Defining what's reasonable is much harder, but it can be parceled out through individual cases, and slowly build jurisprudence.
I would argue that an imperfect definition that doesn't completely encompass a situation is better than a loose guideline, because the definition is unambiguous, while the guideline will always leave room for bickering about interpretation.
Well, the point of it being defined is that you don't have to.
>What if I use a chair as a place to set my dinner plate while eating on the sofa?
Did you forget the other half of the argument? Why should there be a problem if you want to eat on your chair?
>Otherwise, I can add a fifth center support to my table and now you have to rewrite every law pertaining to tables.
Why would the definition of what a table is need to be modified if someone transforms a table into not-a-table?
Silly definitions enshrined into law are why cameras arbitrarily limit the length of the videos they will record, lest they be accused of being video equipment and thereby subject to additional tariffs.
If it's a crime to do X on a "table" and you do X on a not-table, by definition you're not committing a crime. Saying that you're getting away with a crime in such a situation is like saying that you're getting away with a crime by driving your car within the speed limit, whereas if you were an honest criminal and drove a little bit faster the police would be allowed to ticket you. If there are clearly demarcated limits that people are allowed to stay within, it's not a technicality whether you're on one side or the other.
>Let alone what the police will do to poor students sitting in their “tables” (you know, the ones with four legs and a small horizontal working surface).
Sorry, I don't understand the argument.
>Silly definitions enshrined into law are why cameras arbitrarily limit the length of the videos they will record, lest they be accused of being video equipment and thereby subject to additional tariffs.
What the alternative, given that the government wants to tax "professional video equipment" but not "consumer video equipment" and there's a gradient from one to the other?
If you want a less contrived example, where I live motorcycles require different licenses depending on their engine displacement, but since electric motorcycles have a displacement of 0, they can be ridden without registration or license. Is this due to oversight or to encourage use of electric motorcycles? Are people who ride electric motorcycles without a license getting away with exploiting a loophole, or are they using the law as intended?
Three wheeled cars used to be made to bypass the definition of what a car is and avoid needing to be subject to crash testing and other safety regulation. My parent's home is a complicated 'single-unit condo' which is as far as I can tell, basically a lie to get past regulations on building new houses.
I guess my point is, if you agree that the law is good then you should not want the definition to be easily bypassed with a loophole, and having something that's flexible helps a lot with this. And if the law is bad then you'll be glad for one though it makes things silly compared to repealing the law.
And if you see someone using a loophole for a law you like, especially if they are doing so in a cheeky way like the billionaires playing games with shell companies to avoid taxes, it's fair to be mad at them even if it's not "technically illegal".
imo. it's usually big players who have the time and the lawyers to exploit loopholes in the first place.
won't deny that there is downsides though
https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/chapter-3-propert...
We have no trouble defining what things are and often do. Granted we don't have a strict definition of a "table", but we do for general furniture/furnishings, on top of which there are standards set by the various federal agencies and import control by the trade departments. Regardless, there can be one tomorrow like so many things provided in the first link.
Some of these are revised as needed, but anyway getting past the point.
Honestly the more I study social/political systems, the more obvious it becomes just how much more difficult the problems in that space are than the engineering ones I'm used to...
That is a terrible definition of a table. This is how you get loop holes in laws.
Law is not computer code. There is a reason we have judges and a court system to interpret laws.
>Law is not computer code. There is a reason we have judges and a court system to interpret laws.
I'm of the opinion that the judicial system should be as dumb as possible. It's the legislative system where the real work should happen.
PS: Downvoting does not constitute a counterargument.
When you start talking about seizing assets then the definition is all that more important.
You didn't really give an argument to counter.
In fairness, i didn't really either.
"The particular definition isn't as important as long as it doesn't leave room for ambiguity" is a pretty controversial statement. To me, this seems obviously false. However, i think its kind of like arguing about what makes a good person. Yes you can appeal to certain general principles, but at some level the general principles come down to "because i think so".
As a fundemental principle, i think which behaviours the law forbids and which it does not is important. The purpose of law is to regulate certain behaviors; it is not an exercise in mathematics or formal logic. This seems self-obvious to me, but as a normative claim there is not much i can say to convince you if you disagree.
To that end, i think criminalizing the wrong conduct is worse than mild ambiguity in laws, when the ambiguity can largely be resolved through common sense. I believe the principle of precedent in common law systems combined with the principle that ambiguities should generally be interpreted to benefit the defendent, effectively mitigates the downsides of allowing mild ambiguity.
A "loophole" is not in itself a problem.
> Perhaps this is a problem, or perhaps it isn't.
Eh? If you're talking about defining a 'table' but something that is clearly a table doesn't fit in your definition, than you failed at what you're trying to do. That is a problem.
Raising tax on 'regular' tables leads to the obvious effect that next all tables will be sold with one extra leg, making them irregular. Therefore people are still selling and using tables except they don't pay any tax on it (which was presumably the point of raising taxes on tables). Also what happens with the definition of 'regular' when the 5-legged tables becomes the norm, and 4-legged rare? Do we amend it to reverse the definition? this would obviously not work.
In the case of a tax on tables you should be unspecific in your definition of a table so that the interpretation of the law becomes simple. There is a tax on tables, no matter what size, what kind, how many legs, etc. It is clear to producers, traders and consumers.
This ultimately makes everything much simpler for everybody. And this also allows lawmakers to only think of the 'spirit' of the law, without having to endlessly debate about what would be a perfect definition for a thing.
All I'm trying to say is that although I kinda think you're right, in that it would be useful if we could reduce law-things to super strict definitions, it would obviously be great if we could do away with lawyers and judges, and replace them with a simple decision trees, but that's just not realistic.
Realisiticaly it works the other way around. It starts of vague, and only gets debated and amended when and if edge-cases show up.
Nowadays lawmakers know so much about previous cases and laws that they kinda figured out how to write laws that are resistant to all the likely edge cases that might pop up, so even simple laws might nowadays start out as relatively complex documents that are strict in the things they can be strict about and loose when that is more advantageous.
Another point that is mildly related is that I personally wonder if it's possible at all to perfectly capture everything about a thought/feeling/concept in writing. Is it possible at all to put something in English on paper, and not have the interpretation of that thing be different for each person reading it?
What if what you want is simply for the onus to be on the cops to defend why they need to do something, instead of it just being assumed they can do whatever they want?