Forget environmental concerns, why not ban motor vehicles since they're involved in far more deaths?
I've often given that, among other reasons, for reducing automotive dependency. Frankly, if any other mode had this many deaths (40K+ annually) the NTSB would shut it down until it could be made safer. Look what happens when planes or trains crash. There's a thorough NTSB investigation. There are sometimes new laws or regulations resulting from that investigation. When two motorists crash into each other, the cop takes a report and that's pretty much it. Not to mention licensing standards in this country are beyond lax.
Anyone with a bit of common sense could have easily forseen a century ago that the idea of mass motoring, with most people being allowed to drive a motor vehicle, would be an unmitigated disaster. Most people lack the intelligence, coordination, spatial ability, or proper attitude to pilot a motor vehicle. No amount of training can fix that. Yet here we are a century and millions of deaths later, with no signs of trying to fix this mistake. Supposedly autonomous vehicles might do that, but of course that means manual driving on public roads will have to be outlawed. However, autonomous vehicles still don't even come close to fixing the myriad other problems with a car-based transportation system and low-density settlement patterns.
Regarding ex-post-facto laws, we did exactly that with student loans. At least twice. First when we made it much harder to discharge loans in bankruptcy, and applied that to all loans, not just ones taken out after the law was passed. Second when we removed the statute of limitations (and again applied it to all existing loans). We also let collection companies routinely add fees well beyond those allowed in the promissory note, although this wasn't due to a change of law, but rather lack of enforcement of the existing contracts.
---Galane--- Regarding the powers that be, lawmakers and otherwise, I do not know of any nation that is ran as a meritocracy. In the US I have seen a former president's son take the throne and a former president's wife come close. In all the land these were the most qualified individuals at the time and just happened to be direct relation to former presidents? That's either phenomenal coincidence, unholy providence or overt nepotism. Same fruit all the way down the vine.
Sadly, very little in either the private or public realm uses merit as a criteria. If it did, the people who got the best grades, and had positions requiring a higher level of education, would earn the most. Instead, earning potential seems to be mostly a factor of luck (i.e. being in the right place at the right time), combined with who you know. I was actually shocked when I learned employers rarely or never look at grades. If that's the case, all schools should just be pass/fail. Why should I have wasted many nights studying until 3AM when I could have been having fun? In the end, I feel like a chump when many of the people who might have barely passed are doing better than me. I don't just mean in terms of earnings, but their entire lives.
Society loses too when intelligent people end up underemployed, while unqualified people end up in positions where they screw up royally.
If I have a degree of passion about anything it is my dislike for being held to the lowest common denominator. That excuse is a black hole used to justify every manner of excessive and immoral control and syphoning. Reminds me of the dull pace and shallow experiences of my public school years.
Same here. In fact, least common denominator was one reason I never bothered getting a driver's license (the other being that I live in NYC where I really don't need one). At the time, the national speed limit was a ridiculously low 55 mph. Meanwhile, I'd been in cars with people on highways doing more than twice that speed. It wasn't unsafe, provided you had the skills to handle it. So I got to thinking, why don't driver's licenses have tiers, where you're allowed to go faster if you demonstrate more proficiency, as opposed to limiting everyone to the speed a granny with arthritis can handle? Same thing with other facets of driving, like using stop signs when yields will do, or overuse of traffic signals, including telling people when they can make left turns.
I hated grade school. The class ran at the pace of the slowest kids and the disruptive kids. The latter were especially irksome. I suspect one reason I ended up with severe CTS by my late 20s was being forced to write "I must not talk in class" hundreds of times a week despite hardly saying a word. The teachers at the time used "group" punishment, instead of targeting just the offenders. That's about as dumb as it gets. If you're going to be punished for something anyway, might as well do it.
