I’m not quite sure how I want to react here. Clearly there are some important aspects and a good intellectual inquiry and analysis will offer insights. On the other side I have this whisper in the back of my mind saying “Isn’t a lot of this too much like the how many angels can dance on a pin head discussion?” (Note, this is from reading the post and some comments—not the recommended source link...but that is inaction so I should be safe right ;-)
In a more serious note (but feeding into the pin head aspect I think) I don’t see how you get to separate out in action from inaction if the starting point is results. You stop consuming—now you put good businesses out of work and end up contributing to the death of other people. Inaction is just another form of action.
I think rather than seeing this setup as promoting inaction as the best policy I see it more are inaction from punishments for things we don’t understand. No action produces a good result so you don’t know what to do. I think there have been a number of studies that show this is the psychological result of random punishment (where sometimes the test subject gets food/water from pushing the lever and sometimes it gets a shock or sometimes nothing or where it just get randomly shocked whether it does something or nothing—but always faces a risk of shock if doing something).
This seems to be in line with the poker game metaphor for the laws of thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win.
2) You cannot break even.
3) You cannot quit.
I was a bit curious about the “this is how law works” statement. At first I thought you were going to bring up strict liability (which seems to be how the punishment for unintended and unknown results seems to be similar to) but then you seemed to suggest it was about ensuring that the prosecutor will always have some way to charge anyone. Do you really see that as a legal system design goal? Or were you really saying the complexity (and really poor maintenance of older laws on the books) produces that situation. So in that view, we have a poor institutional design? (I would argue that applies more to the statutory regimes more so than to those coming out of a stronger common law heritage).
I’m not quite sure how I want to react here. Clearly there are some important aspects and a good intellectual inquiry and analysis will offer insights. On the other side I have this whisper in the back of my mind saying “Isn’t a lot of this too much like the how many angels can dance on a pin head discussion?” (Note, this is from reading the post and some comments—not the recommended source link...but that is inaction so I should be safe right ;-)
In a more serious note (but feeding into the pin head aspect I think) I don’t see how you get to separate out in action from inaction if the starting point is results. You stop consuming—now you put good businesses out of work and end up contributing to the death of other people. Inaction is just another form of action.
I think rather than seeing this setup as promoting inaction as the best policy I see it more are inaction from punishments for things we don’t understand. No action produces a good result so you don’t know what to do. I think there have been a number of studies that show this is the psychological result of random punishment (where sometimes the test subject gets food/water from pushing the lever and sometimes it gets a shock or sometimes nothing or where it just get randomly shocked whether it does something or nothing—but always faces a risk of shock if doing something).
This seems to be in line with the poker game metaphor for the laws of thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win.
2) You cannot break even.
3) You cannot quit.
I was a bit curious about the “this is how law works” statement. At first I thought you were going to bring up strict liability (which seems to be how the punishment for unintended and unknown results seems to be similar to) but then you seemed to suggest it was about ensuring that the prosecutor will always have some way to charge anyone. Do you really see that as a legal system design goal? Or were you really saying the complexity (and really poor maintenance of older laws on the books) produces that situation. So in that view, we have a poor institutional design? (I would argue that applies more to the statutory regimes more so than to those coming out of a stronger common law heritage).