"I can't Hate Donald Trump"

[Clodfobble]

You are, generally speaking, an isolationist by nature, Henry--not just politically, but in your personality and day-to-day life. To put it bluntly, I don't think you get out much. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time dealing with The Public on a large scale would see one big downside to your plan, and that is the preponderance of Dumb Fucking Idiots in this world. And I don't mean people who hold different political beliefs, or people who prioritize things differently than I do. I mean genuine, horrendous, stupid and immoral by any standard, Dumb Fucking Idiots.

Put a basic, basic intelligence assessment as a threshold requirement for Randomocracy eligibility, and maybe I could be swayed. But legislation readable by humans could not be passed by people whose heads happen to be too far up their asses to think reading or writing anything is worthwhile, and there are more people out there like that than you think.

[henry quirk]

"I don't think you get out much."

Ahem...my work has me out and about every day, in the company of people everyday.

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"Dumb Fucking Idiots..."

...make up more than 90% of any population you care to name...not seein' how installin' morons by random selection will get us any worse of a result than the way we do it now (installin' morons who win popularity contests).

[Happy Monkey]

Laws are written to be precise. Granted, sometimes (often) they are written with maliciously precise loopholes for particular interest groups, but the vast majority of boilerplate legalese that adds pages to laws is there because the shorter, more readable version was misinterpreted in a clever way, and the law needed to be clarified. And, unfortunately, an extreme amount of clarification can become obfuscation.

[Pamela]

I can see a downside. I assume many others to too.

Anyone installed by lottery or other such means would likely immediately devolve into a corrupt banana republic legislator, grabbing as much money as they could while the gettin' was good.

The federal government is one giant hog trough full of cash, and anyone who gets access to it will grab as much as they can for themselves, followed by doling some out to the peons they purport to represent, be they the poor, the disabled, the elderly, whomever. Look at any nonreligious charity (and some of those too).

The ones at the top always seem to make six and seven figure salaries, don't they? QED.

[elSicomoro]

I ALMOST feel sorry for Paul Manafort right now...almost.

Here's a current view into Trump campaign headquarters:

[henry quirk]

"Anyone installed by lottery or other such means would likely immediately devolve into a corrupt banana republic legislator, grabbing as much money as they could while the gettin' was good."

Sure, many would, just as they do now, under the current system.

[henry quirk]

The simple solution: adjudication (and initial restraint)

A plain language law might say 'don't shoot guns within the city limits'...certainly some schmuck will come along and test it, looking for, or creating, a loophole...turning one plain sentence into twenty pages of jargon (to clarify the original sentence) is one way to go, but it might be better, where there's dispute, to allow adjudication (folks present their arguments, the arbiter assesses arguments with the law as standard, then he rules).

Certainly, as time goes, any law will accrete interpretations, amendments, qualifiers, etc. but it seems more natural to allow circumstance to to guide that process than trying to cram everything in from the start.

And, of course, hesitancy on the part of law makers to create new law in the first place would be a nice thing. 'Do we really need a law for this?' is a serious question that, it seems, a great many law makers ignore or give only a passing thought to.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

Certainly, as time goes, any law will accrete interpretations, amendments, qualifiers, etc. but it seems more natural to allow circumstance to to guide that process than trying to cram everything in from the start.

That's what boilerplate is; the natural accumulation of interpretations, amendments, qualifiers, etc, that have proven necessary on old laws, applied to new ones, so we don't have to go through all of that again.

[henry quirk]

It should never be easy to pass laws, so: 'going through all that again' should be required...startin' from scratch every damn time.

[Undertoad]

The law is created, then adjudicated, then enforced as we know from watching the opening to Law & Order...

So random person can create law, and it starts the loophole arguments over what is a gun, and what is firing; but also, there are a whole set of changes that happen to any previous city laws about guns, as well as what laws are at state, county, federal level and how they interoperate.

If the interpretation of the law is to be part of it, then the body of decisions has to be followed, and things previously ruled upon have to be studied, with repercussions for judges if this doesn't happen.

Pretty soon interpretation is more complicated than the law itself, and you have a battle between law and interpretation of law. Making the law more complicated clears some of the interpretation before it happens, so the law is not immediately rendered meaningless.

I think this is all first-year law student stuff, but I also believe if I send an application to Dickinson Law School, they will sneeze on it and send it back to me. They sneezed on my undergrad app back in the day.

[Happy Monkey]

"All that" being a poorly worded law that requires years of additional legislation to bring it to the point we could have started with if we applied the lessons learned to begin with.

Yours is a prescription for more legislation, not less.

[Happy Monkey]

Itchin' to nuke someone.*

“I have to follow up with that, but I’ll be very careful here. Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?” Scarborough said.

* Grain of salt level: Scarborough

[henry quirk]

"All that" being a poorly worded law that requires years of additional legislation to bring it to the point we could have started with if we applied the lessons learned to begin with.

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Yeah, that's my mistake: when I say 'all that' I mean each and every bit of legislation ought to start from scratch, 'all that' being the process from start. That is: the cake of law ought to be made from scratch, not bought, ready-made, at the grocery.

So: if law makers had to seriously consider the need of a law (instead of just assuming that need, or being told there's a need), and if law makers had to start from the beginning on every bit of law (instead of assuming precedents [call it zero-based law making]), there would probably be fewer laws passed and those that were passed would probably address legit needs instead of momentary/cultural/special interest whims.

[Happy Monkey]

So: if law makers had to seriously consider the need of a law (instead of just assuming that need, or being told there's a need), and if law makers had to start from the beginning on every bit of law

Those are completely orthogonal. Sure, there are laws that shouldn't exist. But once it's been decided that the law should exist, I don't see how it helps things to deliberately leave massive loopholes that centuries of experience have shown us.

Because even if the legislators don't, the bad actors will. All they have to do is look at all the boilerplate that was left off of the new law, and do that. They don't even have to make up new ways around the law.

, not bought, ready-made, at the grocery.

That being said, if "the grocery" is a special interest think tank that submits ready-made laws with carefully designed loopholes, rather than boilerplate that has naturally grown from years of legislative clerks drafting law (legislators themselves seldom have much to do with the actual drafting), then I agree.

[henry quirk]

Seems to me, within the American framework, the only boilerplate we need concern ourselves with is the Constitution (itself a concise codification and distillation of 'centuries of experience'). Start there, that's the table (the only one you can use), or mebbe the basic recipe (from which you cannot deviate)...go collect your fixings...make that cake from scratch.

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"orthogonal"

Nice word...lots of meanings.