Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 14:48:17 EST
From:         Jamie <PL436000@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Quota laws, allegedly; and evidence

>From:         The Integral Differential <DEMON@DESIRE.WRIGHT.EDU>

>>Jamie: (note--herein, Brett's comments are preceded by
>>        odd numbers of ">", my quoted ones by even numbers of ">")

Note further that in the context of Brett's reposting, the above
was false, but now in my RE-reposting, it is true again!

(Just one more bit to add to the growing pile of evidence that
my postings are full of truths, and Brett's are full of something
else. :-b )

>>>>Murder laws are put into place in order to socially engineer society
>>>>to prevent supposed wrongs that might occur. Agree or disagree?
>>
>>>    No, they are there to punish offenders *after* the crime has been
>>> committed.
>>
>>All laws are there to do that. Discrimination law too.
>
>        Nope.  Some discrimination laws are clearly meant to rectify
>"problems" for which there is no proof:

Note here that Brett has changed his claim.
The first claim was that the distinction he was after between murder
laws and discrimination laws is that the first is intended to punish
offenders after the crime has been committed, whereas the second is
not. Now he substitutes "problem" for "crime."

What is true, what I said, is that for every law we punish offenders
only after the crime defined by that law has been committed. Every law.

Let's now investigate whether Brett's new claim is correct.

>  Laws that decree you have to rent to anyone who hands you a check.

I deny that there are such laws.

>Clearly this is a pro-active law designed to prevent discrimination.  Yet what
>it does is assume that all landlords will discriminate if given the chance.

Even if there were such a law, I don't know what it would assume. I'm
not even sure what it means for a law to assume something. So this
example does not seem to provide any evidence for Brett's claim.
(Which, let us remember, does not mean that the claim is false,
but does mean we have no reason to believe it.)

>        Let's look at a similar law (hypothetical, at this point) for guns:
>everyone who purchases a gun must submit to yearly polygraphs to "prove" they
>committed no crimes with them.  Clearly proactive in that it assumes all gun
>buyers will committ crimes, if given the chance.

This law, if there were one, would indeed have the following property:
if assumed to have the purpose of preventing some OTHER crime, that is,
other than the one defined by the law itself, it would promote its
purpose in a way that does not make distinctions as fine as one might
want to make. If that is Brett's point, then I agree that this
make-believe (or as Brett prefers to call it, "hypothetical") law
is an example. But if that is his point, I doubt anyone ever
disputed that there COULD be such a law. I doubt anyone ever
disputed that there ARE such laws. Laws denying minors the right
(or privilege, as DMV's never tire of reminding us) to drive
are good real world examples.

It is unclear to me how this is related to Brett's actual point, though.

>        Such a law would not be surprising given the trend towards "guilty
>until proven innocent".

Again, there may be such a trend, but I have seen no evidence of it.
The only exception is one I mentioned earlier: the Zero Tolerance
rules about confiscating property in drug-related cases.
That example, if it is indeed a trend, is very disturbing.

>>> Check the ratio of minorities in various professional fields.  Do you
>>> think this is the result of "effective" laws?
>>
>>I think it is the result of partially effective laws. Just as
>>laws against murder are partially effective. Whereas capital
>>punishment is not effective at all.
>
>        So the current laws are ineffective *given the stated goal of leveling
>the playing field*.  You may come to a different conclusion, but you can't
>reject that claim simply because you like the current laws.

If by "ineffective" Brett means "not completely successful," then
he is right that anti-discrimination laws are ineffective. And
murder laws are also ineffective. He may come to a different conclusion,
but he can't reject the claim simply because he likes murder laws.

If by "ineffective" Brett really DOES mean "not completely successful,"
then he ought to give us notice that he is using the word in a
non-standard way. Perhaps we could establish for the list a
CAIUS FLAG, which everyone using words in a special, idiosyncratic
way could wave at the beginning of posts.

>>>       First claim: no *dis*proof.
>>
>>!
>>I will leave it to Peter to DISprove the claim. He knows a
>>great deal more about the statistics than I do.
>
>  Fine I'll let others reply to the rest of this message then.  Note that
>this is not "ignoring", but "delagating". :)

Very well.
Then we leave it at this:
I have provided no disproof of Brett's claim about the effects that
quota laws (if any) have. Brett has provided no evidence for his
claim. Peter might provide the disproof later. Some unnamed
delegate might provide evidence for Brett's claim. (Yeah, sure.)

Jamie
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