originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Phage
We need fewer laws.
But there will be those who will always want more. . . . .
Unfortunately, i believe that simply by having ANY laws that are not implemented by interpreting the spirit of the law, you are doomed to have ever
more and more complex laws, by a kind of legislative entropy.
If you make a law about a thing, with the best intentions, unfortunately, there will ALWAYS be incidents that occur that are not covered by the
existing law.
Someone (either an individual, a group, a company, a corporation or even a government) will find a way to operate outside of that law, and so
lawmakers inevitably must respond by creating further laws, caveats and rulings in order to close loopholes and ensure that people operate within the
law. This in turn leads to ever more inventive ways of circumventing said laws and the whole process is repeated.
Until finally, we arrive at the point we are now; where the law is so impenetrable and complex that a regular citizen has no hope of really
understanding it, and is therefore paralysed by it completely, simply through a lack of knowledge and understanding.
We must therefore defer to 'experts', thus ceding control, and some degree of personal liberty, to a small group of individuals 'in the know'.
Unfortunately for us, the rich and powerful then hire huge teams of these 'experts' to enable them to continue to operate outside the law with seeming
impunity. And the whole farce continues.
Long gone are the days of appointing trustworthy and wise individuals to interpret the SPIRIT of the law and instead we have a situation where the law
is ever more specific, intrusive and prescriptive (by necessity).
Honestly, i share your reservations about the possible implications of this legislation.
At face value, a charter of rights for children and young people, to ensure that they are well cared for and looked after seems like a
'no-brainer'.
However, it is easy to see how this could be abused, by both government AND the people it is meant to protect.
I feel the debate here is focused on the extremes; 'Government can/may/will take over the rights of parents to make decisions about raising their
children' vs 'Someone has to protect the children from getting raped and abused and it's the government that will save us'.
Both arguments are a little extreme for my taste and i fear that the reality is, the cases that fall somewhere in the middle will be the contentious
ones.
ETA: i'd also like to add that i am beyond grateful that there is, at least, one topic on the front page today that isn't about 'the T word' in some
way, shape or form, and hasn't devolved into a "my dad's better than your dad" pis sing contest"
edit on 16-1-2017 by Indrasweb because: (no reason given)