[HN Gopher] 200-foot-long railway to nowhere is a brilliant ship...
___________________________________________________________________
200-foot-long railway to nowhere is a brilliant shipping loophole
Author : lastofthemojito
Score : 180 points
Date : 2022-02-28 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| worik wrote:
| In Aotearoa we no longer have a (local) coastal shipping
| industry.
|
| Look at a map. How did that happen?
|
| Slave labour imported by ruthless business operators on foreign
| flagged vessels.
|
| Now COVID has hit, we have very little coastal shipping of any
| sort.
|
| Put the Jones Act in that context
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I really love creative workarounds for ridiculous rules. Like
| many of our laws the Jones Act is trying to force a desirable
| outcome because the existing laws forced people to adopt the
| undesirable outcome. In this case US laws make it too costly to
| operate a US flagged vessel. Instead of removing laws that were
| making it too costly we just added a new law to try to force
| operators to the desirable but costly path of being US flagged.
|
| If a law is preventing us from being globally competitive it is a
| bad law.
| shuntress wrote:
| There are some pretty obvious drawbacks to this that you seem
| to be deliberately ignoring.
|
| For example, in cases where this competitive advantage is
| gained through means that cause what a reasonable person would
| considered an excess of human suffering and the relevant US
| laws prevent the actions that gain that competitive advantage
| in exchange for human suffering, does it make sense to submit
| that this human suffering is just a fact of life or would it be
| better to attempt to eliminate that suffering?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I had thought of those cases but didn't mention them as I
| feel most people would agree that those are "good" laws and
| accept the consequences. However, there are currently vastly
| more laws and regulations that do not fit in that category.
| There is a lot of space between sacrificing decency and
| removing law/regulation cruft to improve competitiveness.
| notpachet wrote:
| This comment is much more nuanced than your original black-
| and-white "If a law is preventing us from being globally
| competitive it is a bad law." I appreciate the followup.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Tell me what your incentives are, and I'll tell you how you'll
| behave
| tinotopia wrote:
| It used to seem to me that there was a strong libertarian
| tendency among computer people, at least relative to the rest of
| society.
|
| I always attributed this to the fact that anyone who has ever
| tried to tell a computer what to do has a different kind of
| understanding of how hard it is to precisely define intentions,
| even when the compiler doesn't have a personal financial or other
| incentive to deliberately misconstrue your code so as to create a
| bug.
|
| It doesn't matter how beneficial is the intention of your law,
| it'll really only work if it's generally aligned with the local
| cultural values -- in which case people will Do What You Mean.
|
| Politicians either don't understand this, or pretend not to; you
| regularly see them passing laws to outlaw things that are already
| illegal.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _[laws] only work if...generally aligned with the local
| cultural values_
|
| The business in question is owned by a Norwegian. Perhaps
| American businesses should only be owned and operated
| by...Americans?
| landemva wrote:
| ' It used to seem to me that there was a strong libertarian
| tendency among computer people ... '
|
| And it seemed to be prevalent on HN until about March 2020 when
| over-bearing safetyism became a religion.
| [deleted]
| seniorsassycat wrote:
| Feels funny that the original 30 mile trip was above board. The
| new trip is clearly exploiting a loophole, but maybe both trips
| should be forbidden.
|
| Why is there an exemption for trips by rail?
| beeboop wrote:
| From a link in the article:
|
| Objections were raised at the time about the potential
| disruption of pre-existing patterns of travel of both
| passengers and merchandise in part over Canadian rail lines.
|
| To address those objections, a proviso was added to the
| restated coastwise law - then the "first proviso" - which
| stated that the coastwise restriction did not apply to
| transportation "over through routes heretofore or hereafter
| recognized by the Interstate Commerce Commission for which
| routes rate tariffs have been or shall hereafter be filed with
| said commission when such routes are in part over Canadian rail
| lines . . ." - and "excluding Alaska."
|
| In 1935 this proviso was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court
| which wrote that "its evident purpose was to avoid disturbance
| of established routes, recognized by the Interstate Commerce
| Commission as in the public interest, between Northwestern and
| Eastern states through the lake ports."
|
| End quote.
|
| The TLDR seems to be that forcing it for rail would have caused
| too many disturbances to how the rail was operating at the
| time.
| vernie wrote:
| When I see an example of tariff engineering I want whoever
| dreamed up the "cool hack" to be caned.
| krallja wrote:
| There was a video earlier this month on Half As Interesting about
| this railway: https://youtu.be/oP1Oq3JLNbc
|
| HAI makes interesting, short, sarcastic videos about obscure
| topics that HNers will probably enjoy.
| Okkef wrote:
| Make stupid rules, get stupid compliance.
| crisdux wrote:
| Repealing or reforming the Jones Act would really help river
| cities all along the mississippi river system. It would also
| reduce co2 and traffic congestion. It's amazing to me that no one
| will take a critical look at this outdated law. It's anti
| competitive and disproportionately affects interior states.
| triyambakam wrote:
| The Jones Act has already made Hawaii's economy really difficult,
| but it might be about to get really worse. Hawaii gets a third or
| more crude oil from Russia, and with recent sanctions, it's
| unclear if that will continue. If it doesn't that means Hawaii
| will need to purchase much more expensive oil from the mainland.
|
| > It is much cheaper for Hawaii to buy oil from Russia than from
| the U.S., even though the per-barrel cost of oil from Russia is
| more expensive than from Texas.
|
| > Blame the Jones Act. The 1920 federal maritime law requires all
| goods shipped between American ports to be on vessels that are
| U.S. flagged, built and mostly owned and crewed by Americans.
|
| > The result of more than a century of protectionism has been
| that U.S. ships are more expensive to build and operate, with the
| additional costs inevitably passed on to consumers. In other
| words, the added cost of using American ships makes it more
| expensive for Hawaii to buy oil from Texas than from Russia. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/2022/02/jones-act-
| threate...
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's not just Hawaii. Massachusetts has to import its natural
| gas from Trinidad, rather than use much cheaper natural gas
| from the USA.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| I don't get this doom and gloom. The population of Hawaii is
| 1.3 million, a third of the oil is from Russia. That is
| minuscule on the world scale. Oil is an extremely liquid trade,
| and Hawaii is already buying non Jones act oil.
|
| Jones Act itself is a problem, and a blessing. It ensures a US
| maritime industry but has due to lack of competition left it so
| far behind the world standard that the minute it is removed the
| entire sector will go bankrupt from international competition.
|
| The Decline of the U.S. Merchant Marine | What's Going on With
| Shipping?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJn0bCWx_9g
| echelon wrote:
| > Jones Act itself is a problem, and a blessing. It ensures a
| US maritime industry but has due to lack of competition left
| it so far behind the world standard that the minute it is
| removed the entire sector will go bankrupt from international
| competition.
|
| It's too bad we didn't have something like this for
| manufacturing, too. If we'd kept key component assembly in
| the US, we could've adapted to supply chain disruptions or
| unfavorable trading partnerships.
|
| Our nation should be able to sustain itself as a hedge
| against a multitude of geopolitical risks as well as lay
| sandbags against the erosion of economic power.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| csense wrote:
| > left it so far behind the world standard
|
| I'm pretty sure "the world standard" for shipping is low pay
| and workers getting treated like crap.
|
| In any sector of the economy where you don't have
| protectionism, it quickly becomes a "race to the bottom"
| where companies move to the least regulated places where
| there's no minimum wage; various forms of worker abuse are
| legal; and there's basically no safety / environmental
| protection.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I wonder why we don't have more laws that gradually change
| things. Like instead of having jones act or no jones act as
| the only two options what if we could slowly remove the jones
| act at a rate of 3% per year or whatever? It could begin to
| improve things for people but also give the domestic industry
| some time to adapt.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Jones Act itself is a problem, and a blessing. It
| ensures a US maritime industry but has due to lack of
| competition left it so far behind the world standard that
| the minute it is removed the entire sector will go bankrupt
| from international competition.
|
| > I wonder why we don't have more laws that gradually
| change things. Like instead of having jones act or no jones
| act as the only two options what if we could slowly remove
| the jones act at a rate of 3% per year or whatever? It
| could begin to improve things for people but also give the
| domestic industry some time to adapt.
|
| Because maybe that would just draw out the failure, while
| still failing to achieve some of the main goals of the
| Jones Act?
|
| Economic "efficiency" is not the only goal that should be
| pursued, which the events of the last few years should have
| made clear.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I agree. On a related topic, I think it's important that we
| have some low cost software developer labor to make sure that
| we have the ability to develop things cheaply and compete
| with other countries.
|
| I propose that we start by reducing your salary by 40% so
| that we've got some lower cost labor. It's miniscule on the
| world scale, so you shouldn't complain I suppose? I don't get
| the doom and gloom.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Honestly and unironically yes, this sounds great. I don't
| want to build a career on protectionism. I would start a
| company tomorrow if quality software development labor was
| 40% cheaper, it would make so many use cases economical.
| worik wrote:
| > it would make so many use cases economical.
|
| If exploiting desperate people is the measure an
| economical use case, no wonder business has a bad
| reputation
| mattnewton wrote:
| I am confused, how would a 40% reduction of current
| software salaries in the US for top talent due to
| competition mean exploiting people?
|
| Are you against training more doctors too because they
| would make less money and therefore be more exploited?
| What about the people who buy their services? Or do I
| misunderstand?
|
| There certainly are exploitive labor practices but I
| don't think being for decreasing the costs of a
| profession due to free competition has to be equated to
| being for exploiting people of that profession.
|
| I think that many industries and use cases could benefit
| from software automation, but it is expensive to hire
| those people. If they are good there is endless demand
| for their skills in ad tech alone, where they can afford
| to pay them a salary and benefits valued over 20-30% of
| the gross profit that entire company brings in a year.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Is not that the thing? Working in software I am already
| competing with the world. My job could get out-sourced
| tomorrow, but apparently that does not happen.
|
| See the difference? Value vs. cost. Very different.
| asdff wrote:
| I'm surprised an oil company hasn't tried to set up a free
| trade zone within hawaii yet.
| retrac wrote:
| Valid criticism. But how would the USA maintain a merchant
| fleet in the face of much lower operation costs for operators
| under a different flag? Without the Jones Act, one might expect
| near-complete dependence on foreign-flagged ships for US
| shipping. That's a major vulnerability for a trade-oriented
| nation. Subsidies perhaps?
| dantheman wrote:
| Why should the USA maintain a merchant fleet? We already rely
| on foreign owned and operated ships for the majority of our
| shipping.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Because it is an essential piece of infrastructure and
| without it you lose power to others around the world who
| would use it to control you.
|
| The cost of not having one is hard to put a number on but
| very likely much higher than the savings of offshoring all
| of your shipping.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Moving strategic assets between ports.
| _3u10 wrote:
| The fleet is smaller than it would be without the Jones Act.
| wolpoli wrote:
| It wouldn't be fair for the cost of this national objective
| to fall onto Hawaii alone.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| And not only Hawaii, many other places too. The costs fell
| on Puerto Rico when Congress refused to lift the Jones
| requirements to ease shipping costs even after the
| hurricane left them desperate for supplies. I guess the
| national priority fo ensuring a home-based merchant marine
| fleet outweighed people's need for toilet paper and medical
| supplies.
| ars wrote:
| Seems like a simple solution would be to add "Or Canadian" to
| the Jones Act.
|
| If there was a war I'm sure Canada would help with any marine
| shipping needed, and it would simplify things for some
| operators.
| dhc02 wrote:
| IF the domestic shipping fleet struggled or shrank without
| the Jones Act, the answer would be subsidies, rather than
| prohibition.
| colechristensen wrote:
| And people would be making essentially the same complaints
| and essentially the same arguments about the subsidies (see
| agriculture subsidies)
| golemiprague wrote:
| thrashh wrote:
| Yeah but people complain about all sorts of stuff. We
| haven't gotten rid of the subsidies yet. Although in this
| scenario, we could subsidize oil to Hawaii. I don't know
| how that could be sold but everyone already benefits from
| subsidies somewhere and everyone already subsidizes
| something else.
| adolph wrote:
| > how would the USA maintain a merchant fleet
|
| Why would the USA maintain a merchant fleet if it not
| economically feasible?
|
| Why are operation costs lower for operators under a different
| flag?
|
| How does disadvantaging internal transport help anyone
| involved other than a handful of specialty operators?
|
| _The Jones Act requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to
| be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated
| by United States citizens or permanent residents._ [0]
|
| 0. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jonesact.asp
| themaninthedark wrote:
| The Jones Act can be broken into 3 parts:
|
| 1. transported on ships that are built We
| want to maintain domestic shipyard capacity and not have
| the only shipyards be those that are government
| contractors. Why? Imagine if we are ever in a situation
| where we need Liberty Ships again.
|
| 2. transported on ships that are owned, We
| want to both protect domestic owners as well as be able to
| hold them accountable if they screw up. You sometimes hear
| stories about ships abandoned by their owners and the crew
| forced to stay on the vessel. Or abandoned cargo such as
| the fertilizer that caused the Beirut blast. We want to
| minimize those situations.
|
| 3. transported on ships that are operated
| We want the people working the ships to be invested in our
| country and we want to maintain a population with these
| skills. Why? In the event of a Liberty Ship situation, you
| need people to crew them. But also accountability, who is
| more likely to report the captain ordering waste oil to be
| dumped overboard: A US citizen who knows the rules or a
| sailor from Indonesia whose passport is being held by the
| captain?
|
| There is a large amount of intercostal and waterway
| shipping that takes place in the US, grain down the
| Mississippi, steel on the Great Lakes. Do we want that to
| be open to Iranian or North Korean ships?
|
| Lastly, the Jones Act only applies to goods shipped between
| US ports. So if Hawaii is buying Russian gas from Russia,
| as long as the ship goes from Russia to Hawaii the Jones
| Act doesn't apply.
| adolph wrote:
| I can see how it is important for any nation to maintain
| strategic capabilities in many domains. Since the US is
| largely a single-continent nation, maintaining a
| strategic shipping capacity seems less important than
| other things, but arguably has a greater than zero
| significance.
|
| The Jones Act disadvantages non-shipping parts of the
| economy in order to prop up some otherwise unviable
| operations. In the case of Hawaii, this is especially
| terrible since US sources of goods and material might be
| competitive with Russia or elsewhere except for the
| transportation. The result "costs Hawaii $1.2 billion
| annually, including 9,100 fewer jobs and $148 million in
| unrealized tax revenues." [0]
|
| Ship ownership has nothing to do with port safety and a
| Lebanese Jones Act equivalent would not have changed
| anything in Beirut since it was international shipping
| impounded by Lebanon, offloaded and improperly stored in
| the port for many years. [1]
|
| 0. https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/jonesact/
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
| retrac wrote:
| > Why would the USA maintain a merchant fleet if it not
| economically feasible?
|
| Basically the same reason Japan subsidizes grain production
| or why Sweden doesn't buy its fighter jets from Russia.
| Sure, it'd be cheaper to import, but it's also a
| vulnerability.
|
| It would make America dependent on foreign powers for the
| shipping of goods vital to the economy and even national
| security. How do you move oil to Hawaii and military
| hardware to Guam if foreign carriers decide to embargo the
| USA?
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| > Why are operation costs lower for operators under a
| different flag?
|
| A ship flagged under country X has to obey the laws of
| country X. So a Liberian flagged ship has to obey the laws
| of Liberia. The minimum wages in Liberia is much less then
| the US. Overtime rules more relaxed. Safety standards are
| more relaxed.
| pg_bot wrote:
| Modify the Jones act so that the ships don't need to be built
| in the US, they just need to be owned and flagged by US
| companies. Labor costs for running the ships are a rounding
| error when compared to the purchase price of the ship and
| fuel costs. You just don't need that many people to run these
| large ships and you can already have ~30% of staff be foreign
| anyway.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Do you think the increase in price means renewable energy can
| get a bigger foothold?
| triyambakam wrote:
| Given the history of how Hawaii policy gets shaped, probably
| not. But thinking optimistically, hopefully!
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Solar is already so prevalent on Oahu that they have grid
| frequency excursions that would be unimaginable on the
| mainland.
|
| Once grid-scale energy storage gets cheaper Hawaii will have
| one of the cleanest energy grids on Earth. Until then they
| have to complement their solar production with peaker
| turbines that typically burn diesel.
| triceratops wrote:
| Why can't Hawaii use geothermal energy?
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Hawaii (the island) can and does, but most of Hawaii (the
| state)'s electric demand is on Oahu where they haven't
| found any geothermal that's viable for making power.
|
| [0] https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/clean-energy-
| hawaii/our-cle...
| retrac wrote:
| Hawaii does have a geothermal plant. It got covered in
| lava during a 2018 eruption and took two years to dig
| back out. Not sure if that's a freak incident or ill
| portent for its viability in Hawaii. Pre-eruption it
| supplied about 10% of the state's electricity.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puna_Geothermal_Venture
| [deleted]
| exabrial wrote:
| Make stupid laws, get stupid answers.
| bombcar wrote:
| It seems the truck gets off at the same point it got on, that may
| be a critical flaw in their trick as it can be argued the rail
| line didn't provide "part of the journey".
| duck wrote:
| Is there a video of them loading that truck onto the train? It
| seems like two ramps on both ends would make that easier and
| avoid what you pointed out.
| syspec wrote:
| Yeah i watched the video curious to see how the truck gets
| OFF the train, but it cut out.
|
| Does it really just backup? That seems much more treacherous,
| than having a ramp on the other side.
| nwsm wrote:
| The law just needs some graph theory
| gruez wrote:
| So all they need to do to make this legit is to build a dock on
| the other end?
| londons_explore wrote:
| When sticking to the letter but not the spirit of the law,
| things like this matter...
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Jones Act is a bunch of bullshit. Its right up there with Sugar
| duties, Car dealership laws, Alcohol distributorship laws, and
| corn subsidies as bullshit insider manipulation of the market to
| line their own pockets.
| ape4 wrote:
| Obviously the law could be changed to specify a minimum distance
| traveled by rail.
| notpachet wrote:
| Tea must be served!
| beardog wrote:
| Reminds me of when Marvel argued in court that their mutant
| characters are non-human because human dolls were taxed
| differently https://boingboing.net/2012/02/21/marvel-comics-to-
| us-govt-m...
| pmarreck wrote:
| Reminds me of when people routinely (and entirely legally) use
| tax loopholes to avoid paying tax. The problem is that no one
| even tries to pay a dime more taxes than is legally necessary.
|
| And yet those people are routinely attacked instead of the laws
| themselves, which to me seems completely absurd. A person
| should no sooner pay "the spirit of" the amount of tax they
| "should" owe, than the IRS would forgive a restaurant some tax
| during the pandemic since "the spirit of" tax wouldn't sink
| businesses temporarily set back by pandemics.
| smilespray wrote:
| I'm going to steal that idea and give myself a few mutations to
| avoid income tax.
| ragazzina wrote:
| The same applies to Santa suits: should they be taxed as a
| dress or as a costume?
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/12/20/571645063/epis...
| jtbayly wrote:
| This is why programmers think they can treat the law like code.
| Because people often do and get away with it. Often they don't
| get away with it, too. But still... programmers aren't the only
| ones looking at the law this way apparently.
| cmdrriker wrote:
| Ignoring the primary issue Uncle Sam has with this logistics
| solution, be reminded why laws and or regulations exist for
| things... there's always someone (right or wrong) that will
| circumvent the rules with shall we say... creative solutions.
| hangonhn wrote:
| This is where judges and spirit of the law come in. Laws hav
| always been imprecise and one remedy for that are judges and
| trials. I doubt what the company is doing will hold up in court
| if they want to argue that they satisfied the provision of the
| Jones Act.
| geocrasher wrote:
| "The Bureaucracy is expanding to support the needs of the
| expanding Bureaucracy." - Leonard Nimoy, Civ IV (Oh and
| originally some old guy. Edited for accuracy.)
| caymanjim wrote:
| "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the
| expanding bureaucracy." - Oscar Wilde
|
| Credit where credit is due.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| _If, with the literate, I am / Impelled to try an epigram, /
| I never seek to take the credit; / We all assume that Oscar
| said it._
|
| -- Dorothy Parker
| geocrasher wrote:
| True, but more fun to quote Spock ;-)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Loopholes in the law are like security flaws in programs.
| Whenever the letter of the law (code) doesn't exactly match the
| intent, inevitably some attacker will find it and exploit it,
| especially if there is monetary incentive as is the case in
| business. This doesn't mean the law is wrong, just that the
| people who wrote it were careless and didn't think about all the
| edge cases. What most democratic governments lack is a way to do
| a quick security update to zero-day loopholes as they are found.
| These things shouldn't be fixed with years-long lawsuits arguing
| the intent of the law, they should be fixed with a patch to the
| actual wording of the law so the intent is more clear.
| mcguire wrote:
| Keep in mind that there is an intelligent cut-out in the
| system: the judiciary. They exist _because_ the law is not a
| computer program and because loopholes are not like security
| flaws. In this case, the DoJ (officially) noticed the situation
| in August 2021, meaning the judiciary has not had time to work
| its magic. When they do so, they will evaluate a stack of
| arguments about the meaning and results of the law (in a non-
| computation sense of "evaluate" and "stack"); what they will
| not do is interpret the law like a series of if-then
| statements.
|
| At that point, legislators can then "patch" the law if they
| feel it necessary. (Do you realize exactly how bad "a quick
| security update to zero-day loopholes as they are found" would
| be?)
|
| (Knowing only the facts in the article, I would be willing to
| bet that some judge is going to say, "haha, yeah, good try, but
| no." But then I don't know all of the facts of the case.)
| londons_explore wrote:
| Typically when a judge says no to a case like this, they have
| to come up with a definition of something in the law that is
| not met. For example, they may say "It does not qualify as
| travel on a railway if the load does not travel from one
| station to another station. In this case, since the loading
| and unloading occurred at the same station, this load did not
| travel by rail, and therefore the Jones Act was violated".
|
| That new decision then becomes part of the law (case law).
| _3u10 wrote:
| it's not a loophole, the law says they have to ship via rail
| from a different country so that's exactly what they are doing.
| if the law specifies a minimum distance they will build a
| circular track and run the train long enough to meet the
| minimum distance. If it specifies track length they will just
| build track that long, if it specifies minimum geographic
| distance they will find a further port.
|
| The law is stupid, so this is what it incentivizes, the Jones
| act is like a Soviet Nail factory.
|
| My business gets credits from our vendors if we bring customers
| from other competitors, if it's a new customer we have a vendor
| we work with that provides very cheap options so we sign them
| up with a competitor, before onboarding them with the vendor.
| If the customer is with one of our existing vendors we switch
| them to a different one. EVERYONE is happy, all our vendor reps
| are making their numbers, executives are making their
| competitive advances, even the cheap company is making bank
| because none of the customers ever even use the service.
| allturtles wrote:
| I'm not sure why you say this is not a loophole. What you're
| describing is exactly what a loophole is. A loophole means
| exploiting the technicalities of the letter of the law to
| dodge its intent.
| [deleted]
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > If it specifies track length they will just build track
| that long, if it specifies minimum geographic distance they
| will find a further port.
|
| I wonder what the law would have to say to produce the
| legislators' intended result. Possibly they could require
| companies to define, for each journey:
|
| * Point A - the average(?) location of where the fish are
| caught, and
|
| * Point B - the average(?) location where the fish are sold
| to the public or stored (for the majority of the time they
| are stored).
|
| Then there could be some requirement that there be two
| points, C and D, with the following properties:
|
| * the fish pass through points C and D on their way from
| point A to point B,
|
| * points C and D are on the main Canadian rail network (such
| that most rail track in Canada can be reached by a train
| starting at point C or point D),
|
| * the minimum rail distance between points C and D is some
| percentage P of the straight line distance between A and B,
| and
|
| * the fish travel only by rail between points C and D.
|
| The precise value of "P" would have to be chosen by looking
| at examples of intended paths and thinking of possible
| unintended paths.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's even more like that, because age old code (law) gets
| repurposed and reused and something nobody would even bother
| trying becomes practical.
|
| And in both cases the correct solution is fixing the law (code)
| but often that opens a whole new can of worms ...
| fuoqi wrote:
| Even worse, the precedent-based legal system is quite crazy
| itself, especially to those who lives in the continental
| legal system. Instead of patching "code" (law) to new times
| and sometimes removing parts of it completely, the former
| uses age-old execution artifacts (court decisions) to
| determine future execution. Not only it bloats "code" with a
| truck load of pattern matching branches instead of using a
| lean algorithm, but it also makes it much harder to
| consciously evolve the system, which is especially important
| in the current times.
| jquery wrote:
| It also leads to greater predictability.
|
| >The reliance on judicial opinion is a strength of common
| law systems, and is a significant contributor to the robust
| commercial systems in the United Kingdom and United States.
| Because there is reasonably precise guidance on almost
| every issue, parties (especially commercial parties) can
| predict whether a proposed course of action is likely to be
| lawful or unlawful, and have some assurance of
| consistency.[76] As Justice Brandeis famously expressed it,
| "in most matters it is more important that the applicable
| rule of law be settled than that it be settled right."[77]
| This ability to predict gives more freedom to come close to
| the boundaries of the law.[78] For example, many commercial
| contracts are more economically efficient, and create
| greater wealth, because the parties know ahead of time that
| the proposed arrangement, though perhaps close to the line,
| is almost certainly legal. Newspapers, taxpayer-funded
| entities with some religious affiliation, and political
| parties can obtain fairly clear guidance on the boundaries
| within which their freedom of expression rights apply.
|
| >In contrast, in jurisdictions with very weak respect for
| precedent,[79] fine questions of law are redetermined anew
| each time they arise, making consistency and prediction
| more difficult, and procedures far more protracted than
| necessary because parties cannot rely on written statements
| of law as reliable guides.[76] In jurisdictions that do not
| have a strong allegiance to a large body of precedent,
| parties have less a priori guidance (unless the written law
| is very clear and kept updated) and must often leave a
| bigger "safety margin" of unexploited opportunities, and
| final determinations are reached only after far larger
| expenditures on legal fees by the parties.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
| fuoqi wrote:
| >procedures far more protracted than necessary because
| parties cannot rely on written statements of law as
| reliable guides
|
| I would say it's a problem with laws, not the system
| itself. Also the continental system does not imply that
| precedents do not have any force. The difference is that
| when a law changes the system accumulates new precedents
| for it instead of using outdated ones.
| visarga wrote:
| I think it's meant as a system to ensure consistency and
| limit the rate of change.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Imagine a world where there was one law, "be good to each
| other," and the rest was judicial precedent. What would
| be the problems?
|
| 1. There would be no centralized repository of what the
| laws were.
|
| 2. Even the best interpretation of existing precedent
| could be wrong or overturned, making any action
| potentially illegal.
|
| 3. The size of the entire corpus would grow with every
| case and make knowing what the law was only possible for
| people with a lot of law clerks to research it. The
| complexity of definitions could grow without bound.
| shuntress wrote:
| This is why most good laws are written with the understanding
| that disputes will be solved by a complicated neural network
| that draws on distributed resources for consensus.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but the intent isn't something the legislature knows. The
| outcome _is_ the intent - since there are multiple participants
| and they are negotiating.
| adolph wrote:
| > Loopholes in the law are like security flaws in programs.
|
| For a law to have a loophole it must already be misaligned to
| its user's interests.
| allturtles wrote:
| Who are the 'users' of a law? A government might pass a law
| to reduce air pollution from factories. Obviously this is
| 'misaligned' with the interests of factory owners, who will
| seek out loopholes to exploit. However it may be very well
| aligned with the interests of citizens at large.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The difference is lawyers are paid to find loopholes. And to
| persuade judges and juries their creative interpretation is
| valid.
|
| Software lacks the persuasion element. The CPU either runs the
| code or it doesn't. You fix edge cases by making all possible
| states explicit, not by arguing with the CPU that it should do
| something differently to set a precedent.
| ISL wrote:
| Bug bounties (or zero-day sales) are an expression of that
| persuasion.
| jka wrote:
| A trade-off here is that it seems unlikely for a legal team
| to be able to humanly attempt tens of thousands of slight
| variants of a legal argument and still be allowed to
| participate, whereas with computers and network services,
| fuzzing tends to scale and continue fairly reliably (partly
| because it often goes unnoticed).
| nicoburns wrote:
| > What most democratic governments lack is a way to do a quick
| security update to zero-day loopholes as they are found
|
| That's not necessarily true. The solution is to give regulatory
| agencies more leeway to enforce and shutdown these violations.
| It's only really cultural bias against "big government" (and
| towards letter-of-the-law rather than spirit-of-the-law style
| enforcement) that prevents this. If you are consistent enough
| about doing this, then you massively disincentivise companies
| from exploiting these loopholes in the first place as they know
| they're likely to get heavily penalised for it.
| FpUser wrote:
| This is very slippery slope. It is not my friggin job to
| figure out the "spirit of the law". I can read letter of law
| and follow it. If law makers lack mental capacity to "stress
| test" their creations and incorporate "patches" when bugs are
| discovered they should find some other job.
|
| Otherwise everyone will be on the hook for some imaginary
| "not following spirit". Might as well hire shamans
| egypturnash wrote:
| There is a grey area between the letter and intent of the
| law but it takes a special sort of wilful misinterpretation
| to end up with "driving onto a little cart that goes about
| two hundred feet along a rail, then comes back" as
| "travelling by rail". Especially when there is apparently a
| whole pile of paperwork that had to be done to officially
| register this little cart as A Canadian Rail Line. These
| people know damn well what the spirit of the law is and put
| a lot of time and effort into coming up with a way to
| violate the spirit but not the letter of it.
|
| The only way you can get to that point via a slippery slope
| is to bring your own barrels of lubricant and spend a while
| clearing rocks and trees and other obstacles off of your
| slope. You might even have to put some effort into
| increasing the grade of that slope.
| FpUser wrote:
| This case is obvious. So fix the law, it is / should be
| easy to close the loophole and move along.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Hopefully the courts will decide that while this may not
| violate the precise letter of the law, it's _incredibly_
| obvious that it violates the spirit of it, and judge them
| guilty. But if they do, this company will probably try to
| push it back to a higher court, given that the initial
| fines are 90% of their revenue from a few years ago.
|
| I wonder how much they saved by doing this stupid game
| instead of using actual rail shipping for about thirty
| miles, and how much of it ended up in the pockets of
| their top-level staff and investors vs. the pockets of
| their employees?
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's a slippery slope in both directions. In one direction
| you give power to governmental organisations. In the other
| you give power to corporations. Neither of those things are
| good from the point of view of democracy.
|
| IMO the fact that US culture is utterly intolerant of any
| kind of "spirit of the law" governance is one of the
| reasons why America can't have nice things. It's regulatory
| bodies have other problems, but one of the main ones is
| that they are toothless because they generally aren't given
| any real power. Where they are (such as the FAA), they're
| often much more effective.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"In the other you give power to corporations."
|
| Nope. Once caught bug in law, fix it. But don't punish
| people / corps for failure to "guess". One more time. Iam
| not law maker and it is not my job.
|
| >"that US culture is utterly intolerant"
|
| I am in Canada. Not the US.
|
| >"why America can't have nice things"
|
| I do not get it. Sure there is a lot of awful thing in
| the US. And an awful lot of good things as well. Just as
| everywhere (assuming developed countries).
| nicoburns wrote:
| > But don't punish people / corps for failure to "guess".
|
| You don't punish people for failure to guess (you may
| warn them if necessary). You punish people for flagrantly
| violating the law. Do you really think the creators of
| the railroad in this article didn't know that this wasn't
| what the law intended? It's infeasible to update laws in
| response to every violation - the process takes too long
| - so we need a lighter weight process that can keep up.
| You keep _that_ process in check by updating laws where
| it oversteps the mark.
| landemva wrote:
| The lightweight response is to repeal the law.
| shuntress wrote:
| The system you are working towards already exists: Courts
| and precedence.
| landemva wrote:
| ' US culture is utterly intolerant of any kind of "spirit
| of the law" governance ...' yet USA tolerates government
| immunity which leads to government bad actors having
| little fear of being successfully sued.
| nicoburns wrote:
| US lawsuit culture is a whole other kettle of fish! I
| agree that government officials shouldn't have special
| protections that others don't have. On the other hand, I
| feel like an approach where there was greater collective
| responsibility such that suing individuals wasn't such a
| large part of the culture would be a huge benefit. For
| example, better health coverage such that individuals
| aren't on the hook for other people's medical bills.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >The solution is to give regulatory agencies more leeway to
| enforce and shutdown these violations.
|
| Or just ignore them.
|
| No need to get all jackbooty with broad laws and subjective
| enforcement powers when the basic law and basic enforcement
| covers 99.999% of cases.
| tejtm wrote:
| New Brunswick Southern Railway ... sounds like something I should
| have heard of
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Brunswick_Southern_Railway
|
| ahh... the Irvings, petrochemical and politics they showed up
| here on HN not that long ago (4 months) in conjunction with the
| mysterious chronic wasting disease in the same area
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28979532
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-28 23:01 UTC)