I was walking to work a few months ago, enjoying the crisp summer morning air, and I came to a stop light that instructed me to wait to cross. It being a one-way street, I looked left, saw no cars for a block and a half, and casually walked across the road, against the traffic light's firm instruction. I continued walking for another third of a block, and then heard a siren blare behind me on the sidewalk.
Incredibly, I was getting pulled over (so to speak), by a motorcycle cop (now illegally riding on the sidewalk) for defying a traffic light while on foot. I was – and still am – in shock. I expressed my disbelief to the officer, "You're kidding right?" He was not. "You have better things to do with your time, right?" He did not. He told me a woeful tale of how he has to call parents in the middle of the night to tell them that their child had been hit while crossing the road. I informed him that I was in fact a professional walker that literally walked halfway across the continent, and that I was pretty much OK crossing the street. He insisted he was doing me a favor, and teaching me a lesson.
For the 20 minutes that I stalled the guy, I did my best to make him realize that what he was doing was a waste of time, good faith and resources. I realized then and I realize now that this is the minority position when being ticketed by the cops, and I don't think it helped me get out of the ticket. The whole time I was arguing with the guy though, I couldn't help but think about all the waste that is caused by meaningless laws. Jay walking. Full-stops at stop signs. Waiting at red lights at 3AM. The list goes on.
All of these things waste time, and don't have particularly good purposes. We live for only so long, and how much of our time is stuck waiting because of laws that take morality, judgment, and reason out of the picture? Clearly, there is room for improvement, but somehow cops feel comfortable (righteous?) about giving these kinds of tickets.
Ninety-three dollars later, and I've cleared my name of this heinous crime on humanity. Surely something is wrong though, when cops have nothing better to do than to give this kind of ticket. Can't we find better ways to use our resources?
I read this a while ago when
I read this a while ago when you posted it, but only really figured out my feelings about it today, when I was reading about governance and political economy and came across the concept of rent-seeking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking).
Both you and he know that he was not doing you a favor and teaching you a lesson- he has a quota to fill, and it was probably a Friday, and he was looking out for ANY infringement/violation so that he could meet his department-mandated goals for ticketing, thus bringing in fine revenues to keep the shop running.
It's not that the officer had nothing better to do- he was playing his role in the funding game. As more and more laws and controls are passed on everyday civic behavior, more and more police time is spent enforcing them- mission creep. Large scale enforcement, Major Crimes, etc- those are all financial liabilities in that they are vastly expensive with indeterminate payoff. On the other hand, if you give a cop a motorcycle and authority to ticket any violation they see, revenue comes rolling in for everyone- cops, courts, lawyers- everyone that has a stake in the system except for YOU.
Also, even though you stalled the officer for 20 minutes, he still got $93 out of you. Not bad for 20 minutes of work- and he's got all day to spend doing this.
The police dept has a monopoly on their market, thus is able to extend their rent-seeking behavior to such petty things as fining Mike, who we all know to be an upstanding, civicly minded fellow, for jaywalking.
So how do we incentivize the opposite behavior, and create barriers to this sort of rent-seeking?
That last question is what I
That last question is what I spend time thinking about. This doesn't apply just to tickets and rent-seeking. This applies to all the decisions that are baked into our society at this point, and which are just bad. I have a strangely long history in my family with regards to this kind of thing, and tickets specifically: My grandfather was arrested for refusing to pay a jaywalking ticket; my dad (on the other side of my family) has taken cops to court on a number of occasions; and my uncle has a whole campaign against red light cameras.
I've spent hours
arguingdiscussing these kinds of things with friends, and it can take a long time to convince just one person that the majority of traffic tickets are just rent-seeking. What it would take to convince a nation, and actually make a change is a question I just don't know the answer to.My general policy is to use events like this one as examples. I stall the cop for twenty minutes, and I get everybody I know on my side, making them think about how much of a problem it is as a policy. It probably doesn't have a lot of trickle down effect, but I like to hope that my antics make a difference, and sometimes I learn that they do - generally though I don't hear much.
This is a subject that I've often thought about blogging, but as of yet, I haven't gotten my mental notes sorted out. I live my life in a way that's pretty extreme as judged by a lot of people - I have strong opinions on many matters, and I don't generally deviate from them. It can be socially straining at times, which is a bit of a good and a bad thing, depending on the outcome.
This is a topic for another post though, so unfortunately, I must repeat your question, how do we incentivize the opposite behavior, and create barriers to this sort of rent-seeking? How indeed.
here's my idea, you analyst
here's my idea, you analyst you:
Provide good statistics and budget information, in useable formats, to the public.
Now of course I haven't done the legwork myself, but I'm guessing that as of now I could not easily go through the books of the Santa Cruz PD and find out what percentage of their budget was funded by parking tickets. If citizen activists had access to this data (and the skills to analyze it) they could find out that sort of info- and exactly where the money was going- if ticket revenues go straight into payroll, that is a problem, and could be publicized.
Radical transparency.
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