the gist of it.

I consider it extremely unlikely that it can get any better than this, and I consider it extremely likely that millions of our great grandchildren will die in an ecological holocaust thanks to "progress".

I'm not trying to say I don't <3 indoor plumbing, comic books, and la computadora... but I don't think there's anything particularly unrealistic about my expectation that as this millenium dawns, we are crawling along the razor's edge.

well...if you want to look at it from a cold and emotionless perspective, genocide is progress. your side gets rid of the competition and gets more resources to go on living.

>>3
>>7
Because, you know, progress can't lead to better, more efficient ways of doing things, like cleaner-burning coal plants or cars with better fuel efficiency. No! Humanity is a virus! Gaia is angered!

>>9

Long term world views of promoting the welfare of all human beings, long term views of protecting the environment for future generations, and long term views of healthy products even while sacrificing profits are all SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST IDEAS THAT WILL SEND YOU TO HELL

>>10

There are no long-term socialist-communist ideas. They are unproven, and always, ultimately fail. Besides that socialism is an inherently anthropocentric movement, which would sacrifice trees for humans, fish for humans, pollution standards for humans, etc... if pressed to do so.

>>9

You are absolutely fucking retarded. Your implication that progress leads to better, more efficient ways of doing things is obviously true, but think one microsecond into the future of that better, more efficient world.

A world where cars use 1% less gas will have 1% more driving. A world where a square kilometer of land grows 10% more food will grow to have 10% more people. Ever worked at a factory? I canned tomatoes for a living for 2 years, and we were constantly getting labor-saving inventions that allowed us to be 1%, and 4%, and 6% more efficient with this process and that method, but did they increase our wages commensurately? did they shorten our shifts? did they reduce the hours per year that the plant was open? No, they laid off 1%, and 4%, and 6% of the labor force. I'm not complaining, I prefer my job now to a great degree, I'm just explaining the way the world actually works, since you seem oblivious.

Increases in efficiency never result in a savings of resources, only an increase in their utilization.

>>8

In the extreme short term, decades not centuries, genocide may be construed as progress. From a historical perspective though, I am inclined to believe that there will be no end to the subdivision of humanity. Humans have obliterated other humans for their race, their creed, their ethnicity, their language, their socio-economic position, their caste, their gender, their sexuality, their mode of dress, their hand-preference, their physical or mental disability...

I really think we'll always find some "good" reason to annihilate other humans.

Libertarianism is the right way. 
Support your local Libertarian.

>>11

hahaha oh wow

No, seriously.  I'll ignore your ignorant little rant about the supposed failure of socialism, but I have to lol at your view of humanity.  So what do you propose we do, if progress just makes us want more and will eventually lead to genocide?

He has a point.  If we ensure everything we do isn't excellent, but rather mediocre, then we can intentionally limit ourselves using mediocre music and films, mediocre novels found at airports, mediocre politicians, mediocre cars, mediocre low income communities, and mediocre citizens.

If we were all "excellent" and were all "the best," what else would we have to do besides take someone else's property and rights?  There has to be the excessively rich and the excessively poor, and the mediocre middle, in order for society to function.  Without it, we all become the same social class without significant ability to look down on others.

Mediocrity is the perfect control system.

>>14

>I'll igore your ignorant little rant...

I note your concession.

>What do you propose we do...

Consume much less. There are lots of ways to accomplish that, but basically it comes down to massive depopulation.

>>15

Thank you for getting it.

>>13

Maybe I misunderstand, but wouldn't the libertarian response to an ecological crisis be "well, we can't get in the way of free enterprise, hur hur"? I was talking to a libertarian the other day and his solution to global climate change was "don't worry, there's always space colonies". What? Nonsense. No libertarian would leave a government so intact that it could build a space colony, and no corporation would build a space colony capable of supporting enough human beings to perpetuate the human race (and don't say "we only need two, hur hur" because most succesful breeding experiments in the wild have failed with less than 500 breeding couples). For the most part, corporations are succesful because they're short-sighted, and because they try every possible idea (no matter how stupid). Individual corporations may be cautious but taken as a whole they're wild things. This same short-sightedness is why I would rather not trust the future of my species in their hands.

>>18
Wut? Short sighted greed is what got us this far, who says it won't work for perpetuity? Cuz some enviromentalists painted some ecological doomsday scenarios that may or may not occur based on conclusions that may or may not be true? Nobody really knows the limits to resources that new tech can tap, or the sustainability of global resources for now and the future.

Why not long-sighted greed?  Hydrogen cars or diesel/alcohol are alternatives, but oil companies don't want US car companies to even consider it unless they can get a strangelhold on it.  The New Orleans flood can be prevented by Swedish engineers who know how to deal with these, but we'd never admit our problems could be fixed by other countries.

>>5
Arg, learn to read- period, you stupid motherfucker. My post had absolutely nothing to do with law expiration, and law expiration doesn't solve anything in the first place. It would not prevent laws from still being disorganized, redundant, and unreadable.

You receive retard stamp, congratulations for making another confused response on world4ch, you're a pioneer.

Let us start the country over again so that we will end up in the same situation a century later

We need a society where sex is meant for recreation, people are born in labs with no defects, and everyone is happy through Soma.

How do you know that the oil companies aren't "long sighted greed" and the environmentalists are just fanatic ideologues?

>>24

Basic economics.

Read post 6 in "I've come to understand that" because it would be silly of me to copy and paste such a long topic in here. Note that I never quote (nor would I ever) any environmentalists in my prediction that the environment would collapse. The eventual collapse of the Earth's environment and the massive depopulation and pursuant tramautic reduction in complexity of the human race is simply the a priori result of understanding Malthusian economic theory (It helps to read Botero, Pareto, and Kaldor-Hicks too. Botero especially; most smart people realize that Machiavelli was asinine and full of shit, but most don't know that the intellectual arguments against his silly political philosophy were concretized within his own time by Giovanni Botero).

It's simply mathematics. If we keep reproducing and stretching out Earth until we obtain every possible ounce of production just to feed the exponentially redoubling population, then eventually the system will become so fragile that an infestation in soybeans one year or a disruption in transportation the next will kill however many people the supplies would have fed, because there won't be any extra to go around.

In some parts of the world, the population of states exceeds the (with current technology) food production of the state. And while technology _may_ expand, human population _will_ expand, you can fucking count on it, and eventually technology will drop the ball and millions will starve. And in this world, as we've learned in modern Africa and ancient China, starving people will always kill for a loaf of bread.