Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: more perspective on rules and regs

[truddick (truddick]

-----Original Message-----
From: Diane <dianeclaire [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Re: more perspective on rules and regs


"That is a very slippery slope you're.   The State that writes rules about
picking up babies so many times a day just so it can have a rule that
permits it to close down the really bad day care facilities is also writing
a rule that will allow a really bad inspector to collect graft and in other
ways intimidate the really good day care establishments"

I agree, but also:

--Again,. it's impossible to codify all human behavior.  At some point it
needs to get simplified to "be honest, be competent, be fair, be nice."  [I
proposed that as the student code of conduct at my college but it wasn't
accepted.  I guess there was a risk that people would understand it.]

--The rule cited as the original example specifies something unenforceable
(is a child care agent going to monitor baby-picking-up for sufficient days
to provide statistical reliability?  Does it count if the worker lets the
baby lie for seven hours and then picks her up five times in the last 45
minutes?).  The law fails if the cops can't make an efficient arrest.

--In principle I prefer rules that address specifically what needs to be
addressed, not the tangentials.  For example, regulating drugs is fine, but
regulating "drug-related parapherrnalia" opens the door to busting any stage
production that uses a hookah (like the "Twelfth Night" I was in back in the
70s).

There's legal precedent for government restrictions on mass media that says
the restriction must meet four conditions:
(1) the message in the media must be legal and honest (this is the moot
provision; if illegal or fraudulent, the government can always regulate).
(2) The regulation must address a legitimate public interest.
(3) There must be some objective evidence that the regulation actually
serves to promote the intended interest.
(4) The regulation must be limited so that there are no unavoidable
restrictions on other forms of expression that are not related to the
intended interest.
Those seem to me to be the best guidelines for any rule, regulation, law,
principle, or ethical code.  Too bad they're followed so infrequently.

___
  !    _    Thomas E. "TR" Ruddick
  !   !_)   Nunquam Vadis Levis!
      !  \