In my post on stop lights Phredd writes:
“A minor crime without a victim should not lead to punishment.” I think you misunderstand the purpose of the camera. The purpose is not primarily to impose punishment, but to keep drivers from violating the law before there IS a victim. This is the motivation at least in San Francisco, where a number of intersections have had light-runners fatally injure pedestrians.
There is a cost to cameras giving out tickets to stop light violators. This cost is that it takes control away from the driver to determine the value of stopping the car and places it in the hands of a ‘dumb’ rule that’s insensitive to context. After driving home late for several months in a row I was stricken by how much time I wasted waiting at red lights in the middle of night. I would sit at intersection anywhere between three to five minutes waiting for a red light to turn green. During that an entire time not a single car could be seen from any direction. What a waste of time. If there was a camera in place and I had run the red light I would of received a ticket.
Using cameras to apply a rigid rule prevents the driver from using the local context to determine the need for stopping. Phredd argues:
The purpose is not primarily to impose punishment, but to keep drivers from violating the law before there IS a victim
Phredd further argues that one potential benefit to rigid conditioning is a reduction in pedestrians being stricken from cars running red lights. This justifies the rigid application of a rule.
At this point I want to take the argument in a different direction and wish to speak more generally about the logic behind Phredd’s argument. Generalizing from Phredd’s argument:
Applying a rigid law at the cost of removing local control from an agent is justified provided it yields some kind of preferred benefit.
What I find most distasteful about this argumentation is the assumption that it’s always preferable to restrict agents at the local level to bring about some kind of benefit. In general people have a tendency to discount the capacity of others to perform properly at the local level. This has the problem of diminishing the value of local control making the benefit of a rigorous rule even more attractive.
More important though is the aggregate affect of removing local control in lieu of some rigorous rule. As more and more agency is taken at the local level the value of personal responsibility begins to diminish at the societal level. At the same time the value of adherence to the rule, or the slang expression ‘cover your ass’ becomes more strongly valued. Over time this value becomes much more prominent as a societal value superseding personal responsibility. One is no longer expected to do what is right according to there own evaluation, but rather to do the minimal that is required to fulfill the law or rule intended that replaces the agent’s reasoning capacity at the local level.
If it’s desirable to maintain personal responsibility as a prominent societal value then at some level one must be willing to accept noisier outcomes at the local level. In the absence of some rigorous rule there will be agents that make decisions other may disagree with, but this is the cost of keeping control of in the hands of local agents and in turn maintaining personal responsibility as a more prominent societal value.
