Unenforceable Laws--Speeding, Immigration, Prostitution

Shankar Vedantam, in his Monday Post column, cites the opinions of Douglas Husak and Lawrence Solum, who probably unknowingly follow in the footsteps of Robin Williams, my sociology professor 45 years ago:

Husak and Solum, legal theorists and philosophers, argue that laws on immigration are part of a broad pattern. In recent decades, they say, Congress has passed innumerable laws that no one seriously expects will be enforced. Such laws largely seem to serve symbolic purposes and are often designed to placate some powerful constituency -- conservatives in the case of immigration, or the entertainment industry in the case of laws that seek to deter people from swapping copyrighted music and movies.

Williams cited the case of prostitution, illegal in most states. Laws aren't effective in such cases--you get pro forma prosecutions, "show cases" for effect, not something that works. It's easy to take this line of thought too far. For example, I disagree with Husak and Solum about speed limits. They believe that, if cars on the Dulles toll road go 65 to 80 in a 55 mph zone, the limit ought to be raised. That's carrying the power of the majority too far--let me creep along at 60-65 in the right lane without feeling guilty about not going the speed limit.

It is a problem for bureaucrats whenever the gap between law and behavior becomes great. Do you enforce the rules or exercise the discretion and then become arbitrary?

A Question of Class

Recently (May 22, no longer available free) the NY Times was talking about the starting salaries for policemen on Long Island. They noted:

"Starting salary on the 2,692-member Suffolk force is $57,811 -- compared with $25,100 when entering the New York Police Department academy and $32,700 after six months at the department -- and rises after five years to $97,958 ($59,588 in New York). With overtime, many members of the Suffolk department routinely make more than $100,000."

As one might expect, the differential is causing NYC sergeants to become Suffolk patrolmen.

Then, on Saturday, comes a column on how college graduates should save money. The title is: "More Advice Graduates Don't Want to Hear". He wrote the same column last year:

"In droves, parents sent the column to their children. And some of those children wrote to me to vent. What I suggested was impractical, many said. How would you like to try to live on $40,000 a year in Washington or San Francisco, several asked."

In the bad old days (i.e., 1960), police departments were trying to upgrade their forces and get college grads. I'm not sure how well they've done, but the difference between the two pieces says to me there's a lot of unconscious arrogance among the college graduates who are coming to NYC to live. Makes my populist blood boil.

Is It Better to Know, or Not to Know

That is the question. I wrote the other day I'd rather know if I had the gene increasing the likelihood that I'll develop Alzheimers. (Not that I plan to spring for a DNA test anytime soon. I'm not that principled.)

Today the question is crime. Reston is included in the Backfence community site. One of their facilities is mapping the occurrence of local crime. So is it better to know, or not know? I suppose if you're mildly optimistic, so you overestimate the frequency of crime, having the facts would decrease your happiness. And vice versa the other way. Of course, the guy (Harvard professor type guy) who wrote "Stumbling on Happiness" might say in the long run it doesn't make much difference--you'll adjust either way. The only big deal would be if your belief is way off, in which case knowing the truth might change your actions (sell if crime is much worse than you thought; stay if it's much less).

But I think one point is that greater knowledge might tighten social connections, make the machinery of society have to operate with closer tolerances. I wonder.

A Bureaucrat's Tribute to a Bureaucrat

See this article about eagles and the bureaucrat, Rachel Carson.

Me and Nelson Mandela

Via Dr. Mankiw, this political questionnaire says I'm moderately left and slightly libertarian, like Nelson Mandela. I think my leftism is a little exaggerated; there wasn't any space between "Agree" and "Disagree" with a question. If they'd thrown in a "debatable" option, I would have turned out a wishy-washy flip-flopper.

Dr. Watson's DNA

On June 1 the Times reported that the complete genome for Dr. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of DNA, was released to the public. There's many reasons to ponder this event, but the one that struck me is embodied here:

Amy McGuire, an assistant professor of medicine with Baylor's Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said integrating human genomes into medical diagnoses raises various ethical questions. Those include what to do when they reveal personal information about a patient's relatives and whether someone's genetic code could result in discrimination from insurance companies or employers.

''I think we'll have a healthier and more compassionate world 50 years from now because of the technological advances we are celebrating today,'' Watson said.

While Watson said that he would review the map further, there was at least one part he would avoid. He planned to skip the section of the map that would tell him if he was at risk for Alzheimer's disease, which his grandmother died from.

My mother had Alzheimers. And I'm paranoid about having it. But I think I would want to know. After all, I already know my genome contains the genes for death.

But I'm not going to spend money to find out my mind might die sooner than my body.

House and Gawande, Both Better

My wife and I have one, and only one, favorite TV drama--House.
For those who have not seen it, it features an anti-social drug-addicted, crippled MD, who diagnoses difficult cases while fighting with the world.

My wife and I just read "Better" a collection of essays by Atul Gawande, a surgeon. The essays investigate the field of medicine, in very good prose.

What's the common thread here: I think much of the appeal of Dr. House is the theme of many of Gawande's essays, the constant drive to do things better. House is never satisfied unless he's figured out the answer; he cares much more about the answer than about his patients, which means there's a nice contrast between his misanthropy and his drive for answers, which often results in helping the patients. (Often, but not always; occasionally he has to kill someone to find the answer.) Gawande celebrates the doctors who always strive to improve their methods, to better their results. And he mourns the cases, as when the medical professionals fail to wash their hands, when imperfection leads to death, as in one of his cases.

And EWG Can Do It

I blogged a couple times about the USDA's payments database--it attributes farm program payments back to individuals (i.e., if the check is made out to a partnership, joint venture, corporation, the amount is split among the members of the partnership, joint venture, or stockholders). This is different from the data that the Environmental Working Group has been publishing for 10+ years in that it's more detailed. When USDA released it, they said it was too big to make available on-line. But an ag publication claimed to have done it and I tweaked my former co-workers at USDA about it. Now, EWG is promising to publish it by June 12.

Realism and Defeat

Does this statement by former Sens Dole and Daschle reflect the independence of mind resulting from being out of office or the poor judgment that may have caused them to lost their races?

Former Senate leaders Tom Daschle and Bob Dole suggested Wednesday that the nation's agricultural policy should be reformed, saying farmers should become more dependent on the marketplace.

Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, and Dole, a Republican from Kansas, proposed eliminating direct payments to farmers but retaining countercyclical payments, which pay farmers only when prices are low. They also suggested that farmers be encouraged to take part in emerging markets such as renewable fuels to help them stay afloat.

A Central Vision from the Brits

The British system of government is more centralized than ours, and more bureaucratic. Their professional civil service is much stronger and, from casual reading, their automation has been much more unified. (It appears that entire departments not only were using the same software system in the early 90's, but some systems were being shared across departments. Compare that with the problems USDA and other US departments have getting the same software to be used across agencies.)

In an apparent continuation of that theme, here's an excerpt from a newspaper:

Paul Wickens, General Manager of Steria in Northern Ireland said: “Records NI is one of the key components of a programme that is helping to realise the Northern Ireland government’s vision to create the ‘Office of the Future’. Its main aim is to set up a single storage location for all documents and records across all 11 departments which will save time, provide faster access to information and significantly reduce the amount of space currently required to store records and documents.