Texas state politics/law is completely f'd in so many ways, but one thing they do that I think is fantastic, and I wish all states did, was have a "Sunset Review Commission", https://www.sunset.texas.gov/how-sunset-works.
Basically, all agencies that are authorized by the legislature are set to automatically be abolished in (usually) 12 years. Once the expiration date is near, the Sunset Commission reviews the agency and recommends whether to reauthorize it, in which case the legislature must pass a law to reauthorize, but the "default" is that the agency expires.
This really helps fight the natural tendency of lots of these professional agencies to grow to protect their own power, regardless of their original purpose. And even if agencies are normally always renewed, the review process itself is really useful to, when necessary, smack these agencies upside the head to get them back to their original goal. One example I'm familiar with, a couple years ago the Sunset Commission basically tore the Texas Veterinary Board a new one after they decided to go after animal shelter vets for trying to save animals with extremely limited resources, https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/One-third-of... - actual report at https://www.sunset.texas.gov/public/uploads/files/reports/St...
I wonder what would happen if we did this with laws. There are so many laws that get passed that are literally no longer applicable (funding to build a bridge in the US is done as a law), but also I wonder if this would engage everyone a bit more in how the country runs.
"It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.... Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right"
- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire
So when people talk about the founding fathers and what they had in mind when they wrote the constitution, typically in relation to gun laws, it should also be pointed out that the constitution should have run out after 19 years?
I actually quite like this. The US constitution has been elevated to some quasi religious document where everyone interprets it how they want to interpret it. A bi decadal debate on what it should actually say would be useful. Although it would take politicians longer than that to actually agree.
I feel you are commingling negative rights with regulations .
The constitution provided "negative" rights to the people and individual states.
Negative rights are rights that exist unless someone acts to negate them.
This means the constitution affirms that people and states get to keep all priviledges, unless specifically enumerated as priviledges of the federal government.
So, if the Federal government starts with nothing, the right end state for the for the government to end with nothing.
This is quite different from the inertia you see today in Federal government regulatory growth.
Going back to the current discussion, negative rights dont lapse since they define the starting point. It is only regulations (I.e. anything that comes outside of the constitution) which is subject to reset.
Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default.
By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized.
Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.
In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".
What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so?
The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error.
Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require).
As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
How does one person think they know more than the group of people involved in writing it? Your ego is quite strong.
There are no gramatical errors in 2A or any right. None of the terms used are ambiguously defined, try using a legal dictionary instead of saying they’re ambiguous because you don’t understand them.
Militia has a legal definition, as does arms. Bearing them seems clear to me, ability to use them.
Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights.
If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right?
It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.
There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions. Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition? For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke? Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed? How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings? If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
It's turtles all the way down.
It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
> There's no such thing as the standard legal definition, most terms, including these, have multiple definitions.
That is just blatantly false. Most terms get their legal definitions from case law, or other laws. They are purposefully clear to avoid ambiguity when arguing cases.
> Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition?
> For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke?
Literally all of these are arms, and with the exception of a nuclear bomb, all are legal to own by civilians with proper licensing. (It still amazes me how many pro gun control people think explosives and automatic weapons are illegal.)
You'll notice they drop the "fire" part from 2A and use the generic term "arm", which means yes they intended civilian ownership of all arms encompassing explosives as well.
> Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
The right says "keep and bear arms", which makes it clear that you can both have them, and use them. Bear is a pretty standard word and is used elsewhere (like in finance) and the legal definition is also quite clear: https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/bear.html
Where you get the idea of it's a right to serve in the military is a rather interesting thought.
> If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed?
No, how could it be? Restricting transfers does not keep you from owning and using them. If restricting transfers from an FFL dealer to the end customer is what you mean then yes (read you can't buy guns because you've made them impossible to purchase), you absolutely can.
> How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings?
Courts are deciding this now, and the first case up after the new guidelines says only federal property. If the local government makes use so complicated as there are no places you can legally carry, then it is a violation of the second amendment. So yes, complicating usage is a violation.
> If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right?
> Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
Now you're getting ridiculous and I won't answer these.
> It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
If this is how legal terms were decided, on what someone meant or what they thought the term means, then all cases would be chaos.
> Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
Or, they removed a lot of the room for future leaders to remove rights they thought were important, because they came from a country with a pseudo-dictator and wanted the people to have a means to escape.
Essentially you've proven me right. You have used some veil of ambiguity to state a particular right is ambiguous, then proceeded to give various scenarios of a gun controllers wish list to hinder this right. You're claiming it's ambiguous so you can pick it apart. The wording is quite clear, people can own and use guns. It only becomes unclear when people want to remove the right.
Keep in mind that Thomas Jefferson had no part in writing the Constitution (he was in France) and was a significant opponent of it. People like Alexander Hamilton thought that not only should the Constitution be permanent, but that it should also provide for an elected king.
As a sibling explains, it's important to understand the ground state. The ground state assumption is that citizens have all these rights (speech, arms, religion, etc). Narrowing or abrogating these rights is where laws come in.
The opposition at the time to the Bill of Rights was that it would confuse people into thinking the rights came out of the constitution instead of from nature.
Jefferson was certainly of the mind that documents like the Constitution needed to be overhauled about once or twice a generation.
People like to talk about "the founding fathers" as if they were of a singular mind about things. But they were very much not. They were so much not that the Vice President of the United States literally shot the former Secretary of Treasury over various disagreements.
So, you know, they weren't exactly 100% with each other.
>"It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.... Every constitution then, & every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, & not of right" - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1789, expressing feelings on why laws should automatically expire
IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time. How can we say with a straight face that granting people, institutions or corporate entities rights to own a piece of the Planet Earth in perpetuity, forever, is fair or a good thing that is sustainable? It might have sounded good 300-500 years ago when new land was constantly discovered (cough conquered/taken cough) but what happens when the land pie runs out? Do we just say "tough shit mate, you should have been born 50 years ago when land was still available and affordable for everyone, or you should have been born in a family with inherited land ownership"?
It's a hot take but I think land should be only leased for a limited time, like the max lifespan of a person, ~100 years or so, and then expire, never owned in perpetuity by any individual or corporation.
What you're saying, however, is that the government owns the land in perpetuity, and only lets you live there. That sounds familiar and oddly like serfdom.
The USA has 1.9 billion acres. Developed urban areas account for only 3.5% of this area. If you count other, non-urban areas with more than 30 people per square mile, then the occupation of habitable land constitutes less than 6%.
Accounting for mountains and bodies of water, Earth has 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres (43%) of habitable land. Humanity is only 1/100th of the total biomass on this planet.
Less than 15% of earth is either an urban area or occupied for agricultural use. And 95% of the world’s population is concentrated in just 10% of the land.
Land is generally affordable. Land in areas not yet fully developed is actually quite inexpensive. You can pick up 40 acres of land in Montana for $20,000 USD, and they'll even throw in some livestock and feed.
Property in developed population centers increase in price because of scarcity and market conditions. That's the product of living in an area that has recursive development, amenities, limited supply, and practically unlimited demand.
This leads to an inevitable conclusion. We have plenty of land and plenty of resources. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell something. With this in mind, you could double the population of the planet and still not use a third of the habitable land. As it turns out, Earth is really, really big.
I’ve seen some properties like this. What they didn’t tell you is there is no road access, you’re surrounded by gov land (and they want your plot to finish the set), and you generally won’t be able to access the land without an easement. That’s why the cattle are still there, they can’t get a truck in there to move them.
That sounds great until you spend 5 minutes thinking about it...
What do you do with the $500k home sitting on the $80k land that just got repossessed?
Why would anyone take care of their 98 year old land if they know it's gonna disappear in a few years? Are you gonna fine every person that goes right up against the line (regarding environmental laws for example) without crossing the line? By the time you get to the expired land, it will be a defacto landfill.
Can people choose to lease a specific plot of land and if so does the term reset to 100? Why not pass property around the family back and forth forever?
Who sets the price of a lease? Use gov't prices and the deadweight loss kills your economy. Use market prices and every lease will cost about the same as buying land in our existing system.
All of this has already been thought about. In Amsterdam, for example, you don't own the ground that your home is on; you lease it from the city. Extending that lease is automatic, but technically, eventually everything reverts back to the city. And if you still need it, you lease it from the city again, for whatever the city now thinks the land is worth. That way the city continues to benefit from private development of the city.
I don't know. I'm not familiar with Georgism. It's called "erfpacht" in Dutch, and it's an old practice. Amsterdam is the only city I'm aware of that does it on this scale, but it's not unheard of elsewhere.
Google translation of the Dutch wikipedia page for "erfpacht" [1] translates it as "Ground lease" and suggests it is used in various countries including the Netherlands, about which there's a large section. I don't know how well the translation is w/r/t technical terms, but it reads ok to me.
Is this like ground rent in the UK for leasehold property? This is a thing but usually a fairly insignificant cost as long as you keep renewing it with decades to spare.
UK ground rent goes to the private owner of the land though, which is mostly not the state. That's why there was a scandal recently when some landowners tried to impose a ground rent that doubled every X years - which the government has thankfully banned now.
The UK has leaseholds, which do run out. Typically it means the value of a property drops as a lease gets short, and so you're incentivised to pay to extend the lease to remove the uncertainty.
> That sounds great until you spend 5 minutes thinking about it...
You and I don't have to think about this for five minutes as that's too little time and we're not qualified, but I'm sure if we round up all the top economists and university graduates of the G20 countries and put them together in a luxury resort in the alps to brain storm for a few months, I'm sure they'll be able to come up with a better economic land lease model than the system we have now which only encourages multi generational, winner-takes-all, land hoarding scheme for rent seeking purposes, where the earliest who got in the market got a great deal which they can use as leverage to acquire more land over time, and the ones getting into the market now are completely priced out and screwed as the pie is fixed in size and has already been called dibs on.
Basically, we need a system that resets the monopoly board from time to time as currently you're entering the game from square one while others inherited a better starting position with more assets to boot.
I'm sure such a system could be designed if desired but that's not what's desired as the elites and people in power with entrenched wealth don't want to lose their position on the board.
Maybe the land value taxes are (intentionally) too low for the super rich who own lots of land?
Maybe we need a differential land tax system that's very low taxes for small areas intended for personal living(shelter), and taxes that go up progressively the more land you own, especially if you use it to rent-seek. It should discourage land hoarding and feudalistic rent seeking.
@benj111 That was just an example off the top of my head. Obviously more qualified people than me can come with a sensible model that accounts for farms and other land used by businesses who need it. My main idea was to discourage rent seeking not farms and other businesses who contribute to society.
What is the definition of too much land? If I save up for my entire life making $100k a year across the family and buy 100acres should the gov be able to tax me off that land?
People have spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it. There's a 2018 book called Radical Markets[1] that explores alternative models for various entranced economic systems, such as property ownership, voting etc. There's a free podcast interview with the author online[2].
The tl;dr is that you'd decide what your $500k home is worth. You could choose to say it's worth $80k, $500k etc. You'd then pay property tax as a function of what you decided it's worth.
The catch is that you'd be obligated to sell it at the price you selected if a buyer showed up.
In economics lingo one thing you can optimize for is "investment efficiency", or "allocation efficiency". Traditional land ownership is the canonical example of the former, someone else might be able to make better use of your land ("allocation efficiency"), but they don't own it, so tough luck.
Turning all "land ownership" into what's basically a mandatory bidding system is a way of maximizing allocation efficiency, you'd optimize for (re)allocating land to someone who can most efficiently use it.
The authors spend a lot of time discussing the various edge cases, and in particular the normal knee-jerk responses someone might have.
In particular you can set a system like this up in such a way that a "mandatory buyout" would be a fantastic deal for a given homeowner, e.g. the equivalent of having someone offer you $1 million for your $500k house.
To me my house is worth a lot more than it is to the market because to me it has an emotional value. A mandatory buyout assumes that people do not have emotional bonds with their homes. Do you suggest one adjusts their estimate of the value twice, or thrice as high to prevent a mandatory buyout? How is that fair to those people?
You also end up taxing actual value that can only be used by one person. If your house is close to your job or your parents, or if your children or if your children have gone to school the previous 5 years in the neighborhood and don't want to leave their friends, you'd be willing to pay more to keep it. Now, you actually have to pay more to keep it.
We shouldn't be taxing people on the fact that their house is near their job. And if they don't raise the price of their house, someone will eventually buy it at the market value of the house, and the value will simply have been destroyed.
It also sounds like a great way to harass people. Don't like your new black neighbor? Just force him out by buying his house for the tax price. Ideally he'll have a little more money than he started with, but I could see other social institutions, like trouble obtaining another loan, preventing the re-homing of "undesirables".
I think you and others in this thread are missing that the proposed mandatory bidding price is a multiple of the "real" value.
So yeah, don't like your new neighbors who just bought a $500k home next to you, you can give them $1.5m (or whatever) to get their house. How are they now worse off exactly?
That family can then probably buy the larger house next to yours for $1m, and have $500k in cash left over. A bank that was willing to give them a loan for a $500k house is less likely to do so when they've got an extra $1m in cash?
The system the authors proposed is mainly intended as a clean way to get rid of things like eminent domain and the holdout problem. Most real estate transactions would take place between "willing" sellers and buyers, just like they do now.
>I think you and others in this thread are missing that the proposed mandatory bidding price is a multiple of the "real" value.
That doesn't work. People will set the "real" value to be lower than the real value, in order to reduce their taxes, but high enough that someone who wants to buy the house has to pay barely enough, after multiplying, to make it worthwhile to sell. The tax rates will then be raised accordingly and we'll just have "the mandatory bidding price is the real value" with extra steps.
Right now we don't live in a world where such a bidding system exists, because it's a rather obscure (but interesting) idea. Even if people were widely aware of the details the political will to implement it probably doesn't exist.
But you seem to be arguing that if such a system were implemented the very structure of it would lead to a race to the bottom?
I don't see why that would be the case, if there's political reluctance to implement such a system to avoid certain outcomes, why wouldn't there be the same reluctance to raise the relevant taxes?
In any case, the book I cited upthread doesn't argue for some sort of "shock therapy" introduction of a system like this, but e.g. starting with commercial real estate.
Even people who'd argue that they should never have to sell their ancestral family home would probably find it hard to extent that argument to their neighbourhood Starbucks never having to accept a bid from a competing coffee company.
You could’ve left the color of the skin of the neighbor out and still made your point. People of all skin colors face discrimination these days, not just blacks.
I am curious why you called this out. Is there a social reason I should not use such specific examples in the future? In my mind, giving a concrete example that the reader has some familiarity with help them to develop the story in their mind.
For example, one could misinterpret the neighbor as having the same socio-economic status, making it far less clear how losing the house but gaining an equitable amount of money causes hardship. And blacks specifically have been targeted by such policies in the past, so it's a lot easier to imagine how other social policies align to make becoming un-housed even more problematic for that neighbor.
You're just focusing on the downside without considering the upside.
Maybe you want to go see a movie you've been dying to see tomorrow, and you've got your $100 tickets in hand.
But there's someone else in the same situation, but they'd really like to see it. If a market exists they could offer you $1000, and you'd both be happier, as you can now afford something you'd prefer more than the $100 activity.
The same goes for real estate, it's just a less liquid market currently.
You're assuming that emotional value cleanly maps to current real estate ownership. What if you'd like to re-purchase a house your family lost in the last recession, but which your family had been living in for generations?
The status quo effectively leaves you without a recourse if the current owner isn't willing to sell, the system noted upthread assumes that emotional bonds to real estate can be priced.
> Surely each offer round becomes a bidding round, rather than a simple purchase.
No:
1. There's no requirement to list the house - who would even know if you sold it twice a year?
2. There's no requirement that the seller has to take the highest offer. The other bidder will have to bid again next year when taxes are due.[1]
[1] You can't set the tax based on what the bid is, because the bidder may not have the money (or may not be granted the bond) when time comes to actually do the transfer. The tax has to be based on what the actual selling price is.
How would it? The emotional connection comes from the memories made in that home. You’re still raising kids, still growing up in these homes. So my guess is no.
> The catch is that you'd be obligated to sell it at the price you selected if a buyer showed up.
A modification to that I read somewhere which I like is the buyer has to put in a cash over the barrel offer. Completely unencumbered cash for a period too long for any leveraged investor to tolerate. And enforcing that "cash"'ness is the courts will not enforce claims upon the property based upon pledging it as collateral for say, 2X median population lifespan years.
I'd also want to see a natural person exception and a bounty. If you are a natural person (non-corporate entity, real human), then your home is exempted from the bidding system. But if someone figures out a natural person individual claimed two or more properties under the exemption for some period (say a year and a day) or longer, then that someone gets their choice of properties illegally claimed under the exemption, with instant eviction enforced by the state immediately after the court-supported decision.
The intent of the modification is to disallow hacking the bidding system by tapping credit markets far beyond the reach of median homeowners and systematically outbidding them.
If your nightmare scenario is that credit markets are going to offer you your arbitrary asking price for your house I'd like to live in your nightmares :)
In Israel, for example, a lot of land is not "sold", but leased by the state to people. In practical terms, there is no real difference.
Technically speaking, the lease terms are 49 / 98 years. The problem is that when you reach the end of the lease, there is no real possibility of _not_ extending the lease.
And the lease is for the _land_, not anything on top of that.
So it "sounds" nice, but in practical terms, it just adds another body that you have to go through.
From economic perspective, there is very little difference between the two. A bank will give you a mortgage to buy a house whose "land lease" expire next year, for example. Because there is no possibility of that not being extended.
There is _slight_ advantage to buying houses not leased, but mostly because that means somewhat less paperwork to go through.
That’s essentially how things work in the US with property tax. If a landowner fails to pay property tax for some extended period, eventually the government will seize the property and auction it off to fulfill the tax debt.
Some states allow the person/org who failed to pay the taxes on time to "redeem" the debt (pay it off). So this means that for several years after you acquire the property, there is a risk that it will revert to the previous owner.
Some tax auctions are only for the right to collect the tax. In those states, you never can acquire ownership. You just get a lien.
And some tax auctions are for worthless strips of land. I've seen some that were essentially the strip of grass between a parking lot and the street. The shopping mall had a permanent easement to put a driveway through that grass (if they wanted) and there was no possible way to make ownership of that 10 foot wide (and several hundred feet long) strip of lawn to be useful. Plus, you get to pay property taxes for something you can't live on.
> IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time.
Why limit ownership restrictions to land ownership only?
Private ownership of property (not limited to land) is foundational for functioning democracies; some would even go as far as saying it's foundational for society.
Those societies that went your route of "from each according to his abilities to each according to his need" turned out very badly.
Where I live we have a "right to roam" over other peoples land as long as we behave sensibly and follow some simple restrictions - seems to work perfectly well.
If I'm understanding correctly you're implying that we can have the concept of individual land ownership, whilst not restricting general access of said land, yes?
This is all fine and very nice when it comes to your ability to take a leisurely stroll in the countryside, but it is only such a small facet of the actual issue at hand: Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility. This is one of the reasons why a city like San Francisco has thousands of homeless people and almost no high density housing.
You need both. Freedom to roam in Scandinavia goes much further than the right to a stroll, and includes e.g. foraging and camping, but you're right it doesn't solve the issue of ownership.
To me the freedom to roam is more valuable as an example of how property rights the way they are elsewhere is a huge infringement on liberty in that it massively restricts the general public to the benefit of individual owners.
Once you've experienced it, it is hard not to feel walled in and unfree when you move somewhere without that right.
As such, it is reasonable to discuss which other aspects of property rights ought to be curtailed if one wants to maximise liberty for all.
"Once you've experienced it, it is hard not to feel walled in and unfree when you move somewhere without that right."
I completely agree, I was referring to Scotland where the Right to Roam was introduced relatively recently - I suspect to counterbalance the existing historical land ownership position which is very complex and opaque.
I think you're right that codifying what had previously existed as a de facto but no de jure right certainly was a direct response to increasing pressure from landowners to limit access.
Norway was in a similar situation in that until the 1950's the right was implicit - the one major area of law which was not codified because it was seen as so self-evident that it wasn't considered necessary (Sweden, in contrast, has it embedded in its constitution) - until pressure from land owners who increasingly started blocking off land in ways which violated of centuries of tradition made it clear it needed to be codified so it could be defended in court.
It's seen as integral enough to Norwegian culture that it's taught in primary school.
> Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility. This is why a city like San Francisco has thousands of homeless people and almost no high density housing.
I think you'd need to cite why this is the sole explanation for the scale of SF's homeless population.
> Land being hoarded and/or not being developed to the most of it's potential utility
Land value taxes (in the Georgist/Geoist manner) will ensure that a very valuable parcel of land, such as the one in the middle of San Francisco, will not have a low-value improvement such as a parking lot or a single-story dwelling on top of it.
Too bad that the actual policy we have instead is stuff like Prop 13 and rent control, which all but assures that such higher-value development will not happen.
Land is different from other forms of property and capital. Its supply is almost completely inelastic, and it derives the largest proportion of its value from the efforts of others.
They are an elastic resource. The amount being created is responsive to demand.
Also, they're substitutable; if people can't afford classic cars, they'll buy art, or wine, or yachts, or Rolexes, or a thousand other luxury goods. Land is only imperfectly substitutable, and it substitution has definite economic costs.
Yes, I should have mentioned land value taxes. Depending on the level, they reduce or eliminate the property interest in the rental value of the land itself, while preserving the usufruct and stewardship aspects, crucially allowing the owner to take full property ownership of and benefit from the improvements they make to the land.
Which societies have tried your quoted route? The only communist countries I know about never made it to communist but were very early in the process taken over by dictators who very much took more than their need and certainly inhibited the sharing of abilities.
You're right though, inheritance taxes on all assets help to iron out such issues; but in general the ruling classes avoid most taxes (and often laws in general) and aren't keen to enforce their application.
> Which societies have tried your quoted route? The only communist countries I know about never made it to communist but were very early in the process taken over by dictators who very much took more than their need and certainly inhibited the sharing of abilities.
That's just a different way of saying that it isn't practical. Consider Communism as a goal. Communism is a goal that is often attempted but is never achieved.
When no one can implement something in practice, it's the something that's the problem, not the people.
> You're right though, inheritance taxes on all assets help to iron out such issues; but in general the ruling classes avoid most taxes (and often laws in general) and aren't keen to enforce their application.
Firstly, it's ridiculously easy to dodge inheritance taxes if you're rich.
Secondly, going down the path of "if you, personally, didn't earn something, we will confiscate it from you" historically never worked out well.
You misunderstood, I wasn't advocating for communism but our current system is definitely flawed and unsustainable long term.
So you're telling me that we should allow people to own pieces of the planet earth forever? Sorry, but how is that sustainable? How is it fair the someone gets to own large swaths of the planet and use it as leverage to buy even more of it, just because his great granddad came to an empty country and got land basically for free which now make his grandchildren millionaire landlords even though they didn't contribute to society in any way to earn what they have and if they were to buy their property at current market rate they wouldn't be able to afford even 10% of it.
This may have been the foundation of societies, thousands or hundreds of years ago, but what was the population of the earth back then and what is it now? This system is not sustainable, and just like laws, it should be updated to account for current conditions.
Our current system is flawed as it just comes around full circle to creating a society of a few landlords owning most of the property and assets and the peasantry which can't afford to own anything. And looking back on history we know how that usually ends. We need a new system that resets the monopoly board fairly instead of waiting for social uprisings to boil due to increased wealth inequality.
> So you're telling me that we should allow people to own pieces of the planet earth forever?
Which country allows this? All "land-owners" pay land taxes, and if you stop paying "your" land will be confiscated.
> just because his great granddad came to an empty country and got land basically for free which now make his grandchildren millionaire landlords even though they didn't contribute to society in any way to earn what they have
And now we're back to the argument "to each according to his need". Until/unless you are willing to ruthlessly enforce that nobody gets anything unless they, personally, earn it, there will be large numbers of people who will have stuff that they did not earn.
Arguments along the lines of "to each according to his need" are broken, almost by design.
> We need a new system that resets the monopoly board fairly instead of waiting for social uprisings to boil due to increased wealth inequality.
IIRC, the last time I checked, the countries with the least wealth inequality were those with the strongest private ownership laws.
If it's wealth inequality you're targetting, then strong economies help. Countries with restrictions on ownership mostly, with some outliers, fare poorly on wealth inequality.
> How is it fair the someone gets to own large swaths of the planet
No person owns large swathes of our planet.
> I wasn't advocating for communism
Hard to know where else commenters are going if they're saying the government should be allowed to seize property from people it defines as "people who deserve to have their property seized".
> This system is not sustainable, and just like laws, it should be updated to account for current conditions.
A large factor in current conditions is the constriction of supply by regulation. Trying to socially engineer cities has vote-winning, short term positive consequences (rent control means your rent doesn't change! Hooray!) and predictable but overlooked non-short term enormous negative consequences (it's not worth landlords' time to upkeep properties! It's only worth building luxury apartments!)
Before we say "the government should just come in and take property in the name of redistribution, the way they did in the USSR", perhaps we should consider some alternatives. Saying "there's a problem; here's a solution; if you disagree with my solution than you are saying there's no problem" is a syllogism as old as time.
I never said the people should have their property seized like in comunism and that the government should redistribute it. But i can't endorse the current system either. Surely a better system can be designed if we put smart people up to it, no?
What's your solution? All you did was call me and everyone who thinks the current system is wrong, a commie.
>A large factor in current conditions is the constriction of supply by regulation.
Yes, which is why we're in this mess. It's a rigged system masquerading as the free market. Those who own property have vested interest in increasing the value of what they own and use it as leverage to buy more, at the expense of those who don't own and wish to buy in.
> What's your solution? All you did was call me and everyone who thinks the current system is wrong, a commie.
No. I didn't do that, and I didn't only do that.
> It's a rigged system masquerading as the free market. Those who own property have vested interest in increasing the value of what they own and use it as leverage to buy more, at the expense of those who don't own and wish to buy in.
It is nowhere near a free market, and I don't believe it pretends to be.
> What's your solution?
My personal solution is to do the following:
Realise that most people have property because their parents or grandparents worked hard and sacrificed for years or decades or their whole lives to give a transformationally different life to their descendents.
This can't happen overnight or via regulation.
Take a hard look at the long term effects of policies that are short-term vote winners. The state intervening more in housing should be the last resort, not the first.
Undermine envy by remembering that most families with wealth lose it within 3 generations, and that many people move into the top 1% of earners during their lifetimes, if only for while.
I don't know if that would work for anyone else, though.
>The state intervening more in housing should be the last resort, not the first.
Agree that too much gov regulations push prices up, but like it or not, the gov intervention is a necessary evil for quality housing that has infrastructure and won't fall on you after 10 years. Where I'm from in Eastern Europe housing is affordable due to the lack of gov regulations as developers go crazy and just build anything everywhere but those buildings while nice looking and modern, have no good infrastructure anywhere near them as neither the developers nor the government wants to spend money on it. So you get apartment buildings with no paved roads or parking lots, no schools, no kindergartens, no doctors, no bus stops, no parks or green spaces. Awful. Gov regulation could fix this but also make buildings more expensive for the developers and for the end buyers. In the end you can't just leave everything to the "free market".
>Realise that most people have property because their parents or grandparents worked hard and sacrificed for years or decades or their whole lives
Or, they got lucky to be born in a time when real estate, even in now red hot metro areas, was far cheaper for the average worker/family, as was getting education and a stable career and raising a family.
Saying hard work and sacrifice is the key ingredient to getting rich is massive survivorship bias and young people have wised up to this fact.
>Undermine envy by remembering that most families with wealth lose it within 3 generations, and that many people move into the top 1% of earners during their lifetimes, if only for while.
That's so untrue for Western Europe where the wealthiest families go back hundreds of years, and due to high taxes and low skilled wages you can't really move to the top 1%.
In Austria, the country's top 100 richest people own a third of the wealth in the entire country, and during the covid pandemic, the gap between them and everyone else got even wider while they got richer and everyone else poorer. One city already voted a communist mayor into power. Their wealth goes back centuries and hasn't been lost in 3 generations and will survive 3 more generations.
It's hard to debate without citations. Here are two things:
> Saying hard work and sacrifice is the key ingredient to getting rich
I didn't say it's the key to getting rich. I said they worked extremely hard (no holidays / long hours of hard jobs / making sure their kids prioritised school and working hard) to ensure their descendents could afford something. Not get rich. Afford something.
> is massive survivorship bias
I'm not saying that these things guarantee a home. They're just the most likely path to getting one.
If you're more left wing, you probably view the state as a parent who can be trusted to confiscate and dole things out fairly.
If you're right wing you probably view the state as a necessary evil for providing specific services that can't be provided fairly purely through people making agreements with each other.
If you're the former, you may well think that the state seizing property in the name of redistribution will solve more problems than it causes. If you're the latter, it's the other way round.
> IMHO that should also apply to land ownership rights which should also expire after some time. How can we say with a straight face that granting people, institutions or corporate entities rights to own a piece of the Planet Earth in perpetuity, forever, is fair or a good thing that is sustainable?
Who's granting people perpetual ownership of a piece of land? Once you stop paying taxes on it, the state will take it back.
> but I think land should be only leased for a limited time, like the max lifespan of a person, ~100 years or so, and then expire, never owned in perpetuity by any individual or corporation.
I mean in a practical sense this is exactly what happens. You die -> taxes are no longer paid on the land -> someone else gets it. That "someone else" is either an heir who is now paying tax on it, or its sold to someone else entirely.
China has something like this (when you “buy” property you’re actually getting a 70 year lease from the government) and I can tell you that it’s a huge problem (no one wants to pay again for property they already paid for)
As has been pointed out leases are a thing and work just fine, but many of the objectives you're after could better be achieved through a land value tax. Most of the value of a piece of land is usually derived from it's location relative to other facilities and infrastructure that were not created by the land owner, so it seems reasonable to return a share of that 'excess' value to the public purse.
Do I camp outside Microsoft headquarters then walk in on day 1 of year 101 and say, “this is mine now”?
Where I live we have leasehold land so titles theoretically extinguish after 99 years. What has happened in practise is that the lease just auto-renews, making the situation no different to freehold apart from the paperwork.
> Do I camp outside Microsoft headquarters then walk in on day 1 of year 101 and say, “this is mine now”?
You'd probably have to outbid Microsoft for it. I don't think land should ever be free for the taking for whoever claims it first; It should belong to society and you purchase use rights from society.
There is no "society", though. Who actually owns it and decides? The state? A local body? Who do you give all the power over the land to, if you're removing its ownership from individuals?
The state owns the land and will lease it to any individual, with the price being determined by the free market, same how property prices are determined today. Whoever can afford the most, gets it.
Best of both worlds. You discourage real estate speculative and hoarding for rent seeking purposes and still have the free market competition determining the prices.
Once your lease is up you can renew it at current market prices if you want it and can afford it. If not, then you make way for someone else to take up the lease.
I don't know why you'd want a system where a rich person can take the land your house is on if they can pay £1 more than you for it every so often, unless you're a fan of the feudal system.
I also don't see how it discourages speculative investment. If nothing you own is really yours for very long then you're much more likely to have your property bought from under you if it's in a desirable area. As an investor I would want to do that if I believe I could rent it out at a profit.
A modest proposal: Do land rights the way Nature intends, i.e. one's territory is that which one can physically defend against incursion by conspecifics. Social groups are okay. Acceptable tool use will have to be determined by the courts.
Auto-expiry of laws is an interesting idea, and one that gets floated here on HN with some regularity (possibly because it appeals to the refactoring mindset?)
I wonder about "Chesterton's Fence" effects, though - maybe we'd have to make a _lot_ more use of the "institutional memory" of the non-political parts of government. Behind every law, there's usually at least some advisory recommendations / reports from various agencies, and over 10-30 year timescales there's a non-zero chance that some of the original authors of those are still around.
Otherwise, we'd run the "junior developer" risk of perpetually refactoring laws without understanding the reasoning behind them, and breaking functionality users depend on in the process. Sure, it's obvious that some blue law about not pasturing your cow on ye towne grasse on ye Holye Sundaye is outdated, but I suspect those obvious deprecation cases are few and far between. Thoughtful, context-aware refactoring applies to systems in general, not just computer systems.
Sounds nice in theory, but after decades of everything running smoothly, people forget just how instrumental certain laws were to ensure that stability.
It's a lot like anti-vaxers, anti-pasteurization, and other anti-science fads. And I can point to the repeal of banking regs like Glass-Steagall which resulted in the ~2007 financial crisis and recession. Including a post-it note on a law isn't going to give future people the same perspective as someone who lived through the issues first-hand. If that worked, we wouldn't have voters repeatedly supporting politicians who make the same insane promises that never work.
Alternatively, the renewal of the EPA or the FTC or the FDA would be filibustered and agencies would stop existing, leading to rivers catching on fire and snake oil salesmen using deceptive ads.
I don't see the problem here. If the society is so fractured that they can't agree on having agencies to protect against burning rivers and the like, then the society shouldn't have those agencies.
that's a nice consistent sentiment, but not necessarily useful
if there's consensus then bad laws can be changed, or good ones extended, or the filibuster removed, etc. so why have them auto-expire anyway? (see the Patriot act, got extended without much fuss.)
it would make hiring people to these agencies uniquely challenging, and it wouldn't solve much of anything. (it's a typical libertarian-ish idea, without the usual props required to make these workable, eg. a society that favors cooperation, prefers to adapt their life to meet their goals, eg. like-minded folks moving en masse to make their own life much better, and also getting out of the way of others, instead of what usually happens, which is local groups fighting tooth and nail against any change that would inconvenience them)
>if there's consensus then bad laws can be changed, or good ones extended, or the filibuster removed, etc. so why have them auto-expire anyway?
The auto-expire thing is a good idea; it's basically automatic garbage collecting. It's a procedure which forces the legislature to review every old law to see if it needs updating or renewal or not. Many laws are old and forgotten, because the legislature isn't forced (by its own auto-expire procedure) to review these old laws, and then they eventually cause problems because some lawyer digs them up and applies them to a case.
The Patriot Act got extended without fuss because it had lots of bipartisan support. You may disagree with the Act, but almost all the congresspeople liked it (and they were elected or re-elected by the voters), so it's correct that it was extended.
If the EPA doesn't enjoy that level of support, or even enough support for Congress to re-authorize it every so often, then it should be abolished. Sure, that will result in disaster (burning rivers and the like), but if that's what the People want, that's what they should get, unless you think the government should be replaced with an authoritarian system.
You may think the EPA and environmental protection is important, but you share a country with a huge number of uneducated morons who don't, and their vote is just as valid as yours.
> The Patriot Act got extended without fuss because it had lots of bipartisan support
It wasn’t bipartisan. Witness what happened when Max Cleland - a senator who loss three limbs in Vietnam - was accused of being “unpatriotic” for not supporting the Iraq War
That’s not quite accurate. Specific provisions from the original act, fewer each time, were extended.
> It contains many sunset provisions beginning December 31, 2005, approximately four years after its passage. Before the sunset date, an extension was passed for four years which kept most of the law intact. In May 2011, President Barack Obama signed the PATRIOT Sunset Extensions Act of 2011, which extended three provisions.[3] These provisions were modified and extended until 2019 by the USA Freedom Act, passed in 2015.[4] In 2020, efforts to extend the provisions were not passed by the House of Representatives, and as such, the law has expired.[5]
If Congress cannot pass laws to deal with current problems because of gridlock and the filibuster, you think putting more items on their plate will help?
But the FDA just issued new rules around PFAS this year and tens of billions were allocated to upgrade water plants to prevent contamination in that omnibus spending bill that just passed. Why do you ask?
> you think putting more items on their plate will help
Not GP, but I think it would stress the system to the breaking point and force us to fix it. I strongly suspect this would actually be a good thing. If a periodic process is painful for an organization in many cases doing it more frequently will result in the problems being fixed.
There is clearly significant disagreement in the US over the desirable scope of federal powers. Forcing that issue to a head would hopefully result in a more functional system in the end.
That might be a good idea. But I’m not sure your example is a good one.
Repealing a budget law only adds paperwork and cost and complexity. It’s not like these kinds laws have an ongoing cost.
I wonder if one issue is just perception: people often see laws as “ongoing rules” when they can often just be, “on this date congress agreed to these terms and conditions for some thing.”
usually they are unceremoniously reauthorized by Congress because its just too much to think about
sometimes Congress forgets (or the related lobbyist forgot/couldnt get a lunch date with the co-sponsor)
but this isn't a perfect system its just more case load in practice that no individual person is aware of
I personally cant think of any debate that occurred on an upcoming sunset provision where people consciously said “yeah that has no more applicability let it expire” or “we have to reauthorize this or itll be a disaster” its just nobody has time to think about it so they rubber stamp it in the annual budget reconciliation bill to keep the government open
the previous sitting President made an Executive Order that for every new regulation passed, "at least two" must be repealed. but then everyone kind of ignored it, because it's an Executive Order. would be nice to have something like that but for real though. the best commits are ones where you delete more lines than you add...
completely befitting the idiot he is. mr sharpie guy. he would be the first to game his own rule.
just pick two random ones, copypaste into the new one, repeal the old ones, and enact the new one. yaay. procedurally, formally, technically correct!
> the best commits are ones where you delete more lines than you add...
then you end up with trivial perfection, nothing
whereas the real life zen is accepting imperfections, and still working to decrease them, to converge on some better goal.
sure, law is web 0.1, it would be good to refactor it, but the main problems are not the number of laws. just as you can't (oughtn't?) measure code by lines, you can't do with laws.
arguably many narrow laws might be even better than a few super vague ones, etc
He also wanted to outlaw immigration from Muslim countries. When he found out that was neither legal nor possible, he zeroed out quotas for worker visas, such as H1 & H2. And also zeroed out quotas of many immigrant visas such as EB1-3. Over 4 years that was about 2 million worker visas that were not issued. The media outrage over the "worker shortage" or "quiet quitting" should instead have been directed at the orange dude who made it impossible to import workers. When things were shut down due to covid, it was hardly noticeable. But now, blame gets flung in all the wrong places.
Then you push back on that.
You don't have to give up, it's not all-or-nothing.
That's sort of the history of the law. You outlaw crime (new types of crime are variations of fraud, deceit, etc) and then people "innovate" their methods to get around that and you outlaw that too. Hopefully suppressing them more than they "innovate". But we don't have to just hope, we historically suppressed these new crimes when it became a big problem.
You dont just give up and let them create and do new types of (yet to be classified) crime just because they will always predictably want to do it anyway.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would no longer exist. Nor would the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. The ACA would have expired two years ago, too.
There are problems with term limits, indeed... but is the alternative really to keep the status quo and have essentially a generation of wealthy gerontocrats in power who are completely disconnected from the reality of life for many of their constituents, not to mention who are fucking over the planet? Politics needs continuous supply of fresh blood, people who grew up with computers and no fossils unable to read e-mails that aren't printed out by aides for them. And of young people who have realized that it is no longer possible to join a company at 16 for an apprenticeship and leave it for pension at 65, or that a single earner can no longer afford a comfortable home.
And while we are at it: We need not just term limits, we especially need age caps for politicians and corporate officials. Reach pension age and you're irrevocably out. Here in Germany, old buffoons at the helm of companies who refuse to use computers are the single worst issue for the German Mittelstand. Companies that can't adapt because the owner is stuck in 1960 mentally will wither and die eventually - and while I don't care about ignorant owners, I do care about the employees and the loss of economic contributions.
So your article claims term limits are bad (didn't say they are a scam) because they increase the power of those who are in it for them long haul. And it will weaken Congress (not sure how you can make the weak Congress weaker) and give more power to the executive branch... You know the branch that has term limits.
Are you saying they wouldn't exist because they wouldn't get reapproved? Because that is what you are implying.
And term limits are definitely not a scam
The more civilised way of doing this is to have an independent commission whose job it is to regularly review the state of the laws on the books and put forward lists of them to be repealed by the legislature.
This works quite well in the UK, for example, where Statute Law (Repeals) Acts have been passed[0] every few years since 1969, with the most recent[1] repealing the whole of 817 Acts of Parliament, and portions of more than 50 others.
I think that's a good system and it is nice it exists, but I sense that expiring something might be a better way.
There's a lot to be said to having people step up to defend something instead of having people attack something bad, or even overlook it out of ignorance.
I also remember one thing trump did I thought was interesting was that adding a new regulation required eliminating 2 existing regulations.
Hey, just by the way, it seems your characterization of the outcome with regards to vets at animal shelters is not correct. It's kind of the opposite. It starts on page 41 of the PDF (second link). The problem was: "Recent court decisions prevent the State Board of Veterinary
Medical Examiners from regulating shelter veterinarians or
veterinary medicine practiced in animal shelters."
"Strictly interpreted, the statutory exemption means anyone who practices
veterinary medicine in the context of animal shelters and rescue groups is exempt
from the Veterinary Licensing Act, including standard of care measures and
use of controlled substances. The impact of the decisions is already having an
effect on the oversight and regulation of veterinary medicine in Texas, as the
agency has begun to close all complaints against shelter veterinarians, declaring
them non-jurisdictional based on the decisions.
Taken to the extreme and assuming the Act does not apply in the context of
shelter medicine, animal shelters and rescue groups would not need to hire
licensed veterinarians. If the Act does not apply to the care of these animals,
any person regardless of training, education, or qualification, and regardless of
their criminal or disciplinary history, would legally be able to practice veterinary
medicine on shelter and rescue animals."
The recommendation from the Sunset Commission was therefore for the legislature to change the law to make sure veterinary medicine at rescue clinics WAS regulated.
Since I'm familiar with the details, here is what happened:
1. Texas Vet Board sued a very well-known shelter vet in Texas to revoke her license. Without getting into too much detail, the crux of it was that they wanted to hold shelter vets, who are all on very limited budgets, to the same standards as private vets. The irony is that, if shelter vets can't meet those standards, the Texas Vet Board is OK with just euthanizing the animals. The irony was brutal: "We want you to be held at a certain standard to protect the animals, but if you can't hit that, just kill them."
2. The vet countersued, saying there is a specific carve out in law for owners to treat their own pets, and legally shelter pets have been relinquished and are owned by the shelter. She won this case.
3. During the Sunset Commission hearings, the panel went hard after the Vet Board, basically saying they were harassing shelter vets for the sole purpose of trying to protect their own power (similar to the "everyone who draws a map needs to be licensed" BS in this post), while meanwhile they had a severe problem with not tracking and handling substance abuse issues by some vets. 3 of the Vet Board members ended up resigning because the Commission basically said "you suck".
4. Now, the situation that remained after the court cases was, as you pointed out, there was no more regulation of shelter vets. I think a lot of folks, including shelter vets, think this is not ideal, but they are very wary of being regulated by a board with very different goals (which are, honestly, protect the fees that vets can charge) from the goals that shelter vets have. So there has been some discussion since then about what level of regulation is right for shelter vets.
FWIW the status quo has remained the same - shelters legally own the animals in their care, and thus, as owners, shelter vets are not regulated by the Vet Board for the care they give their animals.
I only read the quoted text not the source link, but I dont see a reasonable basis for the recommendation inference you are making.
The commission is just stating the facts. I don't think they are advocating any change in law. (again from the quoted text).
The fact remains that state veterinarian boards were going after shelter practitioners, the court then gtanted shelters relief - on the basis of the Act - then the Commission generated the post-mortem on the Act.
There seems to be no recommendation from the quoted text?
The whole thing is just three and a half pages, starting on page 41.
On page 43:
"Recommendations
5.1 Request the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, and Rural Affairs and the
House Committee on Agriculture and Livestock to take action to clearly define the
scope and limits of the statutory owner exemption in the Veterinary Licensing Act." It goes on...
I guess out of sight out of mind would apply here. Even if rubber stamped repeatedly maybe it will present an opportunity to catch the eye of some inquisitive type to ask why?
Why should those commissions be abolished? I've heard complaints about them, like I've heard complaints about every single regulating body in existence. but I haven't heard so many that it seems like they should be disbanded.
Aren't those commissions responsible for keeping the power on in Texas [0]? Didn't millions of Texans suffer significant cost, danger, and hardship and >100 Texans froze to death because of these commissions decisions to keep Texas' electrical grid isolated from the eastern and western power grids and to not address infrastructural issues discovered when the exact same problems were experienced in 2011? Weren't a lot of Texans each charged thousands of dollars for a month with very bad electrical service in the recent freeze?
> The reality of that catastrophe has very little to do with politics.
"Politics" means "the activities associated with making decisions in groups." Anything that impacts the lives of groups of people where people made decisions (like the decision to have an isolated electrical grid [0]) is politics.
I live in Chicago. We have far worse ice storms than Texas but we also see over weeks 100F in the summers. We realized that A) power is a critical utility that people need to literally live, and B) it's technologically unnecessary and economically irrational to let inadequate infrastructure cause mass casualty events and cost us $195 BILLION [1] in damage, contamination, and lost economic opportunity, so we made the decision to engineer a resilient power grid and we don't experience the kinds of massive, protracted failures that Texas keeps having, despite the Public Utilities Commission of Texas and the Texas Railroad Commission investigating the failures when Texas' grid went down for the same reasons back in 2011 [2]. By definition, that's politics.
> And those charged high rates agreed to variable pricing.
My power bill each month ranges from $100 to $150 and I just pay for what I consume. People in Texas were getting automatically charged rates as high as $11,000 in a month where they received terrible service. [3] It's just bullshit to say anyone agreed to that.
> The ultimate reason why Texas had a problem was because of a nasty ice storm took out infrastructure.
Why was that infrastructure vulnerable to a nasty ice storm? It is possible to build infrastructure that can easily operate in those conditions.
From what I heard there were plenty of warnings, but EPCOT either refused to demand weather-hardening infrastructure, or did not have the authority to demand this hardening.
Counter-counterpoint: Claims that something is better than the alternative need to be supported with some evidence.
Sunset laws to do not magically improve the quality of the voting public or the quality of the elected representatives--and those are what ultimately decide the quality of the laws.
Furthermore, if we cite Texas, the evidence seems to be a negative correlation rather than a positive one.
(Side note: I'm actually in favor of laws having some form of trigger to cause them to disappear. Time, by itself, is generally insufficient, however. Laws should have a reason for going onto the books and when that reason is invalidated the law should be forced to be reauthorized with a different reason.)
They Sunset Commission themselves are also reviewed [1].
FWIW, the reality is that of course while the system is not perfect, pretty much everything is out in the open and reviewed on a scheduled basis. That really does go a long way to prevent the type of "slow power creep" of a lot of these professional licensing boards.
The biggest difference between an official site survey and you (or him) doing it themselves is liability. It is pretty clear from the language on the site that they aren't accepting legal liability and are just a convenience over doing it yourself using Google Maps or a tape-measure.
I think the article is very well argued, and if this board's closure notice is allowed to stand then it will infringe on Californian's right to simply draw a map of their home or business. His business isn't offering site surveys and doesn't proclaim to, and to be honest even Google Maps/Bing/Apple could be at risk if this board's ability to close/ban this were allowed (they do show property boundaries after all).
The biggest problem they're going to run into is: Who has deeper pockets? Since often in the US legal system that can decide the winner/loser.
I largely agree with you, but it may be a situation where a disclaimer on the plans themselves would assuage the professional board.
The site itself includes a disclaimer (“THIS IS NOT A LEGAL SURVEY, NOR IS IT INTENDED TO BE OR REPLACE ONE.” ).
However, at least on the sample plans the site shows[1][2], there does not seem to be any disclaimer. A reasonable person may be mislead into thinking that the plans produced by that website are legal surveys - they have the appearance of a typical surveyor/engineer produced CAD drawing.
In all the engineering drawings I've seen, the title block is essentially your only way of ensuring contextual information is always associated with the drawing. Including relevant disclaimers in the title block is critical.
If the sample drawings shown are representative of the output of the site, they could do a better job by including reasonable disclaimers on each drawing.
It is not a big ask, and it would not interfere in any way with any of the reasonable uses that are being suggested here.
I suspect there is something of a Chesterton's fence here, dating back to a time when the use of false documents in swindling people were not uncommon. Many comments here are premised on the assumption that the acquirers of such maps should be under no illusion as to their legal status, but that does not necessarily extend to those to whom the acquirers might present these documents. The average HN reader may not be fooled, but they may have elderly relatives who might be.
While I have no reason to believe the person here is in any way abetting any such scheme, a simple disclaimer on the maps themselves might offer a reasonable compromise between disparate concerns.
I've no idea why you're getting downvoted, as your comment is spot-on. Currently going through a permitting process for small modification in my yard, and the town is very explicit about what needs a certified engineer's stamp and what does not need it. It is a very specific requirement and specific thing to produce.
If it does not have the official stamp and signature, it is NOT a certified/stamped/approved drawing. End of story.
Perhaps it works differently in different states, but this has been the routine in every state in which I've lived.
the bottom line is that the presumption is that it is NOT an engineering drawing NOR is it certified, unless the certification/stamp/signature is explicit.
Also, thinking about it a second, the stamp/certification/signature is literally the engineer putting their reputation, license, and career on the line over the accuracy of the drawing. No engineer is going to want that to happen as a default operation — it must be explicit.
> No engineer is going to want that to happen as a default operation — it must be explicit.
I would go so far as to say that it would be unconstitutional (first amendment; free speech) to restrict the act of "making a map" (although restricting the use of an official seal would be fine).
> I think that is asking too much. Absence of certification from a licensed surveyor should be enough.
I don't. As someone who has actually worked in compliance and accreditation, fakes and frauds happen constantly, and regular laypeople have no reasonable way to know whether they're being defrauded over this or not. Web startups that claim to offer "Guaranteed Acceptance" (like his does) without having actually done any of the compliance work to earn that acceptance, are common -- the field is ripe with abuse.
"Absense of certification" is how you end up with food that's poisoned (it didn't promise not to be poisoned) or products that electrocute you (it didn't promise not to zap you) or fake land surveys (it didn't promise not to hold up in court)
You shouldn't have to be an expert in every single field on the entire planet, to not get scammed 24/7/365. It's one major reason why we require licensed professionals in the first place. A regular person might only see a land survey once or twice in their entire life, they can't be expected to know that these random website ones are fakes.
This person is selling drawings he knows are commonly used in place of land surveys, that are fake -- he's not a land surveyor, he's not licensed to sell these. (He could just get licensed, it's not that hard, every other surveyor in my state has done so, there's no cap or limit on licensing of these, it's not difficult to perform them legally).
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His argument is no different than a fellow selling fake Drivers Licenses trying to get out of their consequences by claiming the board wants to "make printing photographs illegal"
> Sometimes it is appropriate to require a license professional to certify something, other times it is not
Sure, but property lines are a pretty clear place where a licensed professional needs to certify it. If you let laypeople do it without knowledge, then property rights start to lose the ability to get enforced fairly.
When you say "that are fake -- he's not a land surveyor, he's not licensed to sell these" it seems to me that the fakeness is based on who is providing them, not on what he's selling. Have I understood your point correctly?
I mean, if he were to obtain the relevant credentials, but did not change a single thing about what he's selling or how they're produced, would that mean the things he's selling are no longer fake?
Yes. A fake doesn't always mean "defective", it can mean a forgery, inauthentic source or unprotected chain. A "fake Rolex" for example, might be a perfectly fine functional watch, but if it's not actually from Rolex, it's a fake. Or A "fake License" can be one where you lied or tricked the government into giving you one (valid document, valid source, inauthentic chain of procedure)
Here, the fake claim isn't the brand name, it's the product itself. He's selling a thing that looks exactly like a land survey, that's being used as if it's a land survey, but actually isn't. His measurements may be right (they probably aren't, this guy is mostly just scraping and reselling Google Maps, including literal screenshots from his browser, I sure hope he's paying the licensing fees to do that legally). But even if his measurements were per-millimeter accurate, it wouldn't change the problem. He's selling things that are intended to be used like land surveys, but aren't.
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If I bought a printer, and I printed off some money, and it's a perfect reproduction (identical size, identical weight, identical materials, identical to any other dollar), is it a fake dollar? If I put on my website that these fake dollars are "not intended to replace real US currency", but don't actually mark that anywhere on the dollars themselves, am I good to go?
If I actually want to be in the "fake money" business ethically (say as a prop for plays and movies, or as a toy for kids), would it not be reasonable to require me to declare it as such? (Like fake money usually does, right on each bill? See https://propmoviemoney.com/collections/full-print-prop-money - 'Motion Picture Use Only' - as an example)
Is any other watch a fake rolex or any photo ID a fake license?
No, because the watches don't claim to be an rolex, even if they tell time and the ID doesn't claim to be legal and state issued.
In this case, unofficial maps are a preexisting good already distinct from a certified land survey.
Governments accept unofficial maps for some uses, and require a certified survey for others. Governments are clear on when one is required but not the other. Governments even provide citizens instructions for how to make their own uncertified maps.
Official land surveys are easily distinguished from unofficial maps by the lack of a surveyors stamp/certification. Governments have experience processing official and unofficial documents, and know to look for the stamp, so the risk of confusion is low.
The site also makes it clear to the purchaser that they are unofficial.
I don't think the presence or absence of a seal will change this. If the fraud already happens constantly and this board is in place, then this would be an argument for replacing them, yes?
It is and it isn't. While not technically required by what you said, it would be trivial for the business to add a small watermark at the bottom of the page, and would add an extra layer of CYA for the business.
It's not reasonable to see the disclaimer on the website and then conclude the opposite is true.
Right in the middle of the landing page, the site also states 'Our Site Plans are Non-Certified (Read More)' in the same list as their selling points. And their explanation of what this means is simple and to the point: https://www.mysiteplan.com/pages/certified-site-plans
Users of the site are very plainly advised. And if they submit those plans to local authorities or whoever, the people who evaluate them are competent to notice whether or not the plans are signed by a licensed surveyor. I'm not sure who you think is at risk of harm here.
the disclaimers must be on the digital and physical documents. not everyone who will ever handle them will know their origin, authenticity, or how to validate them.
Do you think it would be a good idea to make it a legal requirement for (almost) every map produced in the USA to contain a disclaimer? Or perhaps 50 disclaimers because each state might have its own requirements for exactly what needs to be disclaimed? But why stop at maps? Perhaps every kind of document should come with a 100-page booklet of standard disclaimers? That'll stop people from getting confused!
the law may very well be stupid, which is a different discussion.
however, there are plenty of things in civil and structural engineering that carry a huge amount of liability, and do in fact need to be done by a licensed/insured professional. for example, where electrical wiring or sewage pipes are buried. getting a property line wrong, in some cases can be a big problem.
Site/plot plans are not maps...since your remark comes off as arrogantly dismissive of the fundamental difference between explicit dimensioned features and implicit qualitative scale in bad faith.
Everyone who sees them that is expecting certified engineering plans or a surveyor’s plat will know this isn’t that as it won’t have the correct stamp on it. Adding a disclaimer is like writing “this is not a car” on a bicycle.
Your example is a poor one, since no reasonable person could confuse those two items.
A reasonable person could confuse the plans produced by the website and legitimate plans produced by a professional surveyor, though.
More to the point, the author of the website seems to disagree with you, since he already includes a disclaimer on the website. The issue raised is that he does not include that same disclaimer on the plans.
GP's phrasing of 'everyone who will ever handle' the plans is the correct phrasing: those are the people that must be considered. That group includes all people whose work and interests require knowing where property boundaries and physical structures are, now, and in the future.
The professional engineering and survey boards have a duty to the protect the public, and a duty to regulate the practice of land surveying and civil engineering. If someone's behavior interferes with that practice, then they have a legitimate cause to prevent that behavior.
If I work in an office that requires plans to be done by a professional surveyor, it's my job to authenticate submissions I receive. If that requirement doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter. Your argument seems to depend on wholly imaginary future victims.
The disclaimer on the website is so buyers know what they're getting and don't waste money on something that isn't adequate for their legal/planning needs.
Office workers approving applications are not the only people who will see these. Users may include (disgruntled) neighbours, and anyone who will at some point need to know what the measurements on a site are to do their job correctly, legally, and/or safely. The possibility for misinterpretation is clear, and the fix is trivial.
Your interpretation of the disclaimer may be correct, but the phrasing "This is not a Legal Survey, nor is it intended to be or replace a Legal Survey." is excessive for that purpose and makes more sense if it's meant to head off complaints from the engineer's association.
i wonder if you would notice a dollar bill that had slightly different wording on it, or was missing some words. even though you handle cash every day, even if you're a teller at a bank.
The correct analogy is if your job is to handle cheques and someone hands you an IOU lacking any account number or signature that wasn't even addressed to them or their electric bill.
A drawing of your property boundary so you can know where to mow the lawn to or find a plot of acreage granny left you isn't an engineering or legal document and shouldn't be treated as one.
A disclaimer is completely unnecessary on the plans, as official maps by surveyors or engineers have their stamps on them. The absence of those stamps proves it’s not trying to pass as a surveyor’s map.
The guild cannot allow this type of tech to exist and foster lest it become normalized and somehow eventually displace thier exclusivity for certified documents. If I was a surveyor I would want this guy crushed.
> they aren't accepting legal liability and are just a convenience over doing it yourself
This is not a thing when it comes to regulated professional services. A provider doesn't get to choose whether they "accept" liability, or be "just a convenience".
I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I think your interpretation of constitutional law is obviously incorrect.
If someone needs a certified survey from a licensed professionals, they are not offering that service.
If someone want a drawing of their lot in proximity, something that a homeowner could do with a tape measure, or even just guess at, they will do it for you.
I am also not a lawyer, but I think states don't want there to be confusion between "licensed professionals" and people providing a service that could be mistaken for work done by a licensed professional:
There's a difference, in that discussing the law and the implications of it are things we expect people to do constantly and not just by lawyers. For instance, I'm sure a lot of discussions in Wall Street around the contract Musk signed for Twitter were done by non-lawyers.
I do not think that such a disclaimer would help if we were talking about your, djoldman's, plea bargain negotiations.
> The rules to cut hair in NY are harder than the rules to be a computer programmer:
Occupational licensing was a key element in Jim Crow. Why should there be exams and licenses for barbers (who are legally allowed to cut facial hair) or cosmetologists (who are prohibited from cutting facial hair - beards & mustaches)? Because black people might get away with doing the job. And if black people were doing that job, then other black people would never go to a white barber or cosmetologist. Vagrancy (the crime of not having a job) was enforced almost exclusively against only non-white people. Then, they'd be sentenced to work on the chain gang (or other slavery-equivalent) in accordance with the 13th Amendment. Requiring a license (which minorities could never get) made it far easier to punish people for failing to be born white.
Whenever something in America seems to make no sense at all, the key is to think about how a white supremacist would use it to abuse non-white people. One key to understanding the history of racial inequality and civil rights in America would be to imagine that the South actually won the Civil War.
And typically dog food is rated for human consumption anyway, simply so that when a baby eats the dog food and coincidentally gets sick, the dog food manufacturer can avoid expensive legal battles.
You do not get to choose whether you are liable when providing a service or product. You can't just say "Sorry, not liable if this widget blows up." Otherwise, and I know this is a big brain moment: everyone and every corporation would "choose" to not be liable for anything.
If the customer signs a waiver, that's different - but even waivers can't waive all liability. Half the stuff in a waiver isn't even legally effective, it's just there to make you think you can't pursue damages, because they assume you'll read it and go "well shucks, this says..." instead of talking to an attorney.
> You can't just say "Sorry, not liable if this widget blows up."
Clearly you can. Every software license has a disclaimer of liability. It's not like those are there for no reason. No, they are not an absolute shield that's effective in every circumstance, but you can and should have one.
In this case, the work product does not need to be generated by a licensed professional. Informal drawings are useful for a multitude of purposes. If the user of the drawing doesn't need it to be certified, and I can make one on a napkin, why should it be illegal for a third party to draw it on napkin for me.
What is exchanged for the napkin, though? That's generally where courts draw the line between helping out a friend, and providing a service.
If you exchange something, like money, then you may be providing something under an oral contract, even if nothing is signed. And if you introduce a waiver, then you turn that oral contract into a written one.
When you provide what is legally considered to be a service, it comes with legal guarantees. You don't generally get to escape by saying something doesn't count, no matter how upfront about it, that you are. Consumer protections exist, regardless of whether you say they shouldn't apply.
One of the guarantees that probably applies in this situation, especially as it is California which tend to have a few stronger guarantees, is fitness-to-purpose. If there is a service, where an exchange is taking place, there is a guarantee that the product should be considered fit-to-purpose.
> The warranty of fitness for a particular purpose is not limited to sales by a merchant as is the warranty of merchantability. It may be imposed on any seller possessing sufficient skill and judgment to justify the buyer’s reliance. The Code drafters suggest, however, that a nonmerchant seller will only in particular circumstances have that degree of skill and judgment necessary to justify imposing the warranty.” (4 Witkin, Summary of California Law (10th ed. 2005))
The products themselves are unmarked, which means it doesn't matter how upfront that they are with the first customer, because the product is allowed to be resold, and then the limitation on purpose aren't guaranteed to be seen anymore, but it needs to be, if you want to reduce your liability.
As noted in many other places, the very lack of a mark is exactly why these cannot be used in places where they have to be certified. Anyone that accepts it in that case, is in the wrong.
And you do get to escape liability with disclaimers quite well. Just look at every tax reporting agency out there. Massive disclaimers about how you are still liable for any mistakes they may make.
It kinda depends on whether you're charging money and how. I can express legal opinions all day, without being a lawyer. I can write a blog with my legal opinions. I can sit in a room with you and regale you with them.
What I can't do is offer to represent you in a legal case, or imply (with signage, advertising, business cards etc) that I can provide any sort of legal services. And if I took money from you, it would have to be on the understanding that I was just providing entertaining opinions which it would be unwise for you to rely on.
At some point you have to grant that the clients of such a service have some agency and are able to evaluate straightforward disclaimers of liability or fitness.
In that case you are selling the equivalent service (ie rewiring, which is regulated). In this case the service being sold is not the same (approximate versus legally certified maps).
He's not claiming to provide "regulated professional services", in fact quite the opposite. If the California statute or regulation in question says that it is, it's wildly overbroad.
I recently used AcreValue.com to find the rough location of some remote timberland my late mother owned. I've never been there, nor has any other living member of my family. My niece is in the area, and wanted to go out and take a look at it (mainly to make sure no one has set up a meth lab out there or something). The map from AcreValue is perfectly adequate to navigate her to the area.
Now, we would be foolish to use that map in lieu of a professional surveyor if we were planning on building a wall around it or something, but we're not doing that, or anything like it.
I'm guessing from what people are saying that is that the AcreValue site is also illegal under California law.
Edit: I can tell that it's adequate because I also looked at the official county plat map, and can see that the AV map is congruent with the plat map, in respect to the (dirt) roads and geographic features of the surrounding area. I don't (and shouldn't) need to hire a surveyor for this.
But it is perfectly normal to limit liability on the basis of known limitations of the product. And liability will often depend on the client working within certain constraints.
For example you could hire an architect, ask them to do a preliminary sketch, fire them, add an extra floor to the design, and then construct the building based on that design. You cannot expect them to take liability.
>will infringe on Californian's right to simply draw a map of their home or business
Unless I'm missing something these sort of license laws only apply to providing services to other people. So cut your own hair, diasgnos your own illness, build your own kitchen, etc. but do it for someone else, especially for money, and you need a license.
As far as drawing maps goes I don't see it as any less worthy than other things we regulate. Boundaries tend to be important and those doing so for money should probably demonstrate a basic level of competence.
I think licensure has totally gone off the rails. But this doesn't strike me as the best example. Just get the license. Your 2nd paragraph has gone further off.
This really feels like a "spirit of the law" vs "letter of the law" situation - requiring that only a licensed surveyor "depict the location of property lines" seems totally reasonable as to prevent the "location of property lines" from eroding legally, but banning a site loaded with "THIS IS NOT A SURVEY" disclaimers does not.
A discrepancy between requirements from building departments and planning and platting departments is par for the course. Everywhere I have ever lived, the building department will accept an informal description of boundaries to determine whether or not a plan interferes with setback requirements, while a planning department or platting recorder will demand an officially certified survey to determine the actual parcel boundaries.
I think this site's "If your building department DOES NOT require a Surveyor, Engineer, or Architect Stamp our plans are just what you need!" disclaimer is quite spot-on and it is rather frustrating that they are getting targeted.
My own county (Boulder County, CO) offer a county-sponsored GIS service which is not surveyor-approved, with similar disclaimers. My surveyed parcel at my current household differed from their assessment by 5% and at my last household, by 10%. While this is a significant number, for building purposes, it isn't unreasonable - just a few degrees either way in the projection of edges. I think these sites should be allowed to stand with the acceptance that a suit based on the material contained in these sites would be bogus.
It sounds to me like what the law intends to say is that only professionals can actually draw the property lines--a quite reasonable restriction because a mistake can be hidden and expensive. However, it seems to me that what he's doing is simply taking the existing legal documentation and converting it to a 2D printout.
So Zillow should be banned? Informal drawings of property lines are useful and "good enough", and giving a monopoly on that to surveyors would be silly.
I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm saying he's not actually drawing property lines, but rather converting the existing text description into a graphic one. Creating that initial description should be limited to the pros, but it shouldn't take a pro to convert that description into a picture.
Seems pretty clear to me that the site's maps should be generating the warning on them. A downloaded PDF file is only an email away from being consumed by various forms of agents, fence builders, etc. and quickly loosing the disclaimer of the site. If they look legit, no reason why someone might not accidentally overlook when they do something based on the reasonable looking map
Maybe all they need to do is add the disclaimer to the generated maps?
Doesn't matter. Theyre not claiming to be legal property records. If they were, they'd say so, by whom, and what date.
It is a 1fa issue that I can say "This appears to be my property and I'm going to put my gardens in this area around my house".
And, you (royal, not personally) are an idiot if you trust non-authotarative pictures of boundaries for a real legal survey, and then do major things based on that.
There are times when a certification is a good idea, where safety is a concern for example. In these cases it seems it's just salty "engineering" boards that want to hold on to their archaic ways of doing things.
I have a Diploma in Landscape Architecture, but I am not allowed to call myself "Landscape Architect" until I join the "Association of German Landscape Architects" (BDLA) (and pay a monthly fee). I think it is a fairly common concept.
The purpose of these types of regulations are to increase the barrier to entry for the poor, usually immigrants or other minorities. You're right that it's a common concept, but let's not pretend that the primary function is anything about consumer protection.
Not always true. I'm guessing the whole racist barrier entry is just one way to abuse these, but I doubt that's their primary function.
Besides, sometimes it's very useful to have certifications. I'd rather get my brain operated on by someone with lots of credentials.
Still, in most cases it's an incumbent industry barrier, nothing more. For example I don't understand why there's a "cosmetology certification". And don't even get me started on the racket that is a "teacher credential"
There is a big difference between wanting service providers with credentials and laws written by lobbyists that require specific credentials offered by a monopoly. Even if such laws/certifications are not corrupt from the start the industry has every incentive to corrupt it and it's just a matter of time.
Kosher food is a great example of private certification.
The title of this post is too mild - it's not just the $1000 fine but the fact that they are asking for the shutdown of his business, one that he has run for many years.
It's ridiculously broad legally and needs to be struck down.
> Crownholm, who is the founder of MySitePlan.com, a website that allows people to purchase informal maps for their property drawn from preexisting information and images, was issued a citation from the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists, who claimed that Crownholm and the site were illegally practicing land surveying without a license.
If the maps are marketed as "informal", how do they have a valid case against him? This carries the stench of abusive protectionist harassment, leveraging massive Board resources against an individual.
you are overlooking the motives of a power-tripping California Board for Professional Engineers member, is what you are overlooking. those people (power-tripping people) do not make decisions based on intelligence or good judgement; they have the power to enforce a rule and they are going to enforce it no matter what the consequences are.
if you think this is not possible or is unlikely, I recommend you work in a small office somewhere for a year. even the slightest hint of an idea that a person has power over you will often make that person absolutely drunk with power.
what this Engineering organization is trying to do was tried a few years ago by some other Engineer organization somewhere and the engineer organization in question said something to the effect of "only engineers are allowed to do this, and we say who gets to call themselves engineers" and they lost quite resoundingly. it was wonderful, truly.
in that state and that field, neither of which I can remember now (getting old) anyone can say they are an engineer and be hired to do the work that this organization for engineers controlled for so long. they got a big head, they squeezed the wrong person, and they lost it all in court. they no longer are able to control who can call themselves an engineer; the state redefined it as "one who practices engineering" or something like that.
Maybe you're thinking of Mats Järlström who challenged red light cameras in Oregon based on simple math, stated he was an "engineer" but never held himself out as a "Professional Engineer", and was legally harassed by the Oregon board?
I mean, for what it's worth, when software engineers meet the standards of quality of other engineers, then let's talk about whether the title is appropriate or not. Right now anyone can call themselves a software engineer and deploy code that can literally kill people (hello Tesla "self" "driving" software "engineers" in the audience) with very little liability whatsoever.
I wasn't aware that Tesla or the other self driving car companies opened their platforms and let anyone deploy code to their entire fleet (or even personally owned vehicles).
The existing bar for requiring occupational licensing is way to low and abused by rent seeking cartels. (Eg funeral planners, cosmetology industry, unarmed security guards, animal trainers, etc etc...)
Is there really overwhelming societal benefit for establishing licensing for software engineers? Are we not already paying enough for the role in general?
Compare the number of people killed by other engineers and the number killed by software engineers. Even on a daily basis. Software Engineers are the only true professionals here. When they cannot make something that won't kill someone, they simply don't. Meanwhile, all other engineering disciplines accept a fairly high risk of killing.
Why is there such a bullshit troll-level cliche that software engineers are not real engineers?
I can look at most mechanical design, and find multiple flaws. I can look at a car and see fatal flaws. Do the mechanical engineers at Tesla have different individual legal liability from software engineers for design flaws? All Engineers make safety compromises all the time.
Sure, some software is shit, but plenty of software is also solidly engineered. Plenty of other engineers do shit work too - we generally only hear about the most egregious failures.
From what I see, other engineers now depend on the software models they use. CAD, structural, circuit design, everything. Get over it.
I think the definition of engineering is making good compromises. It isn’t about safety. Plenty of other disciplines work without liability producing shonky outputs. Safety is just another compromise.
A federal court disagree with you:
“Courts have long recognized that the term ‘engineer’ has a generic meaning separate from ‘professional engineer,’” the court reasoned, and the word engineer “cannot become inherently misleading simply because a state deems it so.”
“In a free society, government agencies do not have the authority to rewrite the dictionary. Oregon cannot declare the word ‘engineer’ off-limits to the thousands of Oregonians who, like Mats, are engineers.”
Etymology:
mid-14c., enginour, "constructor of military engines," from Old French engigneor "engineer, architect, maker of war-engines; schemer" (12c.), from Late Latin ingeniare (see engine); general sense of "inventor, designer" is recorded from early 15c.; civil sense, in reference to public works, is recorded from c. 1600 but not the common meaning of the word until 19c (hence lingering distinction as civil engineer). Meaning "locomotive driver" is first attested 1832, American English.
Disclaimer: I have an Electrical & Electronic Engineering Degree.
Edit: oh, and the certification of engineers becomes somewhat irrelevant when they are from outside your jurisdiction. Most imported goods and services contain engineering decisions where liability is dealt with through other legal means than certification. Certification matters in only a few engineering disciplines. In Christchurch where I live, a building collapsed in the 2010 Earthquake, and the civil engineer hasn’t had any formal penalties. He also designed some fibreglass roofs for sewage treatment plant, and the roofs caught fire a few years back and that has caused a heap of trouble! https://www.engineeringnz.org/news-insights/ctv-alan-reay-co... As a generalisation NZ is not a very litigious society, and less punishment focused than say the US which has 4x the incarceration rate (people in prison).
So fine those people or arrest them if you can prove something. Would they be better engineers if they did the same thing but paid a mandatory yearly membership fee to some board?
Why should they need a disclaimer? In most cases it is the presence or absence of a certification that matters. Building plans need to specify approval by a professional engineer. Similarly, medical device designs need tractability to an approving engineer.
Alternatively, I have countless diagrams around my house on paper and napkins, do I need to put a disclaimer on each one?
> Similarly, medical device designs need tractability to an approving engineer.
You got a cite for that? medical devices I think would fall in the the category where 'trust me I'm a professional engineer' doesn't even begin to cut it.
does Zillow? does Google Maps? do the maps created by homeowners themselves with the help of the state of California have this disclaimer? no. none of them do.
this is a power-tripping moron not liking this particular guy for some reason and deciding to be being an ass.
Laughable because LA City's system, Zimas, has property lines so poorly drawn over their satellite / aerial imagery. It is some simple alignment issue that puts your property line in your neighbors driveway, or your neighbors easement fully on their property. The sad thing is, this translates into surveys. Now my neighbors and I have completely nonsensical stamps in the ground that we have to figure out how to correct.
Sad thing is, it lines up in their 2001 imagery, but 2017 is off by a few feet.
> The sad thing is, this translates into surveys. Now my neighbors and I have completely nonsensical stamps in the ground that we have to figure out how to correct.
Are these "stamps in the grounds" actual survey pegs placed by licenced surveyors working from the official Lands & survey database after having triangulated from previously placed officvial survey pegs?
Misalignment of geomosaiced air photo images | poor rectification is one thing (and not altogether uncommon) but that's a world away from ground based triangulated surveying backed by dual GPS against ground station modern survey techniques (which extend from a time before air photo surveys became common).
Ex-land surveyor here. They're called corner monuments or property corners. However, in residential areas they are usually not concrete monuments but rather a piece of iron rebar: https://www.cardinalsurveying.com/property-corner-markers/
I'm familiar with monuments | pegs, I'm hoping the commenter clarifies their statement about "stamps" on their property.
I'm not clear whether their complaint is entirely about airphotos and GIS lines not being rectified (annoying but not critical) or if they're actually claiming that visual misalignment of two seperate data sets has caused monuments to have been incorrectly placed.
Here (W.Australia) that wouldn't happen.
FWiW many years back I contributed code to software in this field
I believe they are official ones. Little metal circles pinned into the cement. Survey was done by the previous owners. They line up with the ortho imagery and not with the logical property lines (what the entire street and every property on it are aligned to).
The ortho imagery has the front of the properties too far back on one side of the street and too far forward on the other, so it is not a single property line issue. The data set [1] used has tolerances listed but it is frustrating that it translates to a survey.
The metal circles you describe are likely the official survey points and likely marked well after WGS84 World Geodectic datum | universal GPS coords .. in a neighbourhood that may have been first marked out sometime before (?)
(Perhaps the 70s | 60s | 50s ? - I'm from Australia and not overly familiar with time + architectural style from air photos in your area).
The photo image accuracy in your first link is quoted as:
* 1.35 feet at 95% confidence interval
* 3.63 ft at 95% confidence
for two seperate products .. you can read that as most displacements (of pixels (say a footpath corner)) should be less than either 1.5 or 2.5 feet (depending on product) but you should recall that some parts of a larger mosaic will have areas with larger errors and other parts will be damn near spot on.
If the "modern" GPS era monuments | pegs | nailed discs in concrete don't precisely align with the (I assume) pre GPS era road edges, foot paths, easements, etc then that can be put down to initial developer first survey doing a job that was "good enough for the 70s" (or the era of the time).
These days many land councils focus on the "total gestalt" of a series of co developed blocks - are the individual block all of the correct dimensions and areas .. (even if shifted by a foot or two from the "expected") ?
This is an extremely common issue that arose right around the globe as GPS became the global standard and many (many many) previously seperate datums and local area grids were tied together in single unified system.
Sounds like the people who built the neighborhood may have screwed up? Otherwise it's common for things like driveway replacements to accidentally (or purposefully) overextend when the real property lines are forgotten.
The "lines on the (digital) maps" are generally sourced from official public records and have the correct GPS (or local grid) coords.
The images themselves originate from digital capture behind lenses and are subject to subtle stretching and distortion in addition to positional errors in camera position.
It's common to see major visual parts of any "corrected" frame line up exactly with ground reference coords but other parts of the same frame to off by a few metres due to rough and ready "mostly linear" correction that doesn't account well for the digital terrain model the image must draped across (in addition to lens corrections).
Point being - while digital maps can often have alignment errors twixt image pixels and GIS vectors the actual on the ground land surveying by professionals is done using high grade GPS units in addition to truthing from existing monuments using triangulation.
Staking pegs based on looking at a digital map isn't something a professional would normally do as they'd be aware of the various errors (and others) I raised.
I would like to see these challenges happen more often
I think there is a fundamental limitation in US society that the only people that can challenge laws are the people that are damaged by them. You can't just look at the law in passing and take these exact obvious arguments to court because you have a little free time and money. You need free time, money, and a whole government agency coming after you trying to take all of your free time and money! What kind of power dynamic is that!?
We need a more comprehensive check and balance to get these laws in front of courts way earlier than that. I have some ideas if anyone is interested.
I'm a little interested, if you want to share a follow-up comment, but I had an idea of my own that I wanted to share too.
My vague understanding is that in international law, there is a mechanism by which, in theory, a nation can take up the grievance of an individual citizen and elevate that issue into a case that the nation itself has an interest in, which is then subject to the international legal processes that exists between nations.
Applying this principle within a nation, would mean that individual sub-national units (i.e. states, in the case of the US) would have standing to bring cases against other states or the federal government to the Supreme Court on behalf of individual citizens, even those resident in other states (presumably with the check and balance that the state legislature or executive bringing the case has to agree that the citizen's grievance was worth wasting their own state's tax payers' money to fight).
Of course this could lead to a tidal wave of unnecessary culture-war lawsuits being filed, as blue states and red states tried to undermine each other's laws, but I think that objection is somewhat misdirected. The real problem would be either that courts are understaffed / underfunded, or that it's somehow good that only the richest people with the most time on their hands can afford to challenge unconstitutional laws. Neither of those are really good reasons for disallowing the mechanism that I'm suggesting.
That could be an okay stop-gap solution if consensus couldn't be reached on new laws, since conflicts between states have original jurisdiction with the Supreme Court.
A concept that I heard about in at least one other country is that Governors and Presidents have an additional option when the legislature passes a bill to their desk. Instead of "sign" or "veto", there is at least an additional option of punting it directly to the constitutional court.
(Another tweak is that the constitutional court is not simultaneously an appellate court.)
and then of course is what I observed about who can have standing to bring something to the courts at all. I think one shouldn't need to be harmed already to bring a case to review.
it seems to me that the real problem here is that the "california board for professional engineers, land surveyors, and geologists" has any power at all to issue fines to non-members. professional organizations should govern their own members, but not random other people.
if california wants to make a law that you have to have a site survey done by a member of that organization, that's one thing. but for the board to be able to issue fines to people who aren't professional surveyors seems like a gross overreach.
Typically, these associations and boards are private and should not have power beyond their membership. However, this particular "Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists" of California is part of the government, which unfortunately has power.
It's not unusual for states to have legislation to restrict the definition and practice of "Professional Engineer's" (capital P, capital E) and other "Professions" such as Doctors, etc. However, that does not mean you cannot call yourself an "engineer" (lowercase E) because you write software or drive model trains. The issue in this case is that the article is quite correct (IANAL, but this is still my legal opinion - lower case O - to which I am allowed) the definition of Land Surveying Defined is wayWAY overbroad and that's the understatement of the year.
8726 (a)(2) Determines the configuration or contour of the earth’s surface, or the position of fixed objects above, on, or below the surface of the earth by applying the principles of mathematics or photogrammetry.
So if you perform or offer to perform a service (publicly or privately) of locating fixed things using math or pictures you are performing Land Surveying.
HAHAHHAHAHAA Bullshit. I hope he has enough resources to trounce this bad law. He'll win if he can pay to fight it.
"Determines the configuration or contour of the earth’s surface, or the position of fixed objects above, on, or below the surface of the earth by applying the principles of mathematics or photogrammetry." lol yeah.
Also notice that this 2022 version of the act seems to have the sole purpose of rearranging bullets and changing gender pronouns. What a great use of legislative time in California!
How is this not public information, available to everyone on the Internet?
I'm baffled why anyone would even need to pay for this, much less why someone would be fined for selling this information. In my country, you go to a web site with a map (with dozens of switchable layers), which has pretty much everything: property lines, infrastructure, etc.
We have that in many places in the US as well. My county has an official GIS site that works great. I did need to get a survey to confirm for sure where the property line fell, but for most things it's really helpful.
Crazy. Here in the UK most properties have boundaries you can also find out who owns it for a nominal fee. (For unregistered land it's not that you can't have the data for free, it's that the data doesn't really exist)
Presumably the government is the arbitrator of who owns the land, surely in the US that makes it public domain?
(That said in the UK I get the feeling it's only free [0] because it came from an EU Directive)
> Making it illegal to get an informal survey of land sounds insane.
It's not illegal to get an informal survey of land. It's illegal to pass a fake one off as legal, which is what is commonly happening with his "drawings".
"Taking a picture of yourself" and "writing your name and address on it" are legal, but if you open a Fake Drivers License business, you should expect to get hassled about it. A tiny line of text reading "this is not a real license and should not be used as one" shouldn't absolve you of all responsibility for your product.
That's not what is happening at all. A card with your name, address, and picture on it but absolutely none of the official things that make it a license is not a license, and there is nothing illegal about making them. I have quite a few ID cards from various private organizations - no issue. If the guy were placing a "decorative but in no way meant to be real" stamp on his surveys, that would be one thing, but without any stamp at all it's as clearly unofficial as any other piece of paper.
Oh my. I was about to commit the same crime myself.
We had an ADU built on the property a few years ago. Google Maps and OSM don't show it, only the main house. Even worse, there is some confusion about the street address.
We are on the corner of Foobar Road and Barfoo Avenue. The original address was on one of those streets, but a previous owner changed it from that one to the other. Some utilities think we are on Foobar, others on Barfoo.
I was going to contact those utilities, the various online maps, and the city building office to try to get all this straightened out.
But legal trouble is the last thing I need right now.
I guess I should just leave everything in its current incorrect and confusing state.
Were you going to provide these services or products on the open market, where people could reasonably interpret your products and services as legally valid for their own purposes?
The law here is clearly overly vague and needs clarifying, but so too does the source of data on published maps.
A map to be shared, particularly for any legal or regulatory purpose, should include a note stating the source(s) of the data depicted.
The source could be a surveyor, or it could be Google Maps, or a particular GIS database, or whatever, but provided the data source is clearly stated, then potentially damaging ambiguity is minimized, and a clear paper trail as to accuracy and reliability is established.
I think the problem is that he's selling the maps as a service. A homeowner doing it for themself is different from hiring a professional service to do it.
Correct, and there is no problem in any way with what he is doing. He's providing a map - not a formal engineering survey - derived from existing data sources.
It would be reasonable to require that his disclaimers appear on the maps themselves, and not just the website. But that's about the limit of what would be reasonable.
Disagree -- the existing disclaimers are, IMO, more sufficient than any ToS one sees on typical digital services or digital-derived products.
If the Engineering Board (EB) wants to require formal stamps for their engineer's outputs, they should define that. They don't have the authority to regulate lumber, meat, the thickness of paper, or other markets. This market is separate from their standard market for engineering marks -- this is the market for approximate views from derived data with no legal standing for Engineering work. The EB wants to make that an established guild only. No consideration is needed IMO.
Commercial speech is speech, and ought to have first amendment protection. The regulation should be structured in terms of requiring licensed surveys for specific uses (eg, mortgage underwriting), not making unlicensed line-drawing illegal.
Colloquially, it means "I get paid money to do this thing."
Legally, it means "I am an accredited member of a guild that restricts access to my trade" - think doctors, lawyers, etc. If there's a board/bar type association that gives you permission to make your money, then you're a professional (legally speaking).
The problem in this case is that there are relevant professionals (surveyors/engineers) who are trying to protect their monopoly on…drawing lines on maps.
He shouldn't have let himself be quoted as a "professional tracing company." That's a load-bearing word in this context.
Professional ONLY means you take money for a good or service. There is no assumption to the quality of service or good.
The other term is "amateur". That is not related to profit or renumeration.
Amateur does not mean unskilled. Amateur radio is full of highly skilled and expert people.... Who are forbidden from taking renumeration for radio services.
You can read the Wikipedia pages on professional and profession if you don't trust my memory. (One of my general ed classes was on the history of professions.)
The word "professional," as used by bodies like The California Board of Professional Engineers, strictly means someone who is board-certified to practice that profession. (There are a bunch of requirements to get that certification and become a professional, but the specifics aren't important here.) It has nothing to do with whether or not someone accepted money and everything to do with acquiring and maintaining the credentials legally required to enter a regulated line of work.
> The word "professional," as used by bodies like The California Board of Professional Engineers
How a body uses it isn't relevant, though. If I set up a body called The California Board of Jean Wearers and define "Jean Wearers" as people who wear Levi's, other brands are not obliged to rename their product.
Well, perhaps they would be in California. But that would be the same level of silly as this.
"Profession" and "professional" have precise legal meanings, which roughly equate to "the government gave us a monopoly on gatekeeping who is allowed to advertise themselves as one of us." That's the true meaning of those words. They've colloquially drifted over the years (through the use of phrases like "professional sports") to have a second meaning "people who get paid to do a thing."
The California Board of Professional Engineers is a professional board in the traditional sense of the word. The government gives that group the authority to decide who can be a Professional Engineer, including apparently who can say where the boundaries of a plot of land are.
There's a collision of definitions here. Since the whole case is on whether or not the professionals (in the first sense) can keep this guy from practicing, it's ill-advised for him to use the term "professional" in the second sense.
You can try to start the California Board of Jean Wearers if you want to. IDK if there are restrictions on who can call themselves a "board," but w/e. You certainly won't have a .ca.gov website (like the Board of Professional Engineers has), and you most certainly won't receive a monopoly from the government to define who can call themselves a jeans wearer (which the Board of Professional Engineers has).
Sounds like a jumped up petty bureaucrat decided to flex their muscles, and have now landed their department in a world of pain. When will these people learn?
The real question is how is this a legitimate business? Literally just providing GIS data that is publically available for a fee? BRB quitting my job to make money doing nothing and separating idiots from their money.
Basically, all agencies that are authorized by the legislature are set to automatically be abolished in (usually) 12 years. Once the expiration date is near, the Sunset Commission reviews the agency and recommends whether to reauthorize it, in which case the legislature must pass a law to reauthorize, but the "default" is that the agency expires.
This really helps fight the natural tendency of lots of these professional agencies to grow to protect their own power, regardless of their original purpose. And even if agencies are normally always renewed, the review process itself is really useful to, when necessary, smack these agencies upside the head to get them back to their original goal. One example I'm familiar with, a couple years ago the Sunset Commission basically tore the Texas Veterinary Board a new one after they decided to go after animal shelter vets for trying to save animals with extremely limited resources, https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/One-third-of... - actual report at https://www.sunset.texas.gov/public/uploads/files/reports/St...