Wife Like Me

Colin chose the topic of the day, as you may have guessed. Besides the topic at hand, we’ve been discussing what rights a business has to detain a customer if they only think you’re shoplifting. For example, can Chuck E. Cheese keep you from leaving the building if you bring in a ball for those SkeeBall games from home, then you try to leave with it and they don’t know that you brought it with you in the first place?

Back to the moral depravity of not enforcing rules. A favorite example of this is the Speed Limit. No one drives at or below the speed limit. In fact, a police officer can pull you over if you’re not going “with the flow of traffic” and slowing everyone down, even if the flow of traffic is faster than the speed limit. In a sense, you are (at least sometimes) actually required to break the speed limit.

It’s a dangerous precedent to teach everyone that they aren’t allowed to keep the rules, assuming that they know what the rules are (which is yet another topic of discussion). I recognize that it would be very difficult and costly to re-train the public to drive at or below te speed limit, but what is the cost of not enforcing that rule? Gnawing away at the Rule of Law, perhaps as slowly as a river cuts through stone to create a canyon, is unhealthy for society.

In this speed limit example, everyone knows that you’re supposed to go 5-10 miles over the speed limit (unless, of course, a police officer decides you’re not supposed to today). So the speed limit is set 5-10 mph under the speed that’s actually safe to drive. Then no one trusts the speed limit to be at a reasonable speed and no one trusts whoever makes up the speed limit to give them an honest recommendation or safety rules. The speed limit becomes some sort of arbitrary, expensive, nebulous suggestion of a range of speeds one should go in a specific place.

I am not suggesting we should get rid of the speed limit. I’m saying we should choose reasonable speed limits and enforce them strictly. The same kinds of problems happen with immigration and with toddlers. Consistency is important and it wears away at the integrity of our society to have rules you’re not supposed to always obey.