"A man once said to the universe, 'Sir, I exist.'
'However,' replied the universe, 'that fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'"[Stephen Crane]
“Utopia is not one of the options” – David Bergland
The wave of detentions and deportations are having an effect that could easily have been predicted:
A 79-year-old grandfather, in the United States since he was five, was detained by ICE for not complying with a deportation order issued nearly 60 years ago.https://t.co/7QwjcNQN3s
— reason (@reason) November 28, 2025
Did no one expect that some such cases would arise? I knew they were coming. I also knew that opponents of the deportation policy would strive to capitalize on them. That’s politics, Gentle Reader.
The above is only one. There are surely others. But that’s in the nature of a rule-based system.
Charles Murray noted in his early work Losing Ground that no matter the “rules,” a rule-based system – i.e., the kind of policy whose decisions could be programmed, given the appropriate dataset – will always irrationally include some cases it should exclude and / or exclude others it should include. He was analyzing welfare policy, but the effect touches every kind of policy a law-based State might implement. The deportation orders President Trump has implemented are no exceptions.
Every law creates a rule-based system. Even a law as simple as the one against burglary will have edge cases of the sort that make an observer say “That isn’t just.” (I happen to know someone who was snagged on such an edge.) Occasionally, legislators will try to install provisions in the law, or in the system that will implement and enforce it, to “soften” its edges. But that’s not always possible.
Prosecutorial and judicial discretion soften the edges of the penal law. Those provisions allow human judgment to temper the applications of the penal law. They were undoubtedly well meant. Yet they too have their drawbacks, as politically-minded prosecutors and judges have demonstrated for us recently.
The quote from David Bergland above covers all such matters. That’s why the appropriate way to evaluate a law or policy is “Has it made things better or worse?” Perfection in law is no more available than perfection in Mankind.
I could go on for days about this. It’s inherent in the nature of things, for a simple and unchangeable reason:
One or more will always be undesirable.
Physicists call this the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It operates at all scales and in all things. Law and its enforcement are not exceptions.
To close: Another argument has arisen over the decision of many states to decriminalize the use of cannabis-based products (e.g., marijuana). This has surely had both desirable and undesirable consequences. Some see the negatives as outweighing the positives. It’s unfortunate that there are negative side effects, but whether they mandate returning to the previous state of affairs is a matter for legislators to decide. Should they decide that way, we would shed those undesirable side effects... but we would also lose the positive consequences of cannabis decriminalization: the decreased burdens on law enforcement and corrective institutions, the extra tax revenue, and so forth.
Edges are like that. They’re never perfect and they’re never infinitely sharp. There will always be persons who seek a way to exploit them for personal benefit.
It’s a cruel cosmos. But as I typed that, I realized that I need more coffee. Perhaps I’ll be back later.
No comments:
Post a Comment