Laws are restrained by politics, society and culture to an extent. A law which goes against standard and common practice will get openly disregarded. In the same manner that a law which is too conservative or archaic will be disobeyed as social and cultural practice increasingly liberalizes. The laws can be enforced but at great expenditure of energy. Most police-states end up consuming so much energy that they require propping up by some resource (oil for instance) or they represent a factional interest so exclusively they force the nation into poverty and ruin (Myanmar).
Biopolitics is the process put forward by Michel Foucault to describe how modern liberal democracies protect life through law; whereas before laws protected against violence. The conservative right to life faction has ridden this wave and is many respects the most visible face of this process. However the nanny-state style policies of protecting people from themselves is another insidious biopolitical practice. Alcopops is a very recent example.
As Chris Berg writes trying to establish conventions through the state that contradict common practice means the convention is devalued, the institution ignored and the process brought into disrepute as non-relevant:
It may well be that a third glass of wine dramatically increases the risk of accident and injury to the drinker. But what good are the federal government's new healthy drinking guidelines if they deviate so far from the norm of usual social drinking practices?The principle of self-governance seeks efficiencies through spontaneous self-organisation with minimal regulation. This process is accepted economically within a free-market with minimal state interference. Yet in other areas governments consistently intrude using biopolitics; or the protection of life; or protecting people from themselves; as the validation for the intrusion. This week I was coming home down Route 101 north. It is a three lane high way that runs up the East Valley of Phoenix. There is currently a fourth lane being added to the highway and there are jersey barriers in the left lanes. Because of this construction the speed limit is reduced to 55mph. No-one does it. Not even the police that travel the 101. The safe speed for this highway is somewhere between 65mph and 75mph. This is what everyone does. Foolishly on Thursday night rush hour a mobile radar detector was put on the 101 north. It caused a traffic jam. People jumped on the brakes, and the free flow of self-organisation was broken. Whoever did it worked out the speed camera was a bad idea as it was removed the next day. A study was done in New York where speed limits were arbitrarily reduced to see what commuter behaviour was. It turned out the speed limits were ignored and the traffic continued at the speeds commuters considered safe and appropriate. When people see speeding cameras, whether in NSW or Arizona, they throw the anchors out and pass by the camera at 5pmh below the speed limit. This is more dangerous than the free flow of traffic.
[US] federal and state studies have consistently shown that the drivers most likely to get into accidents in traffic are those traveling significantly below the average speed. According to an Institute of Transportation Engineers Study, those driving 10 mph slower than the prevailing speed are six times as likely to be involved in an accident. That means that if the average speed on an interstate is 70 mph, the person traveling at 60 mph is far more likely to be involved in an accident than someone going 70 or even 80 mph.The local council of Scottsdale has peppered the north Route 101 from Shea Rd to Scottsdale Rd with speeding cameras. In rush hour there are always traffic jams in that area. Yet the free flowing East Valley 101 from Shea Rd to Warner Rd does not have the same issues. The difference is that the cameras are causing traffic jams. I have driven on the German autobahns. They are not as open as they used to be, between construction and local principalities putting speed limits on the autobahn (to protect life, not enable liberty) means that much of it is speed limited. As someone from a country that is speed limited everywhere was that Germans were very rule oriented in their behaviour; just general consideration was enough to make the principle of spontaneous self-organisation safe enough at speeds of 170 kmh. The other interesting aspect was that people did the speed they thought as safe and no-one beeped, hassled or drove at them aggressively for it. This is what gets lost in the over-regulation of the biopolitical state.
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