Everything I want to do is Illegal

http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp03.htm

by smanek • 18 years ago

89 78 18 years ago

ssanders82• 18 years ago

His argument has good points, but would be a lot more convincing if presented in a less vitriolic tone. As Sgt. Friday would say "Just the facts, ma'am."

This particular situation sounds like overkill, but there are reasons we have laws concerning who can produce and sell food, and how homes must be constructed to basic safety standards. And yes, if you sell products to consumers you have to pay sales taxes.

smanek7• 18 years ago

I don't belive that products should necessarily be held to any standard. Consumers should be informed about the safety of their product (known unsafe, unknown, certified safe, etc) and be allowed to make their own decisions.

Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.

If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required), how is that anyone's business but my own? I should be allowed to make my own decisions and live with the consequences of my own actions.

mynameishere2• 18 years ago

The 900 square foot restriction seemed pretty odd, but I have a feeling it is designed to prevent trailer parks from moving in. If you have land in the country, that is the standard nightmare scenario.

lbrandy2• 18 years ago

> If a contractor offers to sell me a 800 square foot house, and I agree to buy it (knowing full well that it hasn't been certified and is smaller than legally required)

Because knowing 'full well' implies you knew what questions to ask. And requiring everyone to know all the questions they need to ask in every transaction is not only unreasonable but wasteful.

How many things need to be "fully" disclosed so that I can make an informed decision when buying milk? The whole purpose of regulation is to have a group of people who are asking those questions for us.

scott_s4• 18 years ago

People would buy "known unsafe" products. They would presumably be cheaper, and some people would risk it. When the product is something like beef, very bad things would happen, and it would have potential to impact the rest of the community.

Alex39173• 18 years ago

>Frankly, I think that I'm better at evaluating how much risk is acceptable to me than some government bureaucrat in Washington.

Then you would love living in China. I guess going to a restaurant or grocery store where much of the food contains various poisons wouldn't bother you, since you're able to tell the difference.

lg• 18 years ago

maybe you could do that in the US, where the threat of lawsuits might keep people honest. but i wouldn't risk it.

seems like the problem this essay is pointing out is that the laws aren't fine-grained enough to distinguish between industrial farms and mom-and-pops. But probably, if there WERE such a distinction and mom-and-pops got off easy, corporate agriculture would bend over backwards to meet the technical definition. if the law said people can sell uncertified stuff on the farm premises, there'd be a little hen house in the back of every shoprite (or whatever), just like with the suv fuel efficiency restrictions. perhaps one way around that, though, is that since all corporations are (if anything) corporations, the law could single out food that's been handled by employees of registered corporations for special treatment. but who knows, they'd probably find a way around that too.

xirium2• 18 years ago

I've seen a similar argument. If an employee agrees to work for less than a statutory minimum wage, does it matter? Yes, because it makes it harder for anyone else to get a better income.

DmitriLebedev• 18 years ago

Can anyone explain what's meant by "o" and "u" word? Googled, but found no explanation.

joshwa• 18 years ago

O = Organic U = ???

mhb6• 18 years ago

kosher?

jcl• 18 years ago

Presumably, U = typo for O

evgen2• 18 years ago

The circled U is a trademark of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America which is used to signify their certification of a product as being kosher.

dreish2• 18 years ago

It certainly is, but I don't think that has anything to do with the question, which was regarding the section of the linked article titled "Opting Out of the System", where the author writes "I can't even use the 'U' word" without giving much of a hint as to what word he means.

He refers to an "O" word later which is pretty clearly "organic", which actually reminds me of what I dislike about this essay: Sure, it would be great if our Howard Roark-style farmer could grow his own organic crop and slap an "organic" label on it to sell it to his handful of fans without having to deal with the Organic Trade Association, but that's not so good for me, as a customer buying food at the local supermarket. If just anyone could label their food "organic", then what are the odds that word would ever actually mean anything?

Likewise, I think it's all well and good that this clearly intelligent and responsible person should build a composting toilet, but if there were _no_ standards, what would stop a new neighbor from moving in next to me and installing, say, a toilet that dumps feces in a pile in the back yard?

hobbs3• 18 years ago

This is the top "Hacker News"?

gills• 18 years ago

Why would this be less than relevant to Hacker News? Put the metaphor in a context you care about.

Right now: Are you allowed to hack code in your living room? Can your buddies come over and help you out? Can you host your business on a server in your garage? Can you use Lisp? Can you build a mashup and earn revenue from widgets other people produce?

What if government regulations told you this: * All code must be written in government-certified office space. * All code must be written by professional degreed programmers hired at a minimum government-defined wage. * All code must be Java. * Hosting must be done by government-certified shared hosting providers. * Your application must support at least 100k simultaneous users.

Would you be happy with that sort of regulation? Would you bother with a startup? Would you accept it all on the premise that it keeps your children safe from evil unregulated websites?

Or do you prefer to have a choice?

hobbs3• 18 years ago

Hell, if this is the criteria for what constitutes relevant news, we may as well have articles that debate the relative merits of different world religions. After all, the debates would help shed light about how to think about our own religious wars within the hacker community.

Honestly, I have just as much of a laissez-faire libertarian philosophy as the next hacker, but there are plenty of other forums that are better suited to spreading the word. (cough reddit, cough digg)

edu• 18 years ago

Don't say it loud!

icey• 18 years ago

The author of this paper (Joe Salatin) runs Polyface farms. Recently, they've been in the news for helping Chipotle figure out how to source local pork products for all of their stores. If you live in the Northeast, you can eat some of his pork by going there.

KirinDave4• 18 years ago

His point about how ridiculously unfair the current system can be is well taken, and it's very frustrating. But, the paternalistic state exists because people cry out for it. There are efforts to ban completely ridiculous offenses, like your pants (url, http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/17/baggy.pants.ap/index.html )"There should be a law preventing that." When it comes to things like medicine, the current overbearing system seems necessary because people at large seem nearly incapable of rejecting obviously false medical treatments ("smart" water, echinacea, magnet therapy, colon cleansing, Kinoki foot pads).

And the other problem... Having faith that people will do "the right thing?" People often don't, especially when it comes to even slightly complex things. Homeopathic remedies are a massive industry, but they've been definitively shown over and over to have no discernible effect. Religious cults still flourish in every civilized nation, despite their policy of taking everything from their members and leaving them as broken, one-dimensional caricatures. Chemical and drug abuse (as opposed to recreational use) is rampant, and our laws cannot differentiate between the two. People even deny proven science because they don't like the implications, stifling scientific progress that could help sick and dying people.

It's not a new dilemma, but it's getting more complex and urgent as our population grows. On the one hand, some people make the world better. On the other? Some people make it worse, sometimes simply through their ignorance. Distinguishing between them and giving the helpers the latitude to improve without giving the destructive forces latitude to destroy is the fundamental dilemma of any society.

smanek7• 18 years ago

I don't expect people to do the 'right thing.' For starters, because we don't know what the 'right thing' is.

Look at it this way: 99% of everything men have ever know has been wrong. All scientific theories (except the current ones) have been proven wrong. And, at every point in history, men who thought the current theories were wrong were labeled heretics or morons. There were men who wouldn't let themselves be 'bled' 200 years ago and men who won't undergo chemo today. And that is their choice.

I think a lot of people make stupid choices, but if it only harms themselves, I say let them. Hell, I would have thought some of Bill Gates' decisions early in Microsoft's history were wrong, but that goes to show what I know.

Every person should be allowed to make their own decisions (and live with the consequences of thereof).

If someone believes in homeopathy or the new age panacea du jour over real medicine, let them. If they die because they made the wrong choice, it's a shame, but at least they died free men.

KirinDave4• 18 years ago

But many of these choices lead to things which are destructive to others. For example, lots of people are resisting vaccination despite overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between autism and vaccination. These people let their children rely on the herd immunity of the first world.

If everyone followed this strategy, many people would die as a consequence of even a relatively small segment of the population's choice. At some point, your freedom ends and another's begins. Drawing that line is really hard, especially when some people are frantically trying to give it up and others are frantically taking it for personal gain.

Of course, not all cases are equal.

ks• 18 years ago

> If they die because they made the wrong choice, it's a shame, but at least they died free men

I agree with you if you are talking about adults. But what about their children? Should a child die just because their parents decided that a prayer would cure them?

Most regulations aren't there to protect what people do to themselves, but to limit what they can do to others.

A responsible child can probably carry a gun to school, but do you trust all children?

The author would probably kill his cattle in a humane way, but can we count on everyone to do so?

agentbleu• 18 years ago

You should spend a few minutes learning about the OPV experimental vaccinations in the later 50s which is the leading candidate for causing AIDS.

http://www.documentary-film.net/search/video-listings.php?e=...

rkts• 18 years ago

Yes, exactly. Too many people think society should be designed exclusively for them. They don't realize that what's good for them is not necessarily good for the world.

Retric• 18 years ago

That works both ways. I might find its ok to drive drunk and I might not want to keep my meat packing plant up to "code" but I might object to you build a hazardous waste next to my house. When it comes down to it a lot of people taking minor risks is why 10’s of thousands of people are murdered every year in 100% preventable car “accidents”.

The point of regulation is collectively managing risk. Driving with old tires might seem a reasonable thing to do but your risking other people’s lives. And the average farmer knows nothing about the overall risks of animal to human disease mutation, but people still pays the price every time such incompetence creates a new disease strain.

PS: Farming is one of the most polluting industries in the world but the lack of smoke stacks seems to give people the warm fuzziest.

strick• 18 years ago

If you'd like to learn more about the issues in this essay, I recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Pollan spends a good chunk of the book using Salatin's Polyface Farm as an example of sustainable agriculture.

Disclaimer: I've just joined the Arlington buyer's club for Polyface Farm and have been very happy with their meat and eggs.

pchivers• 18 years ago

+1 for the recommendation of The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's one of the best books about food and nutrition that I've ever read.

TrevorJ• 18 years ago

Great submission. As the grandson of a lifeling farmer, I have one thing to say to America: we better do a much better job of protecting the ones who out food on our tables because right now we aren't.

Diogenes• 18 years ago

The problem, my friends, is the legislators. More spefically, lawyers as legislators. Think about that (in the context of many of the other good points here), and realize that there is an inherent conflict of interest having members of a self-regulating professional class (lawyers and the Bar) writing the very laws that only they can administer.

Never vote for any lawyer running for any legislative body.

peteg3• 18 years ago

If you found this interesting I would highly suggest his recently released book by the same name. It goes into depth explaining a lot of things more.

A big point in his book that is getting missed here is this: our food regulation system doesn't really make us safer, it just gives us the feeling and appearance of that. What farmers like Salatin offer is true transparency and food safety, the kind government regulated food will never be able to provide. He just wants to be free to provide truly health building food.

Everything I want to do is Illegal

Related Stories