6 Laws That Were Great On Paper (And Insane Everywhere Else)
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And Bourbon.
The point being, history is full of well-meant laws and reforms meant to protect us from ourselves that either don't do a damned thing, or in these cases, actually make things worse.
#6.
Smoking Bans in Pubs and Bars Means More Drunk Driving
Let's face it, alcohol and cigarettes are a magical combination: They go together like peanut butter and chocolate; a rock star and a porn actress; a Cracked writer and minor felonies. You'd think it would be common knowledge by now that if you mess with one of these vices, it's going to affect the other in some way. But anti-smoking laws have been in the news quite frequently, with newly implemented indoor smoking bans taking effect all across the UK and the U.S. The benefit to public health seems obvious at first glance. But as astute readers might have guessed already, there is always a potential backfire just waiting to happen...
Keeping us safe from second-hand smoke.
How Did it Backfire?
Smokers who also drink alcohol are going to smoke when they drink alcohol. As obvious as that statement is to anyone with a shred of common sense, the unbreakable bond of smokes and booze escaped lawmakers completely. They figured that smokers would go to bars, have a drink or two, step outside for a quick nicotine fix and then resume their drinking inside. They forgot to take two tiny little things into account: Winter is cold and wet, and people with genitals typically like to not "freeze them off."
And no practical advancements in winter smoking.
A study by researchers Scott Adams and Chad Cotti discovered that, when faced with smoking bans in bars near their homes, alcohol-drinking smokers would simply drive further to other jurisdictions where the bans weren't in place. That also meant they had a longer drive home when they were potentially drunk off their asses. Adams and Cotti found that, on average, there was a 13 percent increase in drunk driving fatalities in areas that had instituted smoking bans.
Do the right thing.
If we've learned any lesson today, let it be thus: Never underestimate the love affair between beer and cigarettes, or the motivational power of cold balls.
Oh, also don't drink and drive. That's somewhere in there too.
#5.
Sex Offender Laws Make Them Harder to Track
If a stampede of pedophiles running rampant through the streets sounds like a nightmare, you might not be sleeping. You might just be in Iowa.
It all seemed like such a great idea on paper: The good legislators of Dubuque, Iowa, in an attempt to keep pedophiles and other degenerates as far away from their children as possible made it illegal for a registered sex offender to live within 2,000 feet of a school. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But then someone remembered that kids also congregated at other places besides schools. There were libraries, daycare centers, swimming pools and parks to think about too. In the end, sex offenders were forbidden to live within a half-mile of any place where adolescents might gather.
How Did it Backfire?
Somebody took a map of Dubuque and drew 4,000-foot diameter circles around every "predator free" landmark in town. They quickly realized that with dozens of overlapping circles covering the entire city, there was literally no place that a sex offender could legally live. Like some alternate-universe version of the Book of Exodus, the county's molesters had no choice but to pack their shit, sing "Let My People Go" and head for the Promised Land. The Promised Land, in this case, being the town of Galena, right across the Mississippi River in Illinois, where no such restrictions were in place.
When the good people of Galena realized that a herd of dudes named Chester was headed for its borders, they in turn passed their own Draconian residency laws. The next town down the line did the same thing, as did the town after that. A frenzied passing of sex offender residency legislation swept across the entire region and now, presumably, there is a tidal wave of homeless child molesters thousands strong that is going to crash into the Atlantic Ocean at any moment.
Iowa lawmakers reluctantly came to understand that while having sexual predators living in your town is not very appealing, knowing where they live is an important part of policing them and making sure they are controlled and accounted for. Once everyone on the sex offender registry became basically homeless, a good number of them went underground and disappeared off the police radar altogether. The end result: Like a sexually deviant remake of Predator, Iowa is now being stalked by legally invisible child molesters scattered throughout the state.
#4.
Fishing Restrictions Mean Smaller Fish
If you happen to be hunting on land, you have to follow some pretty strict permit rules like: Only hunt in designated areas, observe all safety rules and don't slaughter anything that can sing you an adorable song about the forest. So it only make sense that the same should apply for fishing, right?
Nope! Don't you look stupid for assuming that? That's what you get for applying logic, suckers!
How Did it Backfire?
Fishing restrictions are actually causing the fish to shrink and depopulate. And this isn't some new development either; this has been happening over the past century or so. The average size of cod has gone from 95 centimeters to 65 over the space of 60 years, for example. And while most people were happy to shrug it off, assuming water shrinks fish the same way it makes fools of all men, some scientists suggest we might be the ones actually responsible.
In one study, a batch of Atlantic Silversides were divided up between three tanks. In the first tank, 90 percent of the largest fish were culled; in the second, 90 percent of the smallest fish were culled; and in the third control tank, they culled fish at random (though presumably the ones that "swam like dicks" went first). Counter-intuitively, it turned out that the second tank ended up having larger fish, over longer periods of time.
Do you see the reasoning yet? As we're actively removing all the big fish from the ocean, while simultaneously protecting the smaller fish, we're teaching the genetic structure of the fish to favor slow growth. Not only does this mean that we're getting smaller fish to catch, it also means that fish are now taking longer to reach maturity, meaning they're taking longer to repopulate.
In short: We cull the strongest and the largest (the Schwarzenegger fish) while throwing back the weak and sickly (the Steve Gutenberg fish) then when nature sees this shit go down, BAM!
Perpetual nerd fish.
why not just execute the kiddy-diddlers and be done with it?
ReplyThe story about Iowa makes me want to slump down in my chair (I live there). And lock my doors.
ReplyHere's a novel idea regarding child molesters: If we think they're still enough of a threat that we need to warn the public of their existence, maybe that's a sign they shouldn't be getting released back out into society in the first place! Rather, they should probably be staying in jail, where they rightly belong, for the rest of their lives.
One thing I don't get about this article: What's wrong with the name Chester?
ReplyIt's either a reference to something, or it just sounds kind of molestery. Which it kinda does.
Chester the Molester. Someone never read Hustler.
Snorted coffee through my nose @ "...two dudes punch each other into the short bus." Thanks!
ReplyOne of the best articles ever written on the law of unintended consequences.
ReplyCome on, Big Betty... Dance with me!
Replythe problem with #4 is that when you net a fuckton of fish, you don't pick through and throw back the small ones- basically every fish that ends up netted is going to die, and the holes in those nets are pretty small. Controlling fishing is about keeping the volume of fish in the water higher. That study is not an accurate representation of the fishing industry. The decrease in average cod size isn't because we're only getting rid of the large ones, it's because we're getting rid of all the large and medium and small size ones.
Reply"passionately suckling at the teat of complete failure"... can't wait until I can use that in a sentence
Replyme too!
actually boxing gloves to not increase your punching power at all a slight increase in weight is pointless since its only a few ounces at best which wont even regester on force aswell as since the gloves are soft the glove itself absorbes force one documentary i watched a few years ago showed that a boxers punch decreased around about 5% when wearing gloves
ReplyWhat is being said here is that people actually punch harder as the gloves don't hurt their hands as much.
How many times were you punched in the head before you wrote this?
Actually, the biggest misnomer about the Endangered Species Act is that the government will come into your home and set up an electric fence around an endangered fly and make you its personal servants. The ESA actually only legally applies to FEDERAL LAND and land impacted by federal money (most state land). If the last bald eagle on the planet lands on your wood chipper, you can legally just fire up that puppy and make some pillows. Bloody, beaky, feather pillows. Which actually makes one wonder what everyone is so upset about since if 90% of endangered species are on private land, it appears to be the most toothless law on the planet.
ReplyI think you mean misunderstanding or misconception, misnomer means 'incorrectly named'. That would be if the endangered species act protected gray squirrels, sparrows, feral cats, and other things that are extremely common.
Ask a handicapwd women who cant build her house becuase if sone damn bird who it effects you moron. Also more then once its been admited that eoa crap was started to broaden emanate domain.
Am I the only one who doesn't buy into the "saving trees" argument? As long as people keep felling trees for construction material, fuel, paper, etc. they'll have to plant new ones if for no reason other than to stay in business.
ReplyThat is a fairly valid point until you realize how long it takes trees to reach a decent harvisting size, how many nutrients are leeched out of the soil due to poor re-planting, the toxins released during the production of many wood-based products like paper, and the millions of cubic feet of wasted paper festering (and NOT biodegrading I might add, mostly due to things like bleaching proccesses) in landfills all over the place. I'm not a person that thinks we shouldn't have ANY paper, I just think there are intelligent ways of reducing the amount of paper WASTE we all contribute to every day. By the way if you print this reply there will be a second page with "This page intentionally left blank" in the middle of it.
People have been known to use up so many trees that once-forested places only have the trees that someone planted in their yard left, you have to be thinking ahead by 50 years if you want to plant your way into continued livelihood. Most of history, people just figured that, after we cut down these trees here, our kids can go somewhere else and cut down those trees, there.
See also, Easter Island.
Simple solution to the sex offender problem: Kill them all instead of letting them out. There's almost a 100% certainty that they'll reoffend again and again, anyway. There is no true rehabilitation for them. So they should be culled.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesDo you have any kind of hard scicentific evidence for this 100% reoffence rate??
"Almost 100%" So, not 100% then.
"almost 100%" in the same way I am "almost" a Baboon. A huge chunk of sex offender registries are there for bullshit, non-sex-offendy reasons. The only reason they don't get as much press as innocent people on death row is because no one wants to be they guy that stands up for sex offenders.
The problem is that "sex offender" applies not just to child molesters, but to anyone caught urinating in public, mooning or streaking. "Almost 100%" of everyone who ever went to college has done at least one of those things. So yeah, we should kill...everyone.
nice futurama reference, you get 100 internets
Replyboxing is so f*****g lame... all that needless swinging at the other guy's head teaches nothing about real defensive technique... i like having my opposable thumbs free, so i can do my crazy (steven seagal) aikido shit... my hands are dexterous tactile machines, not bullshit-blunted bludgeons... boxing may require it's own "technique", but when these guys are out of the ring, the rules are a bit slightly different... you can take the marquis of queensbury's rules and shove them straight up your poop-hole.
ReplyIf you keep track of who is filing what, though, it seems like the purpose of the paperwork reduction act is to punish government agencies who require taxpayers to file paperwork by making the government agencies file paperwork to justify it. So really it's kind of a "see how YOU like it" thing. Worse for trees, at least in the short run, but better for responsible government.
ReplyThat's assuming the people responsible for ordering paperwork done are the ones that have to fill out the new stuff. Most of them have secretaries to do the boring work.
that was a masturbation joke. go us! lol, great s**t man. i always wondered that about boxing gloves cause they weigh more than your fist
ReplyI disagree with number 6. Never underestimate the power of an addiction. Smokers will stand outside in the rain, in a storm, in the cold to puff. I've seen them do it. My job has a ban on smoking. People have about a 10 minute walk just to get to a designated smoke area. There is a very heavy and out-of-shape guy that works there. When this guy walks, his breathing is very labored and he sweats profusely. Did I mention both of his knees are shot? Despite his condition, he makes to 10 minute trek each way to go smoke his cigarette.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI wouldn't have a problem with 'designated' smoking areas if they would give us a f*****g break! ok, you got us 10 metres away from doorways, ok, you got us out of most bars, ok, you got us out of most public areas,, that's fine,, but why the hell don't we get a f*****g roof or even a bus stop booth or something to cover us when it is raining and snowing? I have no problem keeping my habit away from people who don't want to be around it and all that but,, not even a bit of cover? non-smokers who think I deserve this s**t just because i do something you don't like,, can lick my juicy little slit! while I slap you in the face and kick you in the balls :}
Well...you deserve all that and more...enjoy your cigarette
Wow MissBliss... quite a tangent. A sexy, sexy tangent.
I just don't smoke in designated smoking areas. I find the nearest place where people can easily avoid my "death-cloud", and if assholes actually go out of their way to approach me and tell me I shouldn't be smoking there, I tell them to f**k off and I'm not inconveniencing anyone with my location.
First, even as a non-smoker, I'd say MissBliss and her fellow smokers should at least get an awning or shelter or something.
Second, I'd have to say that her names appears to be a misnomer.
In my home state all the smoking bans are work place smoking bans. They're in place to protect non-smoking employees from inhaling poison all day.
Replypassive smoking increases cancer risk by about as much as eating citrus fruit. you also absorb considerably more of each chemical by spending five minutes by a busy road. and companies have always been allowed to ban smoking on an individual basis, and you've always been free to refuse to work in a smoking environment or talk to your union to get it changed on an individual basis but hey.
Even taking the health risks aside you wouldnt expect to have to petition your union to stop people doing something that smells horrific and causes you to cough your guts up.
Can we stop equating "sex offender" with "child molester" or "pedophile" please?
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesUnfortunately many people are unaware that you can get placed on the sex offender list for something as innocuous as peeing in an alleyway.
i've checked; we decided no.
1: Especially since it's a f*****g euphemism, 2: Because somehow, people just go to ridiculous f*****g lengths without ANY reason; just further, and further, and further, overly hellfucking (n'or peefucking) simplistic.
How about we just stop committing sex offenses instead? I don't really care what sex offense a person committed, I don't want one within a mile of my family.
You van get put on that list for public urination, having sex in your own house but acvidently leaving the blinds up and someone perks in and sees you. People in college who think its funny to streak ruin their whole future. All cases aren't so black and white. It's swell that you keep such a protective umbrella over your family but the law is flawed.
Your boxing inclusion might make sense, if not for the fact that the gloves weren't meant to protect the person being hit. They're to protect the fists of the person hitting.
Replyand by protecting those fists from whacking skulls, they've encouraged head blows and thus been counter-productive due to fists being less important than brains. which i'm fairly sure was the point the article made, haven't read that far yet.