{"items": [{"author": "Lisa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632948648712", "anchor": "fb-632948648712", "service": "fb", "text": "And the interesting thing is that once we find a \"good law,\" it may change the environment enough that it eventually becomes a bad law, and therefore we need enough diversity to be able to find the next, temporarily \"good law.\"", "timestamp": "1382793382"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632949571862", "anchor": "fb-632949571862", "service": "fb", "text": "Tat is the idea behind states in the USA", "timestamp": "1382794062"}, {"author": "Kiran", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632952810372", "anchor": "fb-632952810372", "service": "fb", "text": "What Phillip said. We have this, it's called the US, and it works in both theory and practice. Gay marriage and healthcare come to mind immediately but there are certainly other examples.", "timestamp": "1382796337"}, {"author": "Mac", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632953034922", "anchor": "fb-632953034922", "service": "fb", "text": "What Phil said. 50 polysci labs. The homogenizing frequently takes place at the Federal level. Cases in point: Massachusetts has provided the models for the Federal constitution and health care law. Homogenization is not all bad. Some state laws are pretty bad and need correction. Segregation was one of those. Thought that's maybe tangent, but then actually describes the genesis of law: Law is secularized morality.", "timestamp": "1382796435"}, {"author": "Cory", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632958763442", "anchor": "fb-632958763442", "service": "fb", "text": "What is so united and liberating about 50 shades of freedom ? I think Its a form of discrimination at the macro level... gravity does not discriminate... its harmonized... i think laws that discriminate at the macro level should be treated as recommendations (like culture and other social trends ) unlike their mandatory punishable or prohibitive status.... in other words while i agree that legislative experimentation has its benefits.. i think the penalties for transgression of laws that are not harmonized, ought to be guided strictly by the collective scientific and historical data of its actual harmful effect... and when true harm has been established... this law ought to be harmonized and therefore deemed prohibitive and punishable.. like murder for example... and when a law has no real basis in true harm it should be treated as culture or social preference and therefore deemed permissive and unpunishable ... like against sexual and recreational drug preferences for example..", "timestamp": "1382799825"}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632963144662", "anchor": "fb-632963144662", "service": "fb", "text": "There are plenty of things we could learn once we decide that it is OK to experiment on humans. But I think there are ethical problems with acquiring this knowledge. If we have reason to believe some set of laws hurt a lot of people, but we aren't sure exactly how this happens, it would be unethical to keep the laws around. Or take the death penalty, I think that is an unethical law, but we don't really know to what extent it incites violent crime exactly.", "timestamp": "1382801921"}, {"author": "Vivian", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=632991752332", "anchor": "fb-632991752332", "service": "fb", "text": "Kiran, federal pre-emption and the interstate commerce clause limit that significantly. Vermont couldn't shut down Vermont Yankee[1] or ban non-pink margarine[2]. States can't decriminalize marijuana[3]. States can increase the minimum wage but not decrease it[4].
[1] unless their reasoning had omitted any consideration of safety (appeals court ruling). Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee LLC v. Shumlin.
[2] http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/.../food-dye-origins.../ ; Collins v. State of New Hampshire, 1898
[3] the only way they are doing it is by hoping that federal law enforcement doesn't get involved.
[4] I couldn't find out which legal theory makes this the case. This would be natural if federal and state minimum wages were separate restrictions, but Wikipedia states \"Congress then [at some unspecified date] gave states the power to set their minimum wages above the federal level.\" without citing it or giving me enough information to find that legislation. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Minimum_wage_in_the_United...", "timestamp": "1382817118"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=633014945852", "anchor": "fb-633014945852", "service": "fb", "text": "@George: I'm not talking about experimenting to learn exactly how bad things we know are bad are. I'm taking about cases where we don't really know what works, so we should try lots of things to find out. For example, does cash work better or worse than food stamps?", "timestamp": "1382829710"}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=633015374992", "anchor": "fb-633015374992", "service": "fb", "text": "If we have a strong suspicious one way or another it is still potentially unethical. As evidence mounts up against one \"treatment\" we need to adaptively phase it out.", "timestamp": "1382829982"}, {"author": "George", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=633015454832", "anchor": "fb-633015454832", "service": "fb", "text": "Of course figuring out what policies do is in some ways the easy part, getting good policies adopted seems a lot harder to me. There are already many cases where there is some overwhelming expert consensus, for example that extending unemployment benefits is good for people and the economy, but still we can't seem to *do* these things.", "timestamp": "1382830050"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=633016452832", "anchor": "fb-633016452832", "service": "fb", "text": "@George: \"As evidence mounts up against one 'treatment' we need to adaptively phase it out\"
I'm fine with that. What I think is harmful is premature standardization, deciding on one set of laws before we really have much evidence one way or the other, in order to decrease the overhead of having different regulatory environments with different rules.", "timestamp": "1382830635"}, {"author": "Toad", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/632946792432?comment_id=633940491052", "anchor": "fb-633940491052", "service": "fb", "text": "It's not just a matter of knowing which laws work 'best'. But having people with different values and ideas being able to live under those values. People can 'vote with their feet' to pick the rules they want to live under.", "timestamp": "1383310056"}]}