The sheer number and volume of laws is ridiculous, and you’re spot on about their purpose as a path to the police state, whether it was intentional or not. Lawmakers get paid to make laws, they get publicity for their re-election when they pass laws, and they get more croney jobs to hand out to their buddies with every law they have to enforce. So, it doesn’t even take a conspriratioral mindset to conclude that politicians will just keep making laws until everyone is a criminal if nobody stops them, and I think we’re already pass that point.
I’m not sure what we can do about the problem, since it would be much easier to pretty much wipe the slate clean and go back to a minimal set of laws than try to hack through the morass on the books already. The average complacent voter would let the media scare them off of supporting something that radical in a few heartbeats, so I don’t think it will happen. Even if we could get a drastic reduction, we’d also have to pass reform to discourage lawmakers making new laws unnecessarily, and that would be opposed by the entire political machine, of both parties.
It’s almost as if this is a problem inherent in political systems with lawmaking bodies, and the only solution is intermittent revolutions toppling the government and redrafting the law from scratch in order to reset the cycle.
Excellent points, all. I think that the Founders recognized all of these problems (”Tree of liberty”, etc.). You are correct also, in that the average apathetic (wo)man could care less. They all of a sudden get hit by some incident (or a family member, friend, etc), and then they usually wake up.
I think that all laws in the U.S. Congress should be only one page long, and read aloud, in English, on their respective floors, before they can be passed. I also think they should have to happen between say 9-7 ET, and be televised, no 3AM nonsense. I dunno, I guess that nothing is perfect, but there has to be a better way.
And you make a valid point, intentional or unintentional, our freedoms are eroded. I don’t think every politician wants to turn us into a police state, but I have a hard time believing a lot of the current ones in power do not. They’re making sure that everything is illegal, and only the people they want get prosecuted. Compare Wesley Snipes and Barney Frank. Or Anthony Weiner and the town perv, etc. etc.
“The sheer number and volume of laws is ridiculous, and you’re spot on about their purpose as a path to the police state, whether it was intentional or not. Lawmakers get paid to make laws, they get publicity for their re-election when they pass laws, and they get more croney jobs to hand out to their buddies with every law they have to enforce. So, it doesn’t even take a conspriratioral mindset to conclude that politicians will just keep making laws until everyone is a criminal if nobody stops them, and I think we’re already pass that point....”
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