Comment by thfuran
2 years ago
There's a ton of reactionary legislation on the books that exists pretty much entirely because politicians wanted to be seen doing something. It's mostly crap.
2 years ago
There's a ton of reactionary legislation on the books that exists pretty much entirely because politicians wanted to be seen doing something. It's mostly crap.
A lot of gun legislation is like this. Whatever your view of guns is, there is no rationale for a "safe hand gun roster" like California's where the Glock 17 Gen 3 is on it, but the Gen 5 -- which introduces a basic safety improvement for left-handed people -- is not.
This is probably a bit too cynical; it's not just "politicians who want to be seen doing something"; the public often wants something done as well. And "we didn't do anything after that incident from ten years ago and now it happened again" is not a good look. Complex stories about trade-offs and the cure being worse than the disease often don't "play well" in the media, especially not with the opposition demanding that "something could have been done!" And corporations tend to be pathologically risk-averse.
Politicians, the media, corporations, and the public all have a part in this.
>the public often wants something done as well.
Sure, that's why the politicians want to be seen doing it. But the legislative focus is often on getting something passed now while it's a hot issue rather than on eventually getting a good bill passed (let alone deciding that we actually already have the correct amount of legislation on the topic).
> the public often wants something done as well
Like many other problems in politics, the root of the problem is the other voters.
Yeah, the legendary politician's fallacy:
1) We must do something.
2) This is something.
3) Therefore, we must do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vidzkYnaf6Y
I thought that was the voter's fallacy.
The voter's fallacy is "this happened while this guy was in power; we should replace him" repeated ad inf.