Being Unreasonable

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I think we've gotten a little sidetracked here with issues of police powers, when that really is not the issue that I was trying to discus. I feel inclined to point out however, that a policeman is more than capable of using his position to enforce standards of behavior not explicitly covered by the law, without breaking it himself. Taking the example of the tow driver, it would have been very easy for the deputy in question to inform the driver that yes he legally could charge the woman not to tow her car, but if he did so in the future the police would single him out and enforce the law to it's full extent on him every time they saw his truck. There are thousands of oddball laws on the books that are usually not enforced, I was told in driver's ed of someone who was rude to the police and was issued 32 citations for such things as under inflated tires and improperly adjusted mirrors, everyone is always breaking some law or another. The police already do this to people who piss them off, I'm simply asking that they at least use this discretion in a positive way.

I would also like to mention that I happen to know a little bit about the roving tow business, and that it's a very ugly way to earn a living. Typically, the tow company has contracts with various parking lot owners and the city to impound cars, and the drivers "rove" around waiting for calls to come in, as well as cruising by the contracted properties looking for cars to tow. The usual arrangement is that the tow driver splits any impound fees 50% with the tow company, so they have a huge incentive to tow as many cars as possible. I view it as a parasitic industry, it doesn't create any value, it basically ransoms people's property back to them. In the example article, the tow driver was so fixated on his commission that he put aside any human decency he might have possessed, so I have no sympathy for him. I hope the negative publicity from this has hurt him personally, as well as his employer.

Moving on, I've recently been reading a book about the Enron debacle, and it's struck many a chord with what I think is wrong with people's attitudes lately. Without going into too much detail, the root problem at Enron was perverse incentives, people were being rewarded for doing the wrong thing and punished for doing the right. For example, executives were given bonuses based on the size of the deals they pushed through, whether or not the deals were any good or not. I'm sure you can see where this is going... Billions invested in 3rd world projects that made no business sense, because the exec that pushed the deal through got a fat bonus, who cares if the company takes it in the shorts... That's the kind of attitude that drives me wild, whether it occurs in the corporate setting, or in more day to day encounters.

I do not admire the implied absolute authority of either the cops or tow truck drivers and appreciate that both would moderate their legal rights in the light of decent civil behavior. But in defense, at least to a degree, of the police, it should be mentioned that they are the absolute interface between the citizens and the law and in many cases the law can seem extremely unjust to a citizen who violates it. The police, even if they are very decent human beings, and I assume most are, are in a very difficult psychological position. Probably they are under pressure to issue a certain number of tickets or make a certain number of arrests to conform to their job specifications. When confronted by a citizen who may even legally object to police treatment the cops have no problems inventing legal reasons to subdue the citizen, even using extreme force that may be totally unnecessary. If a cop permits an objector to successfully resist police demands it sets a president for further weakening of police power and the police usually are very intolerant of that. That's just the nature of the business and I see not much help in mitigating it without superior surveillance of a bad situation which citizens can manage with hand held and cell phone cameras but do not expect the police to be happy about that.

The law exists to protect us. Its officers are there to uphold it.. ie to protect us. When the law cannot do that, the law has failed, and so have its representatives.

As an example of a singular area....Early release for rapists and murderers is technically legal, but is releasing over 300 of these people into society from UK prisons since 97 upholding the law or protecting the people? (Considering many have served less than a decade, I think not.) Is it even good justice? Nope.. but it is all legal and above board.

What is legal and what is right are not always the same thing.

...

Yeah, kind of like being a repo-guy? One of our friends had that position and I've noticed that you almost have to be the kind of person who likes getting into trouble a bit to actually stay with that for any amount of time. He had some pretty wild stories about it and yeah, it sounds almost like being paid to loan-shark for the banks.

I think it is kind of telling in the sense that it takes all kinds to make the world go 'round.

^

I would consider being a repo-man to be more ethical than being a meter maid or a roving tow driver, at least the repo-man is stealing back what is in essence stolen property. The other two are enforcing an often arbitrary and unreasonable penalty on people for making small mistakes that they are likely unaware that they are even making.

Correct. I think out this way we just don't have a lot of that, ie. meter maid and parking enforcement people. Maybe a little bit in downtown Cleveland, when I was in college though I always got a parking pass just because all the meters were strictly 2 hour feed and I didn't want to have to keep running downstairs and through the snow half the time just to get a few more quarters in.

But yeah, I certainly don't see repo work as unethical either. Being a meter maid is rather directly being a tax-collector for the city and doing it by picking at people over small matters. I don't think I could do that or be a telemarketer but, I also understand that there are people out there that desperate to make a living so its a hard call.