I love how these stories - and most of the discussion around them - simply choose to ignore the larger issue of "does the federal government belong in the business of telling auto makers what equipment cars must have" or even more, "does the federal government have the authority to do this"?
I would argue that the answer to both questions is unequivocally "NO" and that we should be raising absolute bloody hell with Congress over this. Despite what the SCOTUS and Congress have done to brutally butcher the 9th and 10th amendments, and despite their twisting and mangling of the "necessary and reasonable" clause and the "interstate commerce clause" it seems quite clear to me that this is an improper role of government in an open, free society.
I say let's quit nit-picking over details and privacy concerns, etc., and let Congress know - in no uncertain terms - that we simply don't accept this whole game, period.
> "does the federal government belong in the business of telling auto makers what equipment cars must have"
> it seems quite clear to me that this is an improper role of government in an open, free society
i'll bite.
from a practical perspective, the federal government should have the authority to say what kinds of vehicles should be able to drive on public roads paved by us tax dollars. maybe you think you should be able to drive a car with no headlights, but the other people driving on the highways at 60mph could get hurt. it seems pretty clear that federal government should be in the business of telling car makers that street legal cars have to have headlights.
from a theoretical perspective, the commerce clause, taken at face value, seems to give board powers to the federal government to regulate any commerce that happens across state lines. cars are certainly sold across state lines. i don't understand why you think its so clear that the federal government doesn't have this authority.
from a practical perspective, the federal government should have the authority to say what kinds of vehicles should be able to drive on public roads paved by us tax dollars. maybe you think you should be able to drive a car with no headlights, but the other people driving on the highways at 60mph could get hurt.
A couple of thoughts:
1. This sounds more like an argument for not building highways with tax money, than an argument for more government power, to me.
2. Liability for the consequences of ones actions should be sufficient to deal with this. If I do drive without headlights for a few miles, or - as far as that goes - 10,000 miles, and nobody is injured, it's totally bogus to claim that a crime has been committed. However, if I drive, without or without headlights, and crash into someone through my own negligence, I should be held liable for that outcome. If we adopted this as a basis for governance, we wouldn't need all these lame statutory "laws" in the first place.
3. Even if headlights are required, a driver might choose to turn them off, or they could be defective or inoperable for some reason. Focusing on the requirement that they simply be present is focusing on the wrong problem even from a practical standpoint.
4. Regardless of what the Constitution, or any other document says, I personally reject the notion that the State has any particular authority at all. Even if you accept Bastiat's extremely minimalist view of "Law as no more than the collective extension to our individual right to self defense" one can still imagine pathological cases where the whole thing reduces to "might makes right". That said, I think Bastiat's view is an ideal to strive towards, as use of force should be limited to situations that could be considered self-defense. Pre-emptive use of force (or threat of force) is invalid, in my world view.
Note: I don't expect everyone (or anyone in particular) to agree with me on this, I'm just explaining why I see this as an invalid role for government.
Anyway, my point doesn't revolve around me being right or wrong in what I believe on the issue... the point is that this conversation needs to be had in the first place, and that people should quit simply glossing over this stuff and just accepting everything the State sends down the pipe as being valid. "Question authority" should be everyone's mantra in my book, even if they decide that the answer to the question is "yes" on a particular occasion.
> This sounds more like an argument for not building highways with tax money
Really? You want exclusively private highways? Has any government ever, in the history of mankind, not created this sort of basic infrastructure? Especially in a country as large as the US, surely many areas would be terribly underserved as their government highways are a losing proposition.
> Liability for the consequences of ones actions should be sufficient to deal with this.
So, rather than discouraging people from acting recklessly, we should depend on them to anticipate every possible issue? Then, if they fail to imagine why driving without headlights might be bad, we should send them to jail for life? The goal of a law like this is to codify past mistakes, as a way to remind you not to repeat them.
> Even if headlights are required, a driver might choose to turn them off
It isn't just illegal to not have headlights. It's also illegal to not use them at appropriate times. This is why we need 'lame statutory laws', because some asshole will always think they've found a loophole.
> I personally reject the notion that the State has any particular authority at all
Do you vote? Do you pay taxes? Have you ever been fined, ticketed or incarcerated? Did you, or have your children gone to a public school? Have you ever received welfare, Medicaid, Medicare, or any other social assistance? Have you driven on a public road, received a student loan, purchased any product from a government-subsidised industry?
The whole libertarian view is a vast over-simplification of the role of a government. The ability to, as you say, collectively defend yourself as a population of millions is non-trivial. What are you defended against, collectively, and who decides when to exert force in self-defense?
> people should quit simply glossing over this stuff and just accepting everything the State sends down the pipe as being valid
I suspect you could easily consume your entire life digesting and considering every decision the government makes. We call that 'politics'. In a representative democracy, such as the one you live in, we've decided that elected officials (not some big, bad, faceless State) should do this work for us, so we can do what we're good at, which isn't making complicated decisions about trade and subsidies and taxes and such.
Really? You want exclusively private highways? Has any government ever, in the history of mankind, not created this sort of basic infrastructure? Especially in a country as large as the US, surely many areas would be terribly underserved as their government highways are a losing proposition.
If full private highways and the risk of some areas being underserved are an inevitable consequence of not handing responsibility for building highways to an entity that uses force and aggression to get its way, then yes, that's fine.
There's a key point about the worldview I advocate, that you are probably missing. You seem to be all wrapped up in analysis of outcomes as the primary motivator for things: how will the highways get built, etc. Now, while I believe that a world built entirely on voluntary collaboration and exchange in a free market will result - on average - in better outcomes anyway, that's not the goal. The goal is, simply, freedom. In my worldview, and the worldview of quite a few others, freedom is its own end.
So, rather than discouraging people from acting recklessly, we should depend on them to anticipate every possible issue?
Not at all. The goal is to avoid the initiation of force to accomplish political ends, no matter how noble they may seem. If some entity (whether it calls itself "government" or something else) wants to issue a guidline saying "always use your headlights" and if 99.9999999999% of people do so, because it's common sense anyway, that's fine. Somebody (or multiple somebodies) could issue whole books full of guidelines, most of which might look a lot like the statutory regulations we have today... the difference in what I propose is that we remove the sanction of "use of force" to require adherence to those guidelines, and rely on the effect of "strict liability for the consequences of ones actions" as the motivator for following them.
It isn't just illegal to not have headlights. It's also illegal to not use them at appropriate times. This is why we need 'lame statutory laws', because some asshole will always think they've found a loophole.
What you just said is almost completely irrelevant to the point I was making, and - if anything - just supports it. Requiring headlights to be installed is pointless because Joe Dumbass can simply choose not to run them, whether it's "illegal" or not. And, as before, if Joe Dumbass drives 100 miles without headlights for whatever reason and no one is injured, there is no reasonable basis to say a crime has been committed.
The whole libertarian view is a vast over-simplification of the role of a government.
One could just as easily make the claim that "the whole statist / collectivist view is a vast over-statement of the role of a government."
In a representative democracy, such as the one you live in, we've decided that elected officials (not some big, bad, faceless State) should do this work for us,
No, we didn't decide. I certainly didn't decide that I want this batch of "elected official" to represent me. Let's not pretend that "voting" makes everything OK or that democracy is anything other than a euphemism for mob rule and the tyranny of the majority.
I suspect you could easily consume your entire life digesting and considering every decision the government makes. We call that 'politics'. ... so we can do what we're good at, which isn't making complicated decisions about trade and subsidies and taxes and such.
Delegating certain decisions is fine, although decisions about a lot of the things you're talking about probably shouldn't be made by any centralized entity at all. Market forces are sufficient... It's a marker of incredible conceit for anyone to think that we can appoint some small group of people to manage something like a national economy, and actually expect them to be able to receive, process and act on, enough information (in a timely enough fashion) to actually make good decisions. It's actually quite an absurd notion.
Frankly, freedom, absent anything else, is pretty useless. You're free to move to Antarctica, where I suspect you could build private infrastructure, etc.
As a thought experiment, still on the headlights: there is no state. I strike a man with my car and kill him. Then I continue on without telling anyone. What discourages me from this? Clearly he has no recourse.
Another: I make my money extracting rare earth metals. The byproducts are toxic and radioactive, so I pay someone to drive them 100 miles away ( on a road I built) and dump them near a town. What prevents me from doing this?
Edit: as I was writing this, I realized in the first example there would probably be a market for professional avengers. Sort of like insurance, the rich could pay a small force monthly so that, should they die, their paramilitary outfit would investigate and murder the perpetrator. It sounds like it would make an awesome anti-randian story about the absurdity of following capitalism to a logical conclusion
As a thought experiment, still on the headlights: there is no state. I strike a man with my car and kill him. Then I continue on without telling anyone. What discourages me from this? Clearly he has no recourse.
The presence or absence of a state makes absolutely zero difference in the situation you are describing. Dead men have no recourse in any scenario.
* It sounds like it would make an awesome anti-randian story about the absurdity of following capitalism to a logical conclusion*
It sounds like you're so blinded by ideology that you refuse to consider that there are alternative ways that things could be done. Of course, the present system is working so well that one wonders why he should even bother to consider alternatives...
But what disincentivizes me from hitting him? In fact, with no state I should go back and make sure he's dead so he doesn't track me down.
The problem isn't that I'm blinded by ideology. Is there any actual way we cold take action on your ideology? I posed two scenarios where a libertarian view doesn't introduce any penalty for externalities, and so he world goes to shit.
Rather than telling people they should build their own roads and let companies store toxic waste wherever, why not try to take a less absolute stance? I'm socialist, but I'm not calling for the government to seize all private businesses. You can create meaningful, effective change by advocating for positions which are well thought through and have a definite impact, rather than idolizing some abstract concept - "freedom! Yay! No roads, but no oppressive IRS".
To get back to the topic at hand, you oppose black boxes in cars because you think it infringes on civil liberties. I think that's a perfectly valid viewpoint, and getting all in a lather abut why roads are bad just confuses the issue.
I posed two scenarios where a libertarian view doesn't introduce any penalty for externalities, and so he world goes to shit.
The point I'm trying to make, is that the current system has pathologies where it doesn't impose any penalty for externalities either. So pointing out that the libertarian position is less than perfect is hardly an explosive revelation. I don't believe any political system is perfect, but I think more people will achieve more happiness, overall, under the libertarian model. But, again, I'm somebody considers freedom (in the "freedom from force & agression" sense) to be it's own end, which is sufficient apart from any arguments related to economics, punishment for crime, etc. It also happens that I do believe that the libertarian model can address those issues as well as, or better than, other models, but that's actually a secondary point to me.
I think that's a perfectly valid viewpoint, and getting all in a lather abut why roads are bad just confuses the issue.
I never said roads were bad. I'm all for honest, sincere debate and reasonable discussion, but I'd ask you to please not put words in my mouth. Just because there's a weak stereotype that some people try to play up that "libertarians are against (roads|feeding the poor|fire protection|etc)" doesn't make it true.
As I understand it, the word "regulate" had a different meaning at the time the commerce clause was written. It generally meant "to make regular", as in, prevent states from taxing imports from one state higher than another.
I can't find any actual citations of the word regulate used to mean "to make regular". The only references I found are in articles trying to explain the Commerce Clause.
The word regulate comes from the Latin regulare "to control by rule, direct". I don't see any evidence that the meaning has changed much over time.
The problem is that the "mangling" occurred long ago and have been largely accepted as "settled law." This "mangling" is not a particularly new phenomenon.
The 9th and 10th Amendments long ago were widely considered by the courts to be fairly limited and, in the 10th Amendment's case, redundant. There are very few cases in which the 9th and 10th Amendment have been used to strike down federal laws.
In the 1940s the Supreme Court ruled that basically the amendment stated a fact which would still be true even if the amendment did not exist. And the 9th Amendment is limited because the wording of the amendment makes it clear that it only limits expansion of enumerated powers; the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause have long ago been interpreted as granting the government powers beyond the enumerated powers (powers to which the 9th Amendment does not apply).
These interpretations are unlikely to change - they have many judicial precedents.
These interpretations are unlikely to change - they have many judicial precedents.
Perhaps not, I'm not trying to prognosticate here. That said, I do believe it is the nature of governments to become more abusive, corrupt and tyrannical over time, and to eventually be overthrown by one means or another. I see the US government as being quite a long ways down that path, but I don't know where the end of the path lies.
My former job was systems programming on precisely this sort of project. We ran embedded ARM based Linux systems in cars, motorcycles and over the road trucks to gather research data from the vehicle CAN. The volume of data and variables collected was immense. Lateral acceleration (swerve), turn signals, seat-belts engaged, gear position, vehicle speed, individual wheel speed, engine rpm, GPS coordinates, steering wheel angel, etc, etc, etc. We were collecting petabytes of data for research. We had cameras on the vehicles as well so that we could correlate all of the collected data with what the driver was doing, where they were looking, etc. I doubt the cameras will exist in the mandated black-box systems, but who knows.
I only say this because there are tons of research projects in this area right now and likely will be for many years to come.
I don't doubt the petabytes of data, but I'd be surprised if data that wasn't visual, all included, was more than a couple of terabytes (if even that .. a terabyte of textual data is a ridiculously large amount).
Counting the gzipped data is the only meaningful thing here, btw - because a verbose XML document with repeating data "<absoluteLocation>17,34,25</absoluteLocation><absoluteLocation remark="notMoved">17,34,25</absoluteLocation>" is not more informative than "l=17,35,25", despite being 10 times longer.
"Such devices, which are already in use in 96 percent of 2013 model year cars, record various types of data that can be accessed in multiple ways."
Whoa. 96% of new cars already have black boxes? Did not know that...
Wait til people get convicted of crimes based on the data in their black boxes. "OJ, your car shows it was used between 8pm and 10pm, and you were not home sleeping as you said you were..."
Next up is a peronal rifd card for ALL forms of public transport, eg the bus, metro, train... A card that can be loaded with dollars using your credit/debit card only. Think it won't happen? It already did in the Netherlands. They're trying to add Black boxes to cars here as well. Oh, did I mention the other privacy-nightmares? How about a mandated centralized database for health-related issues? Run by the insurance companies. We have licenceplate scanning CCTV camera's at all major roads as well as all borders.
Not that I like the surveillance state anywhere, but I'm a lot less concerned about "advances" like these in societies where democracy is already established than countries were authoritarian regimes are still in charge.
EDIT : Why is my comment being down-voted ?? what part of "Not that I like the surveillance state anywhere" don't you understand. It's a FACT, the consequences of Big brother are magnitudes of order more terrifying for societies that still don't have institutions to protect them.
I can see your point but these "advances" are immediately sold to authoritarian regimes by those democracies. Most of the time before they are even used in the democratic country.
I agree. Often the benefits of these kind of things outweigh the risks of abuse. Law-abiding citizens rarely have what to fear from normal "surveillance".
That is not what I said. I think these developments are toxic in the long term however well-intentioned they are when they're first introduced.
I was pointing out their implications are even worse for countries without a tradition of freedom because they'll allow for an even tighter control of information & around the clock surveillance thus enabling the security apparatuses of those regimes to nip in the bud any revolutionary movement.
I agree. Often the benefits of these kind of things outweigh the risks of abuse. Law-abiding citizens rarely have what to fear from normal "surveillance".
Do you live in the US? If so, you're not almost certainly not a "law-abiding citizen." The only question is, which laws count?
Your personal RFID card has your picture on it, along with other information. Swapping it with someone else is not really an option, because at that point if the train personnel comes by you are technically without a valid ticket and will be given a ticket.
There is some fight back to the centralised database, and the system they are proposing to use may not even be allowed to be used due to the parent company being a US based company, and the US having the Patriot Act which would allow the US to require the US parent company to request data on Dutch citizens through the patriot act which would break EU privacy and personal data storage rules.
In my city, in Argentina there's already an rfid card that people uses for the bus, train and trolley. You can load it using cash though. There are also an increasing number of cameras in every corner as well, and a week ago the president herself said on tv that she wanted to put up cameras everywhere.
Involved people at the site of an accident often have no compunctions about lying. If such data can be securely provided in only 5 minute increments, I'd be all for it. We should be able to do this with a sequence of keys based on timestamps. Basically, each 5 minute parcel of data would be timestamped, then a symmetric algorithm with a master key used to derive a parcel key from the timestamp. The master key would never be revealed and only the parcel key given to the authorities.
Authentication could be done through PKC and/or a hash chain. (As in bitcoin.)
The data records only the last 30 seconds, and will only save said data if a crash of substantial force happens, at least in the cars that I am familiar with.
Just think how rich the manufacturers of seatbelt latches are getting in this era of mandatory seatbelt laws. It's clear proof that all laws exist only to make special interest groups ultra rich so they can screw us over in some future dystopia more easily.
Insurances agencies are going to love this one, they might even want to fund this whole idea, if they can get the black box data, they might save billions on not fixing your car as much because you drove like a primate would, breaking all traffic laws and showing signs of intoxication or extreme carelessness.
If it can be shown that the party who is technically guilty of causing an accident has a perfect black box record, while the one who didn't has a terrible black box record, does it change who is at fault?
Insurance companies already offer this to clients. The understanding is that it won't raise your rate, but it can lower your rate.
That being said, if someone is "breaking all traffic laws and showing signs of intoxication or extreme carelessness," I'd hope they are paying more for insurance than I do. Sort of common sense.
They say they don't check for speeding, yet they have full access to your OBD-II information, which definitely does include that. They could for instance easily add when you go over 85+ Mph which is the highest allowable speed in the US...
They might not be able to check on the location you are in to compare it to local speed limits, but they can definitely know if you are driving faster than the max.
I'm wondering how I can get one of these devices to play around with, without handing anything over but cash.
I would argue that the answer to both questions is unequivocally "NO" and that we should be raising absolute bloody hell with Congress over this. Despite what the SCOTUS and Congress have done to brutally butcher the 9th and 10th amendments, and despite their twisting and mangling of the "necessary and reasonable" clause and the "interstate commerce clause" it seems quite clear to me that this is an improper role of government in an open, free society.
I say let's quit nit-picking over details and privacy concerns, etc., and let Congress know - in no uncertain terms - that we simply don't accept this whole game, period.