Why is polygamy illegal?
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@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@Yamikuronue said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
I would love to add to my list of benign illegal actions
That's a ridiculous book. Have a look at the "common" felonies it rants about and ask yourself if you regularly perform any of the actions described. For most people, the answer is no.
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@Polygeekery said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
So a law against whorehouses prevented sorority houses...that has to be a case of an arrow hitting its mark a century later.
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@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
That's a ridiculous book.
@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
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@error laws should have an expiration time, maybe a long one, but they should have. because lawmakers never stop to delete these old bad laws.
they should have to vote it all again from time to time. even if it was once each 50 years it would get rid of a lot of shit
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error laws should have an expiration time, maybe a long one, but they should have. because lawmakers never stop to delete these old bad laws.
they should have to vote it all again from time to time. even if it was once each 50 years it would get rid of a lot of shit
Seems like a good idea, but then you end up with a critical mass at some point in the future where all the lawmakers time is spent just keeping existing laws up to date and no time to pass new ones.
Which...as a libertarian kind of seems like a good idea to me.
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error laws should have an expiration time, maybe a long one, but they should have. because lawmakers never stop to delete these old bad laws.
they should have to vote it all again from time to time. even if it was once each 50 years it would get rid of a lot of shit
There are enough non-controversial laws that are fundamental to the well-being of society that this could be catastrophic.
When a law prohibiting murder, or rape, or theft, or a law laying out fundamental taxation authority (necessary for the smooth functioning of government services, no matter how much we may dislike the mechanism) is about to expire, or authorizing essential services, just watch as extreme Republicrats (the current minority party) hold the reauthorization hostage to force ideological concessions from the in-power Democans.
Does anyone really want that, particularly considering that there are most likely enough essential laws of this kind that you could have a standoff like this every single year, perhaps multiple times per year?
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@candlejack1 some laws do have expiration dates. Our assault weapons ban did.
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@Polygeekery They could group laws into large packages. At least will be able to blame the recent lawmakers if they preserve this shit.
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@candlejack1 too risky. What if every single one of them catches the flu right before the ban against murder expires. I mean, the possibility's pretty remote, but you'd want it to even exist?
Most laws should just never expire.
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@anotherusername it's not likely they would wait for the final deadline to vote it, does it?
somehow, your politicians never failed to reinstate things like the patriot act, or whatever is that heavily criticized thing they need to renew every year
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@Polygeekery They could group laws into large packages.
import { incest, sodomy, bestiality, polygamy } from 'depravity';
Filed under: One of these things is not like the others
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@candlejack1 failing to renew the patriot act would be far less disastrous than failing to renew certain other laws.
You have to remember that our government has actually shut down in recent pass because Congress is too stonewalled to pass budgets... you know, the thing that says "can we spend money? YES WE CAN SPEND MONEY. WHOO HOO!"
Having them forget, or just be unable, to renew an expiring law is a legitimate possibility and I don't want any really important laws to have expiration dates.
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
They could group laws into large packages.
Like a pork barrel.
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@Polygeekery yep, getting your new law grouped in with the murder law would be a surefire way of making sure it's virtually impossible to ever get rid of.
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@anotherusername said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@Polygeekery yep, getting your new law grouped in with the murder law would be a surefire way of making sure it's virtually impossible to ever get rid of.
Kind of what I was getting at by lumping
import { incest, sodomy, bestiality, polygamy } from 'depravity';
together.
Filed under: Subtlety never works, I wonder if people ever find the real links I hide in my tags.
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@anotherusername its 50 years the time I imagined. come on, they can do it
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@anotherusername good point. forget the packaging. just keep the laws into a manageable number.
it's a good way to avoid having too many stupid laws
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
it's a good way to avoid having too many stupid laws
So is anarchy.
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@Polygeekery said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
it's a good way to avoid having too many stupid laws
So is anarchy.
The problem with eliminating authority is that you can't, really. A power vacuum never lasts long, and if you don't put into place some mutually agreeable system, and enforce it, you'll get de facto dictatorships instead.
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inb4 they fail to renew the law that makes them renew laws
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
inb4 they fail to renew the law that makes them renew laws
Well, then they don't have to renew that law.
Filed under: E_LOGICAL_PARADOX
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alternative solution: limit the size of the text of each law, and the number of laws than can exist.
wanna a new law? kill a stupid law first
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
just keep the laws into a manageable number.
Boy, wouldn't that be nice.
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smaller laws is also a way to make they read the shit they are voting.
if it doesn't fit an A4 paper I dont wanna it
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
inb4 they fail to renew the law that makes them renew laws
More seriously, it's not like people "forget" to do this shit. Partisan politicians refuse to do necessary things to gain leverage. Any system will be abused this way.
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
alternative solution: limit the size of the text of each law, and the number of laws than can exist.
Ah, the Twitter law.
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@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
Ah, the Twitter law.
The Gulliver's Travels law. We could do worse than to implement it as described by Jonathan Swift.
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@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
Ah, the Twitter law.
The Gulliver's Travels law. We could do worse than to implement it as described by Jonathan Swift.
How about we use Magic: The Gathering as a model? There are a set of core rules, but cards can modify those, and other cards can modify those.
Filed under: but I do find the interactions between layers of rules to be fascinating., Magic even has "judges" that interpret the
lawsrules in complex interactions.
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@error That's a sad reality, politicians and government aren't there for us, it's just the powerful exercising their power.
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error That's a sad reality, politicians and government aren't there for us, it's just the powerful exercising their power.
Did we just come full circle back to religion?
Filed under: but not really.
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@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
The problem with eliminating authority is that you can't, really. A power vacuum never lasts long, and if you don't put into place some mutually agreeable system, and enforce it, you'll get de facto dictatorships instead.
Precisely. This is the thing that libertarians always (willfully?) fail to understand: power exists objectively. It derives from resources of various kinds, the most important being population and natural resources. Within a given region, there exists a certain amount of power, and it is human nature to organize that power hierarchically into a generally pyramid-shaped structure.
Look at any social organization, whether it be a family, a business, a government, a religion, or a club, and once it gets beyond a very few members, structure will emerge naturally, with the majority of power accruing to the few at the top of the hierarchy. Given the way this keeps happening across time and cultures, and given the way that organizations that intentionally attempt to subvert this by refusing to organize tend to fail spectacularly, (OWS is a clear example,) it's not at all unfair to call it the great pattern of human nature.
And this is where libertarian philosophy really runs into problems. Power exists objectively, and it naturally accrues to those at the top. Disrupt the power at the top, and it does not magically vanish, dissipating into happy sparkles, rainbows, and more liberty for everyone. What actually happens is, it produces a power vacuum, which is an ugly situation for everyone involved while it's going on, and then at the end, (once it ends by someone managing to seize and consolidate power,) what you end up with is someone new at the top who got there by seizing power, someone with the mindset of a conqueror. In the vast majority of cases, this ends up being worse for most people within the system than before the original power structure was disrupted.
When you get down to it, the only way to have a small government with a small amount of power is to have a small nation with a small amount of resources. And this is why libertarians scare me. There are really only two classes of people who would call for wide-scale reduction of power at the top: those who don't understand about power vacuums, and those who do and wish to take advantage of them. It's hard to say which is worse.
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This post was a joke about an editing error that has been d away.
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@masonwheeler what about city states? maybe smaller pyramids would screw us less
(probably not because corporations and external factors)
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@error I have the demon that's the inverse of that. Costs like 3 for a 5/5 flier, but you can't win and they can't lose while it's alive.
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@Magus said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error I have the demon that's the inverse of that. Costs like 3 for a 5/5 flier, but you can't win and they can't lose while it's alive.
Yeah but there are ways to transfer ownership of it to your opponent, or to sacrifice it once you've done sufficient damage.
He's actually a very playable card.
Edit: More fun is when you have both going on at the same time. There's a judge ruling about that. Neither say you can't draw the game.
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@anotherusername said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
The only way around it is by just not getting a state-recognized marriage, but that's oppressive and discriminatory.
Being held to one marriage is being held in subservience and hardship? Most people would feel the exact opposite.
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@error that resting bitch face may be, however.
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@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
There are enough non-controversial laws that are fundamental to the well-being of society that this could be catastrophic.
That's why people have suggested variations like "the total number of laws may only be x" or "only x many pages of laws", which basically means you've got to get rid of one law if you want to add a new one.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress mentioned the idea of a House of Repeal, whose business would solely be to consider repealing laws; a 25% vote would be sufficient.
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@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
hold the reauthorization hostage to force ideological concessions from the in-power
"All laws must be simple enough to fit on one sheet of paper" and/or "a law may only have one topic" might put paid to that idea, because it eliminates the common way that's done, which is to add an unrelated rider or amendment to "must-pass" legislation.
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@anotherusername said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
You have to remember that our government has actually shut down in recent pass because Congress is too stonewalled to pass budgets
Actually, about 85-90% of the government has been deemed "critical", such that it continues even if there's no funding, under the assumption that scheduled allocations like salaries and whatnot will automatically be caught up with later. So the "government shutdowns" of the last few years actually only affected 10% or so of the government.
And of course, in those cases, the various Federal agencies were instructed to go out of their way to impose the Washington Monument defense and make things difficult for the citizenry; for example, by putting up barricades around untended national monuments like the WWII one, which is in the middle of a park with no walls around it, but the government, which was supposedly 'shut down', somehow managed to set up barricades and a police presence to keep people from crossing them.
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@candlejack1 said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
what about city states? maybe smaller pyramids would screw us less
Good luck when a couple of neighboring city states ally against you. Don't need to introduce corporations into the mix to find obvious problems.
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@FrostCat that's a good point, but I wonder if we wouldn't be better of with state-sized countries
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@FrostCat said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
hold the reauthorization hostage to force ideological concessions from the in-power
"a law may only have one topic" might put paid to that idea, because it eliminates the common way that's done, which is to add an unrelated rider or amendment to "must-pass" legislation.
Legal 1NF
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@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
Partisan politicians refuse to do necessary things to gain leverage.
Now if only we could agree on which things were necessary and which were the results of leverage.
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@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
And this is where libertarian philosophy really runs into problems.
Perhaps some of the real loonies. Though what you're describing sounds more like an anarchist philosophy.
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@FrostCat said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@masonwheeler said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
hold the reauthorization hostage to force ideological concessions from the in-power
"All laws must be simple enough to fit on one sheet of paper" and/or "a law may only have one topic" might put paid to that idea, because it eliminates the common way that's done, which is to add an unrelated rider or amendment to "must-pass" legislation.
"The secretary shall..."
Until you get rid of the mess of delegated power that we have, all you'll have done is transfer even more power into unelected bureaucrats.
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@boomzilla said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
Until you get rid of the mess of delegated power that we have
Obviously that would have to go if your goals include anything other than "monotonically increase the size of government".
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ITT: Armchair Legislators and the Attack of the Dunning-Kruger
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@boomzilla said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
@error said in Why is polygamy illegal?:
Partisan politicians refuse to do necessary things to gain leverage.
Now if only we could agree on which things were necessary and which were the results of leverage.
I think most people know that difference, even if they won't admit to it.
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@error I certainly know the difference.