Thursday, July 25, 2013

Laws should be enforced or purged



When was the last time you heard of someone getting pulled over by the police for illegally texting or talking on their smartphone while driving?

Have you ever heard of a telemarketer being fined for calling a phone number that is listed on the "Do-Not-Call" registry?

What about employment laws? Does anyone know of a single instance where an business was fined by the government for age discrimination?

None of these laws have enough teeth in them. They are violated thousands of times a day, right out in the open, and yet there is no enforcement anywhere to be seen.

All of these laws were created because there is a need for them. The acts are not frivolous or rare. Texting while driving kills innocent people. Laying off an employee or not interviewing a  job candidate based on age destroys lives and impacts the economy.

So the question is, why aren't laws enforced? Do we not have enough resources to police these things? Does big business have the lobbying power to prevent enforcement of these laws? Or were the laws simply created to appease the public, with no real intention of following through on them? Maybe it's all of the above.

I suspect we have too many useless laws in this country, which in turn causes many worthwhile laws to be ignored by various agencies and courts. Until we clear out all the antiquated laws, I doubt we'll see much enforcement of newer, more relevant laws.

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