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Hello everyone, today’s broadcast will be about an idiom ‘drawing a line in the sand’, the idea of setting clear boundaries between what’s good and what’s not good, what’s permissible, what’s not permissible and what someone has to or is not allowed to do. Instinctively, in modern society, laws are the ‘lines in the sand’ designed to demarcate these lines. However, it of course isn’t that simple: there are promises, conditional agreements, guarantees, expectations (which I wrote about here). And sometimes, these are actually more effective than laws in ensuring people do ‘good’. But do we really need all of these guardrails; the threat of consequences over our heads to do ‘good’?
A Simple Thought Experiment
Let’s introduce the shopping cart theory:
In essence, the decision to return or not return the shopping cart can indicate whether or not you are a good person. There are no laws, no contract with the shop or even expectations that force you to do this, therefore by returning the cart you are showing that you do not need to be ‘pushed’ to do the right thing.
Another example could be returning shoes at a shoe shop: when taking shoes out the box and trying them on, you are free to put the stuffing back into the shoes, put them back in the right box, and put them back. You are also free to leave the shoes in the exact place where you dropped them and continue about your day. there are no strict laws forcing you to go one way or the other, so whatever you do is of your own free will, and your actions reflect who you truly are.
However, this theory has its critics: for one, the definition of good is something that society has imposed on it, and if this theory was applied to other situations, the decision is not as night and day as it is in this case.
Many shops now have a system where one needs to input a coin into a slot in order to be able to use the shopping cart- you are not paying to use it, it is more of a deposit, as you have full freedom to redeem your money back by returning the cart. However, this still has not solved the issue, which shows that monetary loss as well as the urge to do ‘good’ does not outweigh the cost of inconvenience. So much so, that there are now jobs, where the main part is to collect and return shopping carts from parking spaces. But what if everyone from tomorrow decides to be a ‘good’ member of society and start to return their shopping cart. These people now have their job load reduced or completely eliminated, and are under threat of being laid off or having wages lowered- is returning the shopping cart now as 'good’ as it was before?
What determines ‘Good’
Many see the law as a tool preventing bad, protecting good. But who or what process determines this? In countries where church and state are not separated, it is relatively simple (in theory):the interpretation of religious texts dominates the intent and construction of law. But in countries that attempt to separate the two, it becomes more complicated. Laws may be created according to ideologies, theories, personal belief of elected politicians, civilian pressure. While in normal times all of these motivations average out to create a good moral compass, once these motivations are skewed to the extreme and begin to dominate the others, the compass may point to a new version of ‘good’, which is in a different direction to the previous ‘good’. However, laws in the past were designed to ensure that ‘good’ doesn’t stray too far, so it is vital for countries to have a good basis point, a good anchor- A country’s constitution is often their anchor.
Overall, this serves as an example that the notions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are dynamic, they fluctuate over time, and maybe its a good thing that we have laws which are set and do not flux too erratically over the passage of time, serving as a ring buoy, ensuring our morality never sinks down below - or like a line in the sand.
The Flipside
However, sometimes law’s rigidity does have it negative consequences: take the example of the broken red-light. There are strict rules regarding traffic lights, and there are very very few exceptions when you can legally cross the line on a red light. Typically, the safest instance is when a cop waves you through. But what if you stop at a red light, and it’s broken? How long do you stay then?
From person to person, the answer would vary- some people’s impatience outweighs their fear of the consequences, while some people’s strict adherence to rules outweighs their common sense.
people’s answer may vary depending on the specific scenario too, where morals, societal expectations or simple peer pressure play a part too. For instance, if the broken red light was in a rural intersection with little to no traffic and there were no cars around, you might not wait too long. But if the broken light is in an urban environment, with many cars, different forces come into play:
You have this common sense idea to take more care, as there more people around and higher risk of causing an accident.
Fears of consequences: There is a higher likelihood of cameras or police being present.
Many cars lining up behind you may cause you to hesitate as your actions will influence others.
Those same cars behind you may be honking their horn, pressuring you to go through the red light sooner than you would have.
Although the standard procedure is to report the issue, wait for police arrive or for the issue to be sorted, this may not be practical for someone who has an emergency or is in a remote area, where the response time would be very long.
This also an indication of how laws are unable to foresee every single scenario- laws can try tackle the known issues, but they cannot account for every single possibility and variant of these issues. Furthermore, when new unknown issues arise, existing laws may be unequipped to deal with the new scenario’s. that’s why some of the best laws are vague by design.
Fish-net Laws
This issue can be seen as an applied variant of the age old dilemma ‘quality vs quantity’ - with regards to laws, the dilemma is ‘Vagueness vs Thoroughness’. Both of these are are great attributes for any law, but too much of one attribute can make the law ineffective. lets try explain these two concepts as if laws were fishing nets.
Vagueness ensures that the law covers everyone, and no-one or nothing can wriggle free with technicalities. However, something that is so wide and all-encompassing can be difficult to enforce, especially if the law is broken by multiple people at the same time. In addition, a vague law may mean it could be easy for people in violation of the law to find an argument that enables them to wriggle away from consequences.
This is like casting a wide, large net into the ocean. your are likely to catch a lot of fish, but if the net is flimsy, the sheer mass of fish caught may cause the net to break. Additionally, if the net holes are too large, a lot of smaller fish may escape.
Thoroughness ensures that the law can be rock-solid, and that there is no avoiding falling under the purview of the law. however, designing and implementing such a law can be time consuming and complicated, and can cause unintended consequences or restrict related freedoms. Such thoroughness either means the law has to be a massive piece or many, many different versions of the law have to be additionally implemented in order to ensure everything is accounted for- either way this represents an incredible drain of resources, which arguably could be better served in the creation of other laws which may have more of an impact.
This is like casting a small, but very dense net into the ocean. You are not likely to catch a lot of fish, but if you were aiming for a specific one, you probably caught it. However to catch a lot of fish you may need to cast a lot of nets, and it may be difficult to control all of them. Additionally, as the net is very dense, you may catch unwanted things like seaweed.
Let’s see if I can apply this to a specific, if slightly weird, example. Let’s say one day the government of a country wakes up and decides to ban apples. How do we construct the law?
First we need to construct the idea of what we mean by apple: do we mean the fruit, the company, or the idea of an apple? If we opted to go entirely down the vagueness route, such as a law stating the ‘total ban on apples’ would therefore affect many things we wouldn’t want to. Even if we said ‘total ban on consumption of apples’, wouldn’t buying, using and disposing of an Iphone fall under this?
So lets try more thoroughness, less vagueness: ‘total ban on eating all forms of the edible fruit apples’. however, we have overcompensated in thoroughness, and are missing out on benefits of vagueness. For instance, while food containing apples would be targeted, food containing artificial apple flavouring may not be affected, if the artificial flavouring does not contain apple.
So the hunt for a well crafted law continues, but hopefully this has shown how close to a zero-sum game law making can be.
Another axis
Another way laws can be divided into are laws which restrict, such as laws banning discrimination based on race, gender or religion, and laws which protect, such as laws protect the right to free speech. What is important to note is that laws that ‘protect' only protect you from those trying to stop your actions, but they do not and should not protect against the consequences of your actions. After all, there is nothing stopping you from randomly shouting ‘fire!’ in a museum, just don’t get surprised if you then get banned from ever coming back.
All Bark no Bite?
Laws are only effective if there is monitoring and there are consequences in place. Laws with no teeth can quickly be disregarded as little more than a nuisance. At the very least, monitoring is needed. With a law in place, and the presence of monitoring, this alone is enough for people to be wary of breaking the law, as they assume that the third aspect, the consequences, are also in place. Even the suggestion of monitoring is enough of a deterrence- this is why there is a large market in fake security cameras.
Just imagine: there’s a swing in a park with a sign saying children only (the Law). You might be tempted to go on the swing anyway. But if you see a camera on a tree facing the swing( the monitoring), you have some apprehension, as you are afraid that someone may be watching behind the camera and the park security may come( the consequences).
It’s not even about preventing someone breaking a law, it can change your behaviour entirely. When you walk into an elevator alone, you often do things that you wouldn’t dare do in public- Admire or stress about your appearance in the mirror or even just stare at yourself like a madman, pick at a spot, pick at your teeth, a whole host of questionable activities. But when you spot a camera as you are walking in, how many of those things would you still do?
The Onslaught of Time
Like anything, many laws are not time-proof. Over time, some laws become seen as obsolete, while some have become over-relied upon, creating issues when a law written in previous centuries is applied to modern complexities. The question then becomes should these be updated, or even removed? And if they should be changed, then by who? In the modern atmosphere of polarization, it would be difficult to try updating an old law without the plague of partisanship paralyzing and tainting efforts. And even if laws are obsolete, maybe they should stay just in case they are needed? After all, is the law obsolete or did the law work so effectively that the behaviour it aimed to mitigate ceased entirely?
Hopefully, this broadcast has shown the different factors that come into play in determining what’s ‘good’ and what’s ‘not good’, as well as showing the difficulties and the delicate balance in the trade-offs that need to be dealt with in the path to forging effective law. Laws are built on shaky foundations of morals and theories, equating to lines drawn in the sand, and the sands of time, in the shape of changing societal norms; new problems, are inevitable in shifting these lines.
Make sure to give this broadcast a coherence score!
That’s all from me for now, but stay tuned for future broadcasts,
This has been Kunga’s Written Radio,
Check out last week’s broadcast here →
feel like i’ve read this before 🤔