What would you think If these were the new laws?

1. With what kind of proof? Something undeniable, like DNA? If not, I’m not for it. Still don’t know how I feel about the death penalty in general.

2. No on this one.

3. Agree that animal abusers need harsher penalties.

4. Yes, I’m completely fine with that.

5. No, not okay with this one. Doctors don’t typically have dangerous jobs, but they require a ton of education and ability. They deserve to make good money as much as someone who has a dangerous job. I do believe that police and firefighters and the like should make more money.

6. Agree with this one, as well. I’m okay with them making a nice chunk, but when they make more than doctors, this is completely ridiculous to me.

7. Not okay with this one.

8. I mean, yeah, it’s a nice idea. But how would this be implemented? Who does the educating? Who decides when another person is educated enough?

9. Unsure about this one. Part of me thinks so, but part of me thinks it might be a bad idea for varying reasons.

No. Some of those laws sound good on the surface, but after you give them some thought, many of them are terribly unjust.

Answers are numbered to each law.
1. I hope you have plans for larger, better prisons at less expense to the tax payers.
2. Serious genetic disorders? If it were that serious I doubt they will be having children.
3. Animal abusers should be treated how? You need to define what you mean here. Leaving it open for assumption is not going to make a good law.
4. I disagree. Maybe 90 days for every confirmed killing and 200 hours of community service for every killing.
5. This is the norm really.
6. Famous actors and singers, etc get paid more because there is a very small amount of people that can do what they can do. I disagree with how much money they make however I also agree with it. If I have a spokes person for something, I want them to be loyal to only me, thus a contract and tons of money.
7. If you take away my alcohol then I will just open a speakeasy and charge a fuck ton of money to drink there. Then when your police come to take me away and lock me in one of your prisons I will get my friends to take over my business and pay off your police.
8. Bullshit. Maybe you could start by taking away the two party system.
9. You mean dictatorships, right?
I don’t think I’d really like your laws. But take no offense. I dislike most of “our” laws now. :)

1— attempted murderers and murderers should be locked up forever or get the death penalty.
Barring my own objections to the death penalty generally, we consider each crime individually because there are different elements to every perpetrator and every victim. If attempted murder and murder get the same penalty – people are going to try a lot harder to make sure you’re dead.

2— people with serious genetic diseases can’t have children.
That’s eugenics. That’s what the Nazi’s did. And what the U.S. did when it sterilized people. Way, way too problematic.

3-animal abusers should be taken more seriously.
I’m full on with you on this one.

4-poachers go to jail for a year for every killing.
I’m not against this, but there are severe proof problems.

5-job pay is determined by how much you work and how dangerous it is.
In many ways, it is – this is handled by the market and not the law, and properly

6-famous people like actors, singers, and sports players don’t get ridiculous pays.
Again, that’s the market. If you stop seeing them or paying for things they endorse, trust me, their salaries will fall.

7— no more production of alcohol.
That was called prohibition to some extent – although not completely so. But consider the rise in (1) organized crime, and (2) unemployment.

8— You must be fully and truthfully educated on elections and candidates to vote.
The right to vote must never be qualified – it’s one of _the rights in a democracy. I would rather people have to qualify to run for office (although there are constitutional issues there too._

9-Presidents can stay in rule for as long as the people want them.
Hmm. That would require an amendment – and this used to be the way, in fact. Two terms was a tradition before it was a law. I don’t disagree…but an amendment is hard to pass.

Good thoughts – thanks!

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T Those laws sound very selective and open to wide interpretation. Which means at some point we would all be subject to its consequences.

Personally, I think that it’s impressive that a 13-year-old is trying to think of solutions in this manner, and isn’t disturbed by the idea of presenting them to an anonymous community. ;-)

Maybe, but when I was 13 (I had never heard of Libertarianism) I had already deduced that the only laws we need to create a free, just, and safe society are laws prohibiting assault, theft, vandalism, and fraud—basically the Libertarian agenda.

Oh, and please don’t accuse Libertarians of being Tea Baggers. Libertarians want freedom and justice. Tea Baggers are just rabid conservatives who co-opted the term.

I would think that I was being ruled by actual kindergartners, instead of people who merely act that way from time to time.

One of the problems with short soundbite laws like these is that they are wide open to interpretation (and misinterpretation) by any petty official or bureaucrat (not all of whom are elected) who pokes their nose into the situation. Define “attempted murder.” Define “dangerous” and better yet, “ridiculous.”

This is why we have Very Long Bills that clarify, define, and narrow the terminology. This is the reason that the military-spec requirements for a brownie recipe read like this – because if it didn’t specify exactly what goes into it, you could get a “fruitcake” that is a taco shell with raisins in it, like happened in WWII when people who didn’t know anything about the typical expectations of “fruitcake” were able to bid on, and win, Army food service contracts.

But I digress. There are people who want bills (and therefore laws) to be simple, readable, maybe a page long, clear as day. What they may not realize is that what’s “clear as day” to them is also “clear as day” – and completely different – to someone else. If they would rather that laws be vague and open to any idiosyncratic interpretation by any official, sure, we could have laws like this (leaving aside, of course, how just or warranted these particular suggestions may be). However, if we don’t want legal chaos in a complex world, we’d need a little more information to back them up.

I’m sorry, this is the Social section, isn’t it? I’m supposed to be all haha LOLZ or something. My bad.

Well of course I don’t have all the details, that would take so long to type out. And considering this is for nothing more than discussion I don’t feel like typing it all out.

It’s all good, @daytonamisticrip – I was just explaining why I’m not sure if some of them are good ideas or not. A lot of what’s good or bad about a law is in the details.

That said, I know a number of these would be very, very hard to enforce – and if we were to enforce them perfectly well, it would be the kind of place where I don’t want to live. For instance – it would be very hard to prevent the production of alcohol. You can make it in so many places in so many different ways that the level of intrusion to make sure I’m not a homebrewer would be pretty harsh.

Note: The level of intrusion would have to be more than a maximum-security prison, where my brother in law made prison hooch while incarcerated for murder.

Simply put, many of these have been tried before, with bad enough results that the law had to go away. I’m not saying it’s all bad – but that there’s bad precedent.

Well, Mr. Hitler, regarding #4, I think I should be able to cook an egg however I’d like.

@Vunessuh okay first off don’t call me hitler. Second off do you even know what a poacher is. It is someone who illegally kills endangered animals.

Wow. I was completely unaware. So I can cook my eggs anyway I’d like then? What a relief.

@Vunessuh -May I please have my margarita back? XD

Okay the meaning of the laws were not clear at all so I’ll do one law and question at a time with more detail.

@Vunessuh – ROTFLMMFAO :-p

@Vunessuh, this has been a very thought provoking day on Fluther. This may not be a good time for any kind of levity XP. I’ll have some of these, please;-)

Humor and levity will NOT be tolerated here!

@daytonamisticrip the meaning of the laws was perfectly clear. You want a world that is ‘just so’, arranged exactly how you would like it.

Outside of your own head, you won’t get it. Sorry.

I agree with 4 and 6. To be honest, I think 4 should be much harsher than 1 year per kill. Poaching is murder. A legal kill is for food/population control. Poaching is highly immoral. As is trophy killing.

Uh, no. Especially #7. I would like to maintain my right to get fucked up. ;)

@DominicX Yeah, no. 7 is a joke.

A lot of these sound way to Conservative for my taste. Tolerate animal abuse and no beer?

Fuck that.

1. Why not.
2. No..
3. Too vague.
4. Sure.
5. I think job pay should be determined by the person paying.
6. (See above)
7. Silly and impossible.
8. Way too easy to keep people from voting simply because they disagree with certain things.
9. No.

1— Definitely not for attempted murder.
2— No. The Nazis tried this already.
3— yes
4— No. Poaching is a very minor crime in the grand scheme of things, and can be dealt with by existing laws of theft or animal cruelty (see Law 3), depending on the circumstances of the killing.
5— People in dangerous jobs should be paid more, but that shouldn’t be the only factor. There are plenty of jobs that are unpleasant, or require a great degree of education or skill, which deserve better pay too. There should definitely be a minimum wage which is factored by the local cost of living.
6— Impossible to prevent while people are interested in such things. If people stopped watching them and reading about them their salaries would fall.
7— Again, has been tried before and failed. Making things like alcohol illegal causes crime to rise, not fall.
8— A person’t right to vote should not be tied to their intelligence. This is why it took so long to allow women or non-white people to vote: ther weren’t considered intelligent enough to do so.
9— This is the way it works for UK prime ministers. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister for 13 years before handing over to her successor in the same party. In practise it’s extremely rare for a prime minister to serve more than 5 years, they just get voted out. I think this one would have little practical effect, as long as the voting system is fair and just.

Nearly all of them are a step back, and/or a step towards totalitarianism. The ony one I am in favour of is the one about animal welfare.

I like how @downtide‘s answers are my answers too! I’d give you kudos but that might be considered slightly self-congratulatory. ;-)

If I had given a point-by-point answer above, I probably would have said mostly the same things as @downtide. Except that I am totally opposed to the death penalty for any reason whatsoever. There are plenty of examples where people have been found guilty of heinous crimes with eye-witnesses and “no doubt whatsoever” who have been exonerated years later. There is no justification for the death penalty except as revenge against whoever happens to be a convenient target. If you want to protect society from murderers, life without parole does the same thing AND allows you to undo mistakes.