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Comment by ffsm8

5 days ago

I wish it was was more common around the world. Not just with parking though, but everything in the context of cars.

Like letting the police install a permanent speed trap on your property or even pay for the privilege of them doing so. I'd bet that'd curb a lot of speeding in short order

There's no need for violence. In fact, the capital outlay would be inefficient.

If you want to curb speeding, the solution looks much the same: Pay reporters some portion of the fines collected from the speeder. You will very quickly see a cottage industry of Internet connected dashcams and on-board AI solutions spring up, because it's practically free money if you drive safely yourself for long enough. Pretty soon nobody will be speeding, simply because you never know who or what is watching.

This is a set of economic-legal policies I've been writing about here and there for a long time. It's great stuff.

  • Peasant bounty hunting really concludes the picture of a nation slowly failing under applause and cheers.

    • Phrased like that, it's indeed problematic. But you should keep in mind that speeding is

      1. A safety hazard

      2. Causes high noise pollution

      3. Measurably increases air pollution

      Under these circumstances I feel like a citizen driven enforcement for the law is not quite bad as you are portraying it. I would even call it apploudable, because they increase the quantity of life for everyone in their neighborhood.

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  • Uh, did someone advocate for violence?

    • A speed trap is a kind of violence, yes. Have you ever hit one of those things at high speed before? Ouch.

      EDIT: I've been away from the States for too long. I was indeed thinking about speed bumps, not traps. Traps are cameras, and they therefore get a thumbs up from me in the beautiful bounties-on-everything-we-care-about future.

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    • You have it backwards. A perfect detection rate for crime makes it much more important that we define conservatively what we even consider to be a crime in the first place, and then what kind of punishment we levy upon it.

      You also have it backwards because it already reliably makes society better for you. Take the case of Biogen employee Michael Bawduniak, who spent seven years documenting covert payments that steered doctors toward Biogen’s multiple‑sclerosis drugs illegally. When the United States Department of Justice settled the case for $900 million in 2022, Bawduniak received roughly $266 million, or about 30% of the federal proceeds, under the False Claims Act. It's a very similar mechanism, and anyone you may know who suffers from multiple sclerosis has likely had their treatment options materially improved thanks to Bawduniak's actions. But those kinds of actions only happen when you have the right mechanisms in place, to reward people who do the right thing.

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    • Modern people are so risk averse. Back in the day we would rob trains. These days society is the equivalent of a HOA - freedom is fast forgotten and trains go mostly unmolested except through that one bastion of liberty: Los Angeles. Society is full of tattletales and stool pigeons. A criminal society is a free society. Order is antithetical to expression.