Most mornings, as I begin my drive to the office, I turn to wave goodbye to my wife and two smiling cherubs, a wave punctuated by a few honks of the horn. A harmless way to start my day — or so I thought.
I just found out that it is illegal to use a car horn for such frivolity, in Ohio anyway. According to The Columbus Dispatch, “Ohio law says that horns are to be used only to avoid danger, although police normally don’t cite friendly beeps or the occasional frustrated fist to the wheel.” Who knew this law existed? Or that it extends to private property, nonetheless?
While it is magnanimous that police rarely enforce this law, the law still exists, punishable by a $120 fine — as one local woman recently discovered.
Having a full deck of little-known laws gives government an upper hand — providing government with an arbitrary and capricious means to punish those whose actions annoy and offend its petty officials.
In addition, the reality that the state can trump reasonable, harmless actions with little-known laws adds uncertainty to our plans. So instead of investing and facing the whims of government, consuming current capital may become the rational course of action.
An arbitrary and capricious state is a hallmark of the developing (nondeveloping?) world. Is it our fate also?
When you meet me, know you are meeting a criminal — a criminal who plans to continue his unlawful ways. It’s the only right thing to do. The state and its petty officials be damned.
Note: In Ohio, it’s also illegal to blow a whistle while riding a bicycle. I plan to do just that as soon as the weather warms. Meaningless disobedience to stoke the internal fires for liberty.
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I actually hope the arrogant public officials that create silly laws like this try to enforce them more often. It can only result in waking up the sheeple to what our country is becoming.
The economic collapse is baked into the cake. Our only hope is that Americans will learn the appropriate lesson from this debacle: that the government is nothing but a destructive criminal syndicate.
It was Hayek in the Road to Serfdom warning of the dangers of frivolous laws that create disrespect and distrust and ultimately, disgust and despair by citizens.
The US is not an exception to this by any stretch of the imagination.
fedako:
guilty of lèse-majesté. better hope that’s not on the books.
It was back in the mid 70s that I met a man who claimed that the best way to get rid of bad laws was to enforce them rigorously. It is because they are enforced only against the fringe members of our society that they are tolerated.
Looking through the local police “In Custody” list occasionally shows a wayward 17-year old being charged with a long line of petty offenses like cussing. I think it is probably done in coordination with parents in an attempt to make them “scared straight”.
I have no idea how effective this is.
I hate honks.
“Looking through the local police “In Custody” list occasionally shows a wayward 17-year old being charged with a long line of petty offenses like cussing. I think it is probably done in coordination with parents in an attempt to make them “scared straight”.
I have no idea how effective this is.”
Gee, my parents are so frivolous they call the cops when I say “dickcheese”. I wonder what they’ll do when I rob a liquor store? Teeheehee…
Steve Hogan wrote:
“The economic collapse is baked into the cake. Our only hope is that Americans will learn the appropriate lesson from this debacle: that the government is nothing but a destructive criminal syndicate.”
Steve, come on, didn’t you know that the economic depression we’re experiencing is all the fault of greedy businessmen, and only altruistic statesmen like Barack Obama can save us? It must be true; after all, I keep hearing it on TV and reading it in the newspapers.
I have resided in Ohio. The frequency of car horn use (“how dare a person take more than .1 second to respond to an intersection light change!”; “I am going to wake up everyone in the neighborhood at 4:30am because I am to pick up a co-worker and one second after my arrival he isn’t walking toward my car! I am not physically impaired, but am too lethargic to knock on his door!”) was personally unbearable and diminished my professional productivity – if this was my experience, then also possibly it was, and in continuation is, the experience of many other persons.
The government may be doing what a private governing system would do if the roads were privately owned – enforce civility.
Your blog position isn’t precisely an argument for capitalism, as it would be if it argued that private management can more effectively minimize the disturbance and maximize peace of mind, but rather it is an argument for acoustic anarchy.
The described phenomenon and the issue it engenders (residential fury) requires appeasement regardless of road ownership and management.
Best Wishes,
Classical Thinker
The frivolous horn use I detest is the the local automobile service center that uses a *-beep-beep-* in it’s radio advertising…(you know the one.) Sometimes it occurs three or four times in the spot.
Very distracting to hear while driving.
Now THAT ought to be illegal. Kind of like yelling FIRE in a crowded theater.
How Close Are We To Becoming Totalitarian?
In our collapsing society there are two parallel criminal operations. One knows its criminal and uses the underground to strengthen its fire power. The other is ignorant of what it means to uphold and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. It operates according to the disutility of labor so it does not want to go head to head with the other well-armed criminal operation. Instead it will go after the unarmed, unprotected common citizen. To them there is no reason not to. Ignorance of the Constitution has caused them to morph into the domestic enemy. When it links with the hierarchy of violators of the Constitution our society will have become totalitarian.
I can one up this one: in Nashville it is illegal to warm your car up in the morning.
http://www.wsmv.com/news/10905357/detail.html
So your the guy that wakes me up every morning.
Your punishment: being tied to a chair and made to
listen to Keynes’ General Theory read aloud by Ben Stein until you have gone incurably insane.
I have to agree with Classical Thinker on this. Just because the government creates a law doesn’t mean it wouldn’t exist due to private organizations. A perfect example being drivers licenses and auto insurance. It is likely that owners of private roads would require both, as well as stop signs and a ban on graffiti. I’ve heard of anarchists/libertarians arguing against all these things.
One thing I wish they would outlaw and put big fines on are loud motorcycles. I used to own some property in upstate NY and there were lots of idiots who would disable their mufflers to produce ear shattering levels of noise to echo down the valley. You could literally here these motorcycles miles away.
I have had my car almost seven years now. I don’t think I have used the horn once. I remember sitting out an entire light cycle because the guy in front of me didn’t see the green left turn signal. My eldest asked my if I was demented for not honking the horn.
Of course, I agree with the gist of Mr. Fedako’s piece, but I sure as heck prefer horns only be used for emergencies, such as when a beautiful woman walks by and you have no other way of effectively expressing your admiration.
Classical Thinker –
I disagree:
1. It is a liberty issue. The law is silent on decibels. No aggression needs to occur. In a libertarian world, your fury has no legal standing unless you were aggressed. I am guilty for the action alone, which is true whether I lay on the horn in your neighborhood or give a slight toot where no one else is found. The whistle on a bike is another good example. Blow a whistle while riding in Ohio, no matter the time/place, and you broke Ohio law.
2. It is a free market issue. I was employed by the US Peace Corps in Jamaica. It was easy to see (on the surface) that there are many ways to profit through investment on the island. But, and this is big, there is no way to guarantee that you will not violate some regulation or law. And since the police and bureaucracy “enforce” regulations and laws in an arbitrary and capricious manner, a business plan would need to include a large percentage for bribes, fines, etc. The amount, of course, would not be known. So there was no way that I would ever invest there — which explains why so little foreign investment occurs there (outside of that which is protected by US influence, bauxite as an example). This is the reason why Haiti is such a mess. If laws are known and applied consistently, entrepreneurs can add them to their business plan. But when laws are hidden and arbitrary and capricious, why invest at all.
I agree:
1. I am no market utopian. It could be that private roads would be plowed less than government roads due to market preferences. But the total service that I voluntarily purchase will be more efficient than what government supplies. It may be that I would rather save a few bucks and be inconvenienced during the occasional Ohio snowstorm.
“While it is magnanimous that police rarely enforce this law, the law still exists, punishable by a $120 fine — as one local woman recently discovered.”
if true, that seems steep and something on the books that probobly shouldnt be there.
if you pulled into a culdesac at 5am to pick someone up and honked your horn to alert and woke other people up….i can see where that would be a noise nuisance. horns can distract people from driving.
someone told me once in the state where i was born that a law existed that nothing or noone could delay a legislator from getting to session…one such legislator tried to use to the law to get out a of a speeding ticket. i dont know if it was succesful.
i think sirens are distracting.
More proof, as if any were needed, that “a nation of laws” is an unsupportable.
Since statute laws require interpretation in order to be applicable to the real world, human society is always going to be ruled by people. The least we can do is realize this and abolish statute laws entirely.
In New Zealand, I *think* it may be illegal to use horns, except in case of an emergency, in between certain hours (maybe 10pm-5am or something). Some sort of hour restriction isn’t a bad idea – I certainly don’t want to be woken up at 3am in the morning by some muppet honking their horn…
Then again, I’ve never heard of it being enforced.
Mr. Fedako,
has it crossed your mind that perhaps your horn may be annoying to your neighbors?
Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins.
Having a few stupid laws on the books can be very helpfull.
Years ago in BC, you were required to have proof that your car radio met the approval of some obscure gov’t dept. The proof was the sticker on the back of the radio. To see the sticker you had to pull the radio out.
If anyone was being a dick to the RCMP, they would demand proof of compliance. You could either pull the radio out of the dash or pay the fine.
It usually settled the morons down. And the Mounties had a great laugh in the bar afterwards.
Curious -
As I noted above: 1. It is a liberty issue. The law is silent on decibels. No aggression needs to occur. In a libertarian world, your [annoyance] has no legal standing unless you were aggressed. (I changed the quote to fit your response.)
There are many things that my various neighbors do which annoy me. Are you advocating for laws to protect me from all of these minor annoyances?
As far as: “Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins.” Such clear demarcations of rights exist only in a utopia. Court and/or arbitrators will always be needed.
But, again, this is not an issue of aggression. You break the law by beaping the horn, not by an act of aggression.
(note: Keep in mind that I am talking about little toots that are less noisy than banging garbage cans and lawn mowers. Trust me, no one cares. But that really is not the issue here.)
If anyone was being a dick to the RCMP, You could either pull the radio out of the dash or pay the fine.
It usually settled the morons down. And the Mounties had a great laugh in the bar afterwards…
having the police get their comuppance isnt being a dick
i would have wired my car to have a horse rattling whistle begin after the radio was pulled….only mistake at birth would laugh at such a thing.
There are many things that my various neighbors do which annoy me. Are you advocating for laws to protect me from all of these minor annoyances?
“As far as: “Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins.” Such clear demarcations of rights exist only in a utopia. Court and/or arbitrators will always be needed.
But, again, this is not an issue of aggression. You break the law by beaping the horn, not by an act of aggression.”
yeah…people fart in elevators. i find that annoying, the rcmp probably like it. horn or annoyances would likley have to be arbitrated. if the annoyance was repetitive of could be shown to affect health of others etc. probably not that difficult.
some careers are better than others. while the rcmp
make sure the top 40 is the real top 40 – south of the border…..
Dan Burton, II (18), son of Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), was busted in January of
1994 on charges of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Allegedly, Burton II
was transporting seven pounds of marijuana in a car from Texas to Indiana when he was
caught in Louisiana. Burton II plead guilty to felony charges of possession of marijuana
with intent to distribute. Rather than face ten to sixteen months in federal prison, Burton
was sentenced to five years probation, 2000 hours of community service, three years of
house arrest and random drug screening. Five month later police found 30 marijuana
plants and a shotgun in Burton’s apartment in Indianapolis. Under federal mandatory
minimum rules, Burton should have received at least five years in federal prison, plus a
year or more for arrest while on probation. State prosecutors decided that the total weight of marijuana from the 30 plants was 25 grams (about one ounce), thus reducing the
charge to a misdemeanor. The Indiana prosecutor threw out all the charges against him
saying, “I didn’t see any sense in putting him on probation a second time.”
http://norml.org/pdf_files/NORML_politicians_childrens_arrests.pdf
if the norml article is true, they may lie as bad a marines and abaies and incuabtors stories…i will laugh at the death of the rcmp and the bozos in blue who continue to do their ‘jobs’ while shit like this happens.
Sometimes it can be amazing what local governments (state-level and smaller) can get away with. The federal government draws the most attention for obvious reasons, but its sheer size lets people get away with bogus arguments using abstract and hypothetical terms.
It’d be nice to have more posts here and there about local, particularly city, governments: How do they work on a day-to-day basis? What principles do they seem to be following? Even though city governments are less scrutinized, their decisions can have large negative ramifications, as we saw with the housing boom/bust, which, as Sowell recently argued, was a local phenomenon, even though it was perceived as a national one. Such confusion between local and national events shows that the public could use so more working knowledge about local government.
I propose a legislative efficiency act.
For every new law added to the books lawmakers should be required to remove an old one.
The local weekly rounds up the police blotter so readers can feel superior to their feckless neighbors (while trying to figure out who’s who). In one report, a woman’s parents called police to the apartment she shared with her husband after she didn’t answer the phone one evening. Police took the husband from the apartment because he was drunk and “combative” (we may assume this involved some sort of insufficient obeisance to The Only Ones), releasing him in the morning. The woman didn’t answer the phone because she was asleep, according to the report. There is no evidence that she wanted the police there or filed (or had) a complaint against her spouse. I am trying to figure out what grounds The Only Ones had to kidnap the husband overnight.
“…your [annoyance] has no legal standing unless you were aggressed.”
I’m not sure I see a difference between annoyance and aggression. What is it?
“You break the law by beaping the horn, not by an act of aggression.”
I see your point and I agree, the law is unnecessary.
“Trust me, no one cares.”
“Trust me” is not a rational argument, it carries exactly zero weight in a rational discussion.
So you still may be a career criminal, not because of breaking the horn-blowing law, but because of annoying your neighbors.
It is not terribly unusual to see a few statist comments; after all, Mises Institute stories sometimes show up in search engines. It is unusual for someone to post, as if it were noncontroversial, the sickeningly obedient sentiment expressed in the comment above about stupid laws having a purpose in getting back at people who are “dicks” to the police. You sicken me.
Curious –
“I’m not sure I see a difference between annoyance and aggression. What is it?
Read Rothbard, et al. Good Luck.
The problem with conflating annoyance and aggression is that the limits of liberty are defined by the most aggressive (maybe that should read passive-aggressive), aggrieved, vaporous, or easily offended. That’s just one of the reasons workplaces are the Fun Factories they are, a generation into “hostile environment” sexual-harassment statute law.
HM,
Your RCMP example reminds me of the theme of the double album “Joe’s Garage” by Frank Zappa. The idea was that the government made music illegal. Since everyone loves music, everyone would then be a criminal, and the government would have an excuse to completely control everyone.
In other words, I don’t think your RCMP radio example is a good argument for why unnecessary laws should exist. I think it’s a good example of how law enforcement personnel abuse law and power, and a good excuse for why such laws shouldn’t exist.
Take the law against marijuana. It used to be illegal mainly as an excuse for picking on Mexicans and blacks. Now billions of dollars a year are wasted, and thousands of peoples’ lives are ruined, because of a law that was an excuse for LEOs to do what they wanted.
Mr. Fedako,
“trust me” and “read so and so…” carry no weight in a rational discussion.
If you think they do, good luck persuading someone to your point of view.
Curious –
“I’m not sure I see a difference between annoyance and aggression. What is it?
It will not be much of a rational discussion if you cannot see the difference between those two word. I’d suggest Webster’s, but you’d likely admonish me again.
There will be no more discussion here.
Dear Jim Fedako, Esq.
Law limits one’s liberty. The repudiation of law upon that basis is anarchism.
Libertarianism assumes a mutual benefit of some legal restriction to liberty.
I await a revelation on the benefit to be conferred through an absence of restriction for car horn use, and look forward to your epiphany in regard to this subject and the related disquisition thereof.
Best Wishes,
Classical Thinker
P.S. – I shall pray that a car horn does not interrupt the epiphany.
“Classical Thinker, Esq.”
Not really sure where you lived in Ohio, because growing up there I never had a problem with horns. Trains were the culprit, but I believe they were there first anyways. (Also, you must be a much lighter sleeper than I, because I eventually got accustomed to most trains as well.)
In your position, I would have invested in a pair of soft foam ear plugs.
Eric,
the fact that you never had any problem with horns, is not an objective argument.
It has as much weight, as Mr. Fedako’s arguments of “trust me” and “read so and so”.
don’t worry, everything will be ok!
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