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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> "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.

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.

Now it essentially means "control".

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.

It's convenient that your historical definition lines up perfectly with the ideology of limited government. Do you have a source for it?

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.

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.

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

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.

You know, Somalia - a proper Libertarian paradise - has an open immigration policy. What are you waiting for?

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.

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