ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I agree with this. But ijmorlan thinks everyone should make their own value judgements about the stupidity of rules. Decide whether to cross a train track mid-block rather than be inconvenienced by a stupid rule. Decide whether to run a stop sign rather than be inconvenienced by a stupid sign. Decide whether to design for accessibility rather than be inconvenienced by a stupid building code. Decide whether or not to park on a bicycle path rather than be inconvenienced by stupid markings.

While I may not agree with all the rules, this is not the kind of society I would want to live in. Sorry if that offends anyone.

This is pretty philosophical. But I will argue that we already live in this kind of society. There is no prior restraint on running a stop sign. You can run it if you want. There might be a post-hoc consequence to it, in the unlikely event that you get caught. But when too many people break the rules, or when the rules are unenforceable, then sometimes the rules get reformed. We see that sometimes in this country.

I'd also claim that ideally the rules should conform to most peoples' value judgments about them. If rules fail to do that, then we are encouraging rule breaking.

Yes, I'd agree this is already the society we live in, many of the rules we have are entirely unenforced.

Moderate speeding (say, 70 on Fischer-Hallman or 115 on the 401), stopping before the stop line, signalling turns, walking after the walk sign is off but while the countdown shows enough time to proceed (this is an example of a rule that is frequently reformed, it has been reformed in multiple US states), generally these are rules which are generally not enforced, and are broken quite frequently by people--even myself.