My own favorite confused law is nothing like donkeys in bathtubs or ice cream cones in back pockets. Instead, it's a law that fills no need and is needlessly complicated.
"If you've been wondering whether it's illegal to defraud an innkeeper, the answer in California is yes, according to this post by the firm of Greg Hill and Associates. The post explains that "defrauding an innkeeper" is the crime of obtaining something without paying for it. Now, you and I might just call this "theft," but for whatever reason California has a statute specifically criminalizing the getting of "food, fuel, services, or accommodations" from a "hotel, inn, restaurant, boardinghouse, lodginghouse, apartment house, bungalow court, motel, marina, marine facility, autocamp, ski area, or public or private campground," without paying for it, such as by absconding after the thing has been got. See Cal. Penal Code § 537. So if you "dine and dash," or I guess flee from a bungalow court after staying the night there, this is the crime you just committed. Now you know."
I presume the basic intent was to add extra punishment for crimes by travelers, who were harder to track down than locals.
I don't know when the law was first written, but my instinct says in the early days of automobiles when people were a lot more mobile and could dine and dash more easily. But trains existed, and people had horses, so I don't know how much cars mattered.
Then there's that long list of locations. Doesn't mention bed and breakfast establishments; is it legal to steal from them?
And why only "food, fuel, services, or accommodations"? Does a box of Hamburger Helper count, since it hardly counts as food by itself? Is it OK to steal pens for sale, since they are goods, not services or accommodations?
Why not ban just plain theft? Oh wait, it is already banned, but under a dozen different names -- robbery, burglary, shoplifting, embezzlement, conversion.
Why not ban assault and other crimes? Surely all crimes by travelers and outsiders are just as deserving of extra punishment, not just those specific varieties of theft.
It's my major complaint with how laws are written. All that extra verbiage just creates more uncertainty and scope for loopholes. Why not just ban "theft"? Everybody knows what it means -- don't take people's stuff. Make the punishment a fine for some multiple of the loss, associated damages, and the expense of investigation and prosecution. Throw in a multiplier for deterrence if you want. If you want jail time, use the same standard conversion rate for people found factually innocent after a false conviction.
If the only people that put ice cream in their back pocket are horse thieves, then you've made it easier to catch horse thieves without bothering anyone else.
It is sort of why I don't find "if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns" in itself to be very persuasive. Yes, it becomes a lot easier to identify outlaws; they're the ones with the guns.
The gun outlaw statement does not mean what you think it means. It means that if you make mere possession illegal, then by definition, everyone in possession is committing a crime. It doesn't mean they are a criminal in the normally accepted manner of theft and assault.
It's the same mistake with illegal aliens. They are criminals only in having entered illegally, not for theft and assault and other ordinary criminal actions.
Same for the ice cream cone. All you've done is capture people with ice cream cones, and while very few people put ice cream cones in pockets, unlike carry guns or cross borders, it is, like Derp Derp says, only likely to happen in circumstances where you'd catch them in the actual criminal act of theft within a very short time. Unlike crossing a border or carrying a gun, which are not indications of imminent theft or assault.
The outlaw comment is meant to suggest that if you outlaw guns, then the law abiding will be defenseless against criminals because it is only the law abiding that give up their guns. That's true. But then mere possession is good indicator that you are involved in some criminal enterprise.
Of course, nothing is as silly as the blue city policy of making it hard to own a gun legally and easy to own a gun illegally.
No, mere possession would indicate criminal intentions only if no one except criminals ever carried guns. Unlike ice cream cones in back pockets, the only way to know is to stop everyone and frisk them, and we know how fair that strategy has worked. There are plenty of stories of people carrying guns for protection even when it's illegal, I bet more than criminals with bad intent.
Making possession during a crime illegal makes some sense. Making possession illegal just for being illegal makes no sense.
I agree with your point that many decent people would still own guns even if guns were illegal (but this also contradicts the premise of the outlaw comment). I think that is one reason why gun violence is a thorny problem to solve — do you really want to go to war against the decent people who just really love their guns.
It does not contradict the premise. The premise is that outlawing guns instantly makes all gun owners outlaws. It doesn't matter if that's one outlaw or a hundred million.
But what are the chances you’ll find a horse thief with ice cream in their back pocket when they’re not about to steal a horse? You’d likely just catch them stealing the horse. The law in question gives cover to harass non-horse-stealing ice cream carriers.
And the guns case really doesn’t work. The vast majority of current gun owners aren’t people you have to worry about. Banning guns actually reduces the signal:noise ratio because you now have a bunch of people whose only crime will be owning a gun.
The nuclear regulations are crazy, but I'm not so sure about the anti horse theft measures. It's comparable to rules that ban hand guns in planes. The hand gun itself is harmless unless you're going to use it for a crime. But since it's primary use in a plane is to commit acts of terrorism, it makes sense to ban them. Similarly, I can't think of any other reason than horse theft to put an ice cream cone in my back pocket.
Maybe it's prudent to remove this law from the books now, since the method is no longer feasible as a tactic. Would it also have been crazy at the time of enactment? It's a lot easier to apprehend someone on foot than someone on horseback.
Like Derp Derp says, the actual theft is imminent, and if you can surprise a thief while they've got an ice cream cone in their pocket, you could also wait a very short time and have proof of the actual theft crime, not just an indicator of what probably will happen.
Your guns in airplane comparison misses the case of hijackers knowing that there's a good chance of at least a few passengers carrying self-defense guns, and that shooting guns through the skin of a plane does not result in rapid violent disassembly. It's the reason for Air Marshals; for hijackers to not know if their flight had an armed passenger.
Concealed carriers have a lower crime rate than off-duty police. It would be the most effective anti-terrorist method possible, far cheaper and less delay.
You are the one who believes we should take revealed preferences very seriously. Doesn't that suggest the truth is that we have a revealed preference for getting to feel morally righteous and tell people what they can't do -- indeed a strong enough one we are willing to pay quite a bit to buy it? After all it does seem like we pass more laws like this the more money we have just as a consumption theory would predict. A pure error theory would say we should be no more willing to support such dumb laws.
Maybe we are just buying the goods we really want but won't admit.
But the flip side of this is that the 1957 Price-Anderson Act put an arbitrary cap on the potential liability that non-military owners of nuclear reactors must bear (currently set at $450 million). That capped liability exposure isn't adequate to account for the damages that could be inflicted by Chernobyl- or Fukushima-scale events. An obvious moral hazard problem arises whenever a business can profit by risking harm to its neighbors without bearing the costs of such harms.
One can't seriously advocate deregulation of businesses without also advocating that we get rid of all the special immunities that governments often extend to their special friends in the business world, not excepting the limited liability privileges that are generally extended to all corporate shareholders and to all members of limited liability companies even when such shareholders or members exercise some measure of control over the management of their firms (i.e. they have voting rights for selecting managers or are themselves vested with a managerial role).
Likewise, it should be recognized that when businesses are held liable, it is the providers of liability insurance who are then incentivized to act like regulators under a laissez-faire system; except their regulations actually make sense from an economic point-of-view (think Underwriters Laboratories certifying electrical products, for example). It is also important then to advocate that the state not impose price controls and other arbitrary restrictions upon the insurance industry, so that it can perform its regulatory and risk pricing functions in an efficient manner.
Your graph on nuclear plant completion costs is interesting. In 1979 the Three Mile Island accident occured. The result was a massive series of regulations that were added to plants that were already under construction. This caused the step increase you see in your graph. It pretty much ended new nuclear plant construction in the US.
"...the cumulative cost to society of draconian nuclear regulation plausibly comes to trillions of dollars."
All that money is going somewhere. Great effort was put forth to achieve those ends. Why would that ever change? How could that ever change? The value of its potential success has been captured. It's likely that nothing short of war can set that value free. What else would persuade a group of people to give up trillions?
> To be fair, the book often provides rationales for seemingly “crazy laws.” For example, horse thieves sometimes used back-pocket ice cream cones to lure horses. But why respond to this situation by punishing an isolated horse-stealing tactic, instead of just saying, “We’ve already got a law against horse theft. Who cares how you steal them?” Or perhaps, “Let’s increase the probability and/or severity of punishment for horse theft.” From this perspective, the rationales fail, and we should indeed regard the laws discussed as crazy.
Increasing the probability would require more resources. Noticing someone has icecream in their back pocket before they still a horse is conceivably easier than catching them after they steal a horse.
But if you notice someone with an ice cream cone in their back pocket, why arrest them for that indication of intent when you are close enough that you can just wait a minute or two and arrest them for the real crime? You don't have to wait til they've ridden off. They have to get the horse to lick the ice cream and follow them out of the stable or corral, at which point you arrest them as a horse thief.
There are cases where it might make sense to make laws that prohibit a behavior as an indirect way to try to control some outcome.
The most obvious is in cases of irreparable harm, where you want to do everything you can to *prevent* an outcome rather than try to punish it after the fact. "Why do we make it illegal to buy uranium 235 and block all the people with perfectly reasonable pro-social uses for it? We would just wait for the bad guys to build and detonate nuclear bombs and specifically target them!"
Another case is where it might be very hard to directly detect or deter the outcome, but there is some other condition that is easier to detect that is a precursor to the outcome. This could be the idea behind the ice cream cones in pockets ban. It is very easy to see someone with an ice cream cone in their pocket, but it is very hard to manifestly tell if a person leading a horse owns that horse or not.
The law against waking up a sleeping bear to take a picture seems reasonable to me. It sounds like it was made in some area full of wild bears to stop dumb tourists from bothering them and getting mauled.
Why make it a law instead of just a warning for stupid tourists? By the time someone is arrested for the crime, the bear will probably have mauled them anyway. It is a truly stupid law. "It shall be illegal to hold a lit stick of dynamite until it blows up." "It shall be illegal to commit suicide."
People are all too eager to want stupid laws, legislators are all too happy to oblige and show their worth, cops are all too ready to enforce them, and prosecutors love overcharging to get better plea deals.
Is it defensible in general to outlaw something merely because it creates risk? For example, the difference between getting a speeding ticket vs. being punished for causing an accident.
A better solution now would be simple dash cam video. If other cars are swerving away from a car, show the video to a jury and let them decide if he was a threat. Doesn't have to be cop car dash cam either.
In terms of cars that is a good idea, if enough people have dash cams and want to share the footage. I would be against mandating dash cams, and I can understand why many people don’t want them, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing to more widely use that footage as “better than eye witness” testimony.
My own favorite confused law is nothing like donkeys in bathtubs or ice cream cones in back pockets. Instead, it's a law that fills no need and is needlessly complicated.
From https://loweringthebar.net/2021/09/assorted-stupidity-147.html:
"If you've been wondering whether it's illegal to defraud an innkeeper, the answer in California is yes, according to this post by the firm of Greg Hill and Associates. The post explains that "defrauding an innkeeper" is the crime of obtaining something without paying for it. Now, you and I might just call this "theft," but for whatever reason California has a statute specifically criminalizing the getting of "food, fuel, services, or accommodations" from a "hotel, inn, restaurant, boardinghouse, lodginghouse, apartment house, bungalow court, motel, marina, marine facility, autocamp, ski area, or public or private campground," without paying for it, such as by absconding after the thing has been got. See Cal. Penal Code § 537. So if you "dine and dash," or I guess flee from a bungalow court after staying the night there, this is the crime you just committed. Now you know."
I presume the basic intent was to add extra punishment for crimes by travelers, who were harder to track down than locals.
I don't know when the law was first written, but my instinct says in the early days of automobiles when people were a lot more mobile and could dine and dash more easily. But trains existed, and people had horses, so I don't know how much cars mattered.
Then there's that long list of locations. Doesn't mention bed and breakfast establishments; is it legal to steal from them?
And why only "food, fuel, services, or accommodations"? Does a box of Hamburger Helper count, since it hardly counts as food by itself? Is it OK to steal pens for sale, since they are goods, not services or accommodations?
Why not ban just plain theft? Oh wait, it is already banned, but under a dozen different names -- robbery, burglary, shoplifting, embezzlement, conversion.
Why not ban assault and other crimes? Surely all crimes by travelers and outsiders are just as deserving of extra punishment, not just those specific varieties of theft.
It's my major complaint with how laws are written. All that extra verbiage just creates more uncertainty and scope for loopholes. Why not just ban "theft"? Everybody knows what it means -- don't take people's stuff. Make the punishment a fine for some multiple of the loss, associated damages, and the expense of investigation and prosecution. Throw in a multiplier for deterrence if you want. If you want jail time, use the same standard conversion rate for people found factually innocent after a false conviction.
But simplicity is not the lawyer's friend.
If the only people that put ice cream in their back pocket are horse thieves, then you've made it easier to catch horse thieves without bothering anyone else.
It is sort of why I don't find "if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns" in itself to be very persuasive. Yes, it becomes a lot easier to identify outlaws; they're the ones with the guns.
The gun outlaw statement does not mean what you think it means. It means that if you make mere possession illegal, then by definition, everyone in possession is committing a crime. It doesn't mean they are a criminal in the normally accepted manner of theft and assault.
It's the same mistake with illegal aliens. They are criminals only in having entered illegally, not for theft and assault and other ordinary criminal actions.
Same for the ice cream cone. All you've done is capture people with ice cream cones, and while very few people put ice cream cones in pockets, unlike carry guns or cross borders, it is, like Derp Derp says, only likely to happen in circumstances where you'd catch them in the actual criminal act of theft within a very short time. Unlike crossing a border or carrying a gun, which are not indications of imminent theft or assault.
The outlaw comment is meant to suggest that if you outlaw guns, then the law abiding will be defenseless against criminals because it is only the law abiding that give up their guns. That's true. But then mere possession is good indicator that you are involved in some criminal enterprise.
Of course, nothing is as silly as the blue city policy of making it hard to own a gun legally and easy to own a gun illegally.
No, mere possession would indicate criminal intentions only if no one except criminals ever carried guns. Unlike ice cream cones in back pockets, the only way to know is to stop everyone and frisk them, and we know how fair that strategy has worked. There are plenty of stories of people carrying guns for protection even when it's illegal, I bet more than criminals with bad intent.
Making possession during a crime illegal makes some sense. Making possession illegal just for being illegal makes no sense.
I agree with your point that many decent people would still own guns even if guns were illegal (but this also contradicts the premise of the outlaw comment). I think that is one reason why gun violence is a thorny problem to solve — do you really want to go to war against the decent people who just really love their guns.
It does not contradict the premise. The premise is that outlawing guns instantly makes all gun owners outlaws. It doesn't matter if that's one outlaw or a hundred million.
Try googling the phrase.
But what are the chances you’ll find a horse thief with ice cream in their back pocket when they’re not about to steal a horse? You’d likely just catch them stealing the horse. The law in question gives cover to harass non-horse-stealing ice cream carriers.
And the guns case really doesn’t work. The vast majority of current gun owners aren’t people you have to worry about. Banning guns actually reduces the signal:noise ratio because you now have a bunch of people whose only crime will be owning a gun.
Your point about horse stealing sounds right. You couldn't prepare for the crime too far ahead of time, or else the ice cream would melt.
Outlaws, as opposed to hunters and self-defense devotés.
The nuclear regulations are crazy, but I'm not so sure about the anti horse theft measures. It's comparable to rules that ban hand guns in planes. The hand gun itself is harmless unless you're going to use it for a crime. But since it's primary use in a plane is to commit acts of terrorism, it makes sense to ban them. Similarly, I can't think of any other reason than horse theft to put an ice cream cone in my back pocket.
Maybe it's prudent to remove this law from the books now, since the method is no longer feasible as a tactic. Would it also have been crazy at the time of enactment? It's a lot easier to apprehend someone on foot than someone on horseback.
Like Derp Derp says, the actual theft is imminent, and if you can surprise a thief while they've got an ice cream cone in their pocket, you could also wait a very short time and have proof of the actual theft crime, not just an indicator of what probably will happen.
Your guns in airplane comparison misses the case of hijackers knowing that there's a good chance of at least a few passengers carrying self-defense guns, and that shooting guns through the skin of a plane does not result in rapid violent disassembly. It's the reason for Air Marshals; for hijackers to not know if their flight had an armed passenger.
Concealed carriers have a lower crime rate than off-duty police. It would be the most effective anti-terrorist method possible, far cheaper and less delay.
You are the one who believes we should take revealed preferences very seriously. Doesn't that suggest the truth is that we have a revealed preference for getting to feel morally righteous and tell people what they can't do -- indeed a strong enough one we are willing to pay quite a bit to buy it? After all it does seem like we pass more laws like this the more money we have just as a consumption theory would predict. A pure error theory would say we should be no more willing to support such dumb laws.
Maybe we are just buying the goods we really want but won't admit.
But the flip side of this is that the 1957 Price-Anderson Act put an arbitrary cap on the potential liability that non-military owners of nuclear reactors must bear (currently set at $450 million). That capped liability exposure isn't adequate to account for the damages that could be inflicted by Chernobyl- or Fukushima-scale events. An obvious moral hazard problem arises whenever a business can profit by risking harm to its neighbors without bearing the costs of such harms.
One can't seriously advocate deregulation of businesses without also advocating that we get rid of all the special immunities that governments often extend to their special friends in the business world, not excepting the limited liability privileges that are generally extended to all corporate shareholders and to all members of limited liability companies even when such shareholders or members exercise some measure of control over the management of their firms (i.e. they have voting rights for selecting managers or are themselves vested with a managerial role).
Likewise, it should be recognized that when businesses are held liable, it is the providers of liability insurance who are then incentivized to act like regulators under a laissez-faire system; except their regulations actually make sense from an economic point-of-view (think Underwriters Laboratories certifying electrical products, for example). It is also important then to advocate that the state not impose price controls and other arbitrary restrictions upon the insurance industry, so that it can perform its regulatory and risk pricing functions in an efficient manner.
Your graph on nuclear plant completion costs is interesting. In 1979 the Three Mile Island accident occured. The result was a massive series of regulations that were added to plants that were already under construction. This caused the step increase you see in your graph. It pretty much ended new nuclear plant construction in the US.
"...the cumulative cost to society of draconian nuclear regulation plausibly comes to trillions of dollars."
All that money is going somewhere. Great effort was put forth to achieve those ends. Why would that ever change? How could that ever change? The value of its potential success has been captured. It's likely that nothing short of war can set that value free. What else would persuade a group of people to give up trillions?
> To be fair, the book often provides rationales for seemingly “crazy laws.” For example, horse thieves sometimes used back-pocket ice cream cones to lure horses. But why respond to this situation by punishing an isolated horse-stealing tactic, instead of just saying, “We’ve already got a law against horse theft. Who cares how you steal them?” Or perhaps, “Let’s increase the probability and/or severity of punishment for horse theft.” From this perspective, the rationales fail, and we should indeed regard the laws discussed as crazy.
Increasing the probability would require more resources. Noticing someone has icecream in their back pocket before they still a horse is conceivably easier than catching them after they steal a horse.
But if you notice someone with an ice cream cone in their back pocket, why arrest them for that indication of intent when you are close enough that you can just wait a minute or two and arrest them for the real crime? You don't have to wait til they've ridden off. They have to get the horse to lick the ice cream and follow them out of the stable or corral, at which point you arrest them as a horse thief.
The ice cream cone law is unnecessary.
There are cases where it might make sense to make laws that prohibit a behavior as an indirect way to try to control some outcome.
The most obvious is in cases of irreparable harm, where you want to do everything you can to *prevent* an outcome rather than try to punish it after the fact. "Why do we make it illegal to buy uranium 235 and block all the people with perfectly reasonable pro-social uses for it? We would just wait for the bad guys to build and detonate nuclear bombs and specifically target them!"
Another case is where it might be very hard to directly detect or deter the outcome, but there is some other condition that is easier to detect that is a precursor to the outcome. This could be the idea behind the ice cream cones in pockets ban. It is very easy to see someone with an ice cream cone in their pocket, but it is very hard to manifestly tell if a person leading a horse owns that horse or not.
The law against waking up a sleeping bear to take a picture seems reasonable to me. It sounds like it was made in some area full of wild bears to stop dumb tourists from bothering them and getting mauled.
Why make it a law instead of just a warning for stupid tourists? By the time someone is arrested for the crime, the bear will probably have mauled them anyway. It is a truly stupid law. "It shall be illegal to hold a lit stick of dynamite until it blows up." "It shall be illegal to commit suicide."
People are all too eager to want stupid laws, legislators are all too happy to oblige and show their worth, cops are all too ready to enforce them, and prosecutors love overcharging to get better plea deals.
Is it defensible in general to outlaw something merely because it creates risk? For example, the difference between getting a speeding ticket vs. being punished for causing an accident.
I would generally argue no, as defining and measuring risk is a risky business itself, and tends to lead to rule by the most paranoid.
A better solution now would be simple dash cam video. If other cars are swerving away from a car, show the video to a jury and let them decide if he was a threat. Doesn't have to be cop car dash cam either.
In terms of cars that is a good idea, if enough people have dash cams and want to share the footage. I would be against mandating dash cams, and I can understand why many people don’t want them, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing to more widely use that footage as “better than eye witness” testimony.
I'd trust objective dash cam videos before I'd trust eyewitnesses.
Well said. Totally agree.
Bob Murphy and I pile on: https://youtu.be/CwWgt138dsQ?si=213uK12r5h4t2mKe
Excellent, thank you.