Road Laws, for or against (Speed limits, drink driving and dangerous driving)?

Economics Economics Questions
21

Uriah,

I’m not asking the amount in which a cost will be imposed at all. As I’ve said the cost in this case is completely irrelevant, hypothetical or otherwise. In our society we happen to use an economic cost in order to punish an individual. It could instead be a swift kick in the balls rather than a fine and not change my position, though I expect we may not be having this argument. What I’m asking is the effect that alcohol in sufficient quantities (BAC of over 0.05) has on the response times, reflexes, perception, etc of human being based on the best empirical evidence you have at hand. I don’t have time to chase up studies at the moment (Am swamped with assignments at the moment and won’t have much free time for a few days yet) but will do so when I get a free chance.

So I ask you again. Do you believe that sufficient quantities of alcohol to cause impairment, operating a phone while driving and driving while texting increase the likelihood of a car accident due to split attention or impairment of an individual’s reactive abilities based on the best evidence you have at hand?

Please note that avoiding answering this question will be seen as by me as a cop out on your part (If you’re going to avoid making any decisions based on empirical evidence then there’s no way I’ll be able to convince you of anything here. Your argument rather than a scientific one is instead a philosophical or religious argument).

If you want an economic system to understand this, then you can view the government as attempting to make the cost of engaging in dangerous behavior so expensive in the long run to dissuade individuals from engaging in it (From fines to taking an individual’s car). The cost in this case does not reflect in any way the damage caused by the individual’s actions, or even the damage caused by the individual’s potential actions. The cost is sufficient to constitute a slap on the wrist or a kick in the nuts depending on the circumstances. The cost itself is merely a form of punishment used.

Seph,

The above is my position on the issue. It is my belief that alcohol in sufficient quantities, texting while driving and operating a phone while driving are unreasonable risks to take and increase the risk to other individuals on the road unreasonably. I say unreasonably as additionally to the normal risks one will take when getting on the road selfish individuals engage in behavior which increases the risk of an accident to others which can easily be avoided (6-10x I believe, will need to do some research when I have to to substantiate). The risk to others is the important bit here, should they risk their own life with their behavior I wouldn’t care less. They also engage in this behavior in opposition to clearly defined rules of conduct outlined by the owner of the road (In this case the government). Speeding, and dangerous driving also does increase the risk of an accident and can be avoided, but the risk is significantly less substational, and not as much an issue in my mind (Though still irresponsible behavior).

22

Well, if that’s what you believe then start up a road company, with rules based around those beliefs. If you managed to judge well with your rules and meet the consumers desires, then you will make a profit. If consumers do not like your rules, you wont.

Except you can’t, which is why we have discussions such as this.

23

“Your argument rather than a scientific one is instead a philosophical or religious argument”

You see there’s your problem. You don’t understand that what we are discussing IS economics. Yes it borders on the philosophical, however it is a large body of logic, which is used to understand human action, and assess transactions/events.

“If you want an economic system to understand this, then you can view the government as attempting to make the cost of engaging in dangerous behavior so expensive in the long run to dissuade individuals from engaging in it (From fines to taking an individual’s car).”

Yes, we understand that, go back to the beginning. The problem lies in assigning a “correct” cost which can not be done, and so it does not work, and has a bunch of externalities associated with it.

Have a look at what you write, it’s full of YOUR subjective assessments and with a pile of normative statements. You attempt to correct this by saying, look, I’ve this specific empirical knowledge (which doesn’t include the data for the exact same conditions without these laws) and so I can ignore the opportunity costs, the administration costs, and similar, by not even taking them into account. Additionally, you note that YOU don’t see something as risky, but you wouldn’t be making these decisions.

Lastly, if you can’t get out of the quantitative, you’re really going to struggle with your first year of economics. They’re going to get you to use models which use only logic, not measured historical information, to make decisions. Semester 1 is Micro, which is all about the individual’s choices (well, firm choices as well).

Did you think about this on the individual level? The greatest disagreement amongst economists is how the macro level should be treated, because it is hard to aggregate individual decisions.

Maybe you shouldn’t be changing your study to economics/finance? Accounting has a little economics but it’s more quantitative.

24

Uriah,

At this stage I’m not even trying to advance my original argument. I’m not trying to prove a point, or disprove a point of yours. I’m simply asking you a question in order to establish some common ground on this issue. The question I’m asking is not economic, philosophical or political in nature. The question is scientific. I’m simply asking you to make a decision based on the empircal evidence you have on hand whether this is first hand experience, a general obseravtion or the results of a particular study.

So I ask you again. Do you believe that alcohol in sufficient quantities to cause impairment, operating a phone while driving and texting while driving increase the likelihood of a car accident due to split attention or impairment of an individual’s reactive abilities based on the best evidence you have at hand?

You can disagree with me on the above or you can agree that this is the case. This is not going to prove or disprove my orginal argument. This isn’t a question of economic validity, it’s a question of cause and effect. I’m not asking you to delve into any particular system to discover the optimum outcome, or the correct outcome of a series of actions, I’m simply asking you what effect one element has on another.

If you want we can get really specific, you can instead you can answer the following:
Do you believe that alcohol has deletrious effects on an individual’s reaction time, perception and coordination?

I don’t think I’m asking too much here.

Peace.

25

Uriah, you’re trapped in what Stefan Molyneux has described as an argument based on facts. You have facts, and your friend has facts. You can assault each other with facts, and that will not change a fundamental disagreement on morality.

I’d suggest clarifying where your friend is coming from. If he believes that roads should be public (paid for with taxes extracted with force) then you won’t be able to make an argument that sticks. The person willing to use a gun is not interested in libertarian exposition in the least.

Now if your friend is willing to concede that the roads should not be public, that it is wrong to extract taxes by force for the privileged rulership of the political class, and their special interests, then the argument almost solves itself.

Again, a battle of facts when your friend values positive law, seems like a big waste of time to me. Just sayin…

26

Liberty,

At the moment I’m trying to establish a common understanding on the factors we’re discussing. As I’ve been told in earlier posts that I have no way to “assess whether it was unreasonable risk” that someone drive while intoxicated I am attempting to establish two things:

  1. That alcohol has deleterious effects on an reaction time, perception and coordination.
    and
  2. That these deletrious effects increase the probability that an accident will take place.

Until we establish whether these two statements as true or false we can not even begin arguing about the morality of the issue, as we’re disagreeing on the forces in play or the fact that there is even an issue in the first place (If there is no problem with drunk driving why bother arguing about it).I assumed this was a fairly simple and straight forward question and didn’t forsee the issues I’ve had getting a straight answer to it.

Once I have at least established both our positions on the above we can continue debating this.

27

Liberty, I think you might be reading too much into my argument as well. I’m not arguing “Goverment? Yes or No?” in this instance. I’m arguing in favour of rules governing human behavior on the road in order to minimize the collective risk. Whether this is imposed by a private institution funded by some happy anarcho-capitalists or by goverment pig-dogs paying taxes is not the point. The argument is whether or not an organization should impose fines/levies on a individual’s actions even though no physical damage has resulted if those actions constitute an unreasonable risk (A term we haven’t been able to come to an agreement on yet).

Here’s a hypothetical scenario if you’d like:
Bil lives in an anarcho-capitalist country and enjoy driving on the wrong side of the road. This is his own personal preference and leads him to drive into incoming traffic causing them to have to swerve to avoid him. Though this isn’t such a problem when the streets are quiet, but many accidents have almost occured when the street has been busy as cars are forced to frantically swerve to avoid him. The question then is, should Bill be allowed to continue with these actions though no physical harm has yet resulted? Should the local defence company institute a law that states that individuals must drive on the correct side of the road or be subject to fines, or is it immorral to penalize an individual when no physical harm has resulted?

28

Yes, but to varying degrees for different people.

This is an instance of case probability, not class probability. We know some of the factors determining whether an accident will occur, but there are other determining factors about which we know nothing. In other words, the overall frequency of drunk driving accidents tells us nothing about whether a given man will cause an accident through his drunk driving.

29

Part of the problem is that “Government, yes or no?” is implied in your question. Do I think private roads should have the freedom to stipulate rules of the road? Absolutely. Regardless of whether I dislike them or find them to be too lax, I can bring my business to competitors. Do I think a coercive monopoly should be able to stipulate similar rules? Absolutely not. Neither I nor anybody else has the ability to shop elsewhere.

30

That’s arguing under the presumption that government = yes.

Collective risk is silly. I don’t own a car. I don’t care what people do on the roads, those risks are theirs, not mine.

It is the entire point. It is an enormous difference. Public property is owned by everyone, thus owned by no one. More appropriately, it is paid for by everyone, but controlled by narrow political interest. It has a completely different set of incentives from a private road, where the owner is the operator, and so cost and action are more closely aligned.

That’s up to the road owner. If it is bad for other customers, Bill might be banned completely from driving on that road. The road owner is interested in satisfying as many customers as possible, or as many miles driven as possible, he has no incentive to assure a right of Bill to drive. If Bill is bad for business, then gonzo.

Only if they own the road. The private defense agency has no authority on other people’s property unless they have been contracted to provide a service.

Ancap is a very sophisticated argument. You have to first understand the consequences of completely private property, before we can talk about how things might work. Might, because we can only guess. As far as how they should work, that sort of busybody-ism is only possible under the state.

31

Thought I’d strip all the specifics out of the argument as people seem to be getting caught up on those rather than getting straight to the heart of the issue. My fault as wel for adding too much unnecessary information to my original post. Anyway, what had me and Uriah arguing in the first place was the morality of punishing someone for a “crime” in which no physical damage or cost resulted. In this case it was to do with anti-hoon laws, but the same can be said for someone caught drunk driving, speeding, etc.

Our two positions were as follows:

=Uriah=
That as no physical cost or accident resulted from the individual’s actions it would be immoral to punish them as:

  1. That there is no way to assess the cost of the action.
  2. That there is no way to assess the risk their behavior represented.
  3. It would only be moral to punish the individual should an accident actually take place, an actual cost had been tallied and an aggrieved party had been identified.

=Dazaris=
Regardless of whether a physical cost was incurred or an accident resulted it is immoral on the part of the individual breaking the law to increase the risk posed to other inviduals on the road as:

  1. Assessing the cost of the action was irrelevant as the fine itself was punitive in nature intended to change the individual’s behavior rather than a matter of transferring the cost to a specific individual.
  2. It is possible to assess the relative risk of specific types of behavior (Drinking, speeding, etc), as opposed to the absolute risk. That is to say you can say that one type of behavior will tend to increase the risk that an accident will take place (Deleterious effects of alcohol, stopping power of car, etc).
  3. That it is moral to punish the individual even though no accident has taken place as they are actively increasing the risk to the other individuals on the road in a manner which could be avoided (Not drinking, catching a taxi, obeying the speed limit in the school zone, etc).

Uriah might want to step in here and fix up what I’ve put down as his argument as I don’t think I’ve gone into enough detail on his points.

Anywho, discuss.

32

That’s close enough, though it’s now framed as moral which has no method with which we can assess it. Well, none I’m interested in, if you want to talk about that, check out a philosophy forum, or read some Immanuel Kant or similar.

Economically we assess this as is it efficient or not. Which is what we’ve been discussing, so no real need to discuss it more, since (just read back over it), pretty much well all that can be said has been said, though I have noticed that some of the conversation has been on a bit of a higher level, and might require a lot more reading and study for someone to understand it.

I literally can’t think of anything else I could say, which would show this, especially if the question has been changed to a moral one. If anyone else has any thoughts, I’d be interested.

33

Hey Justin,

The other factors that may affect the driver are beside the point of my argument as they are outside the driver’s control (Situation factors). What I have an issue with are the factors within the driver’s control as through his actions he actively increases the risk that an accident will take place.

If gave an insurance broker the choice of two individuals to insure and the only difference between them was that one drinks and drives and the other doesn’t, I have no doubt which of the two he would pick.

34

Uriah,

Ah, no problem dude, my mistake then. I was under the impression that we were discussing what “should” be the case, which falls into the category of a philosophical argument. Efficiency on the other hand is completely descriptive as far as I was aware and no valuation on it’s behalf can be made without resorting to a philosophical system of some kind.

Anywho, thanks for spending the time working with me on this and thanks to everyone else for their input.