Full Text RSS
Email UpdatesToo many people - even smart people - believe the only way to change something is by passing a new law. At the core of all law enforcement is coercion and force. Go ahead and tell a police officer you aren’t going to comply with the law and you’ll see what I mean (I’m kidding - don’t try it - I’m just trying to make a point). As a nation, we’ve either forgotten what can happen when a law is enforced, or we don’t care. This is an example of how some of us are willing to use the force of law to end the simplest of disagreements.
Last summer I was talking to my neighbor about youth baseball, when I asked, “Did you see that New York City passed a law banning aluminum bats in youth baseball games. Isn’t that outrageous?”
My neighbor is a smart successful small businessman. He’s a hunter and a lifelong Republican and I love having him as a neighbor and a friend. But I am going to use his quote to make a point.
He replied, “I’m with ‘em on that one. There should be a law here too. Aluminium bats are dangerous. The ball comes off the bat too fast.”
I don’t have an opinion about the safety of the bats. I don’t know enough about it. I know people have reasonable opinions on both sides of the issue.
But I do have an opinion about laws like these.
Youth baseball leagues have governing boards which set the rules of the game. The government shouldn’t set the rules, the league members should set the rules. So if you want aluminum bats removed from your youth baseball league, petition the youth baseball association and not the government. There is no need for the government to regulate the rules in youth sports, we are capable of doing that privately.
Or are we incapable of resolving an issue as simple as baseball rules without government? Is that what we’ve become as a free society?
A law like this shows a lack of respect for the rule of law itself and for free society. When laws like this are enforced, they make a mockery of real law enforcement.
Baseballs off metal bats kill people.
Baseballs off wood bats don’t.
Go find out what a trampolined fastball going 150+ back into your teeth from 50 feet away tastes like.
Comment by Joe Bob March 20th, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
@Joe Bob,
That isn’t the question. The question is… Is this the role of government?
Comment by The Savage March 20th, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
Does it really matter? In California (my home state until I moved to Ohio in 2005) the cops can arrest you for having ANY bat in the trunk of your car.
If you can PROVE you are going to a game, you MIGHT be okay… but it is up to the discretion of the officer. It’s crazy! Why are we not judged by our actions instead of what the sporting goods in our trunk COULD do?
FYI… No, I do not have a criminal record.
PS I have a good friend with a large extended family that used to carry bats, gloves, and baseball in her trunk for when the family got together… which was often. She no longer does… not since dating a cop who told her it could get her into trouble. I was stunned!
America is dying. =0(
Comment by Michael N. March 20th, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
To answer your question, yes, this very much *is* the role of government.
In particular, for statistical effects that are provably real, but difficult or impossible for individuals to notice and prepare for, government regulation is an excellent way to address the problem.
If the individuals making the bat choice were also going to have to suffer the consequences themselves, and if they were not minors, there’d be a better argument for leaving this one alone. But it’s not so. It’s a no-brainer (no pun intended).
Comment by skeptic March 20th, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
@skeptic
Why can’t this be left to the youth sports associations to sort out?
If it is the role of government then what isn’t the role of government? Can the government dictate the length of spikes, the hardness of the ball, the brand of catchers equipment? How about the positioning of the fence or the maximum speed the pitcher is allowed to throw the ball? Why have sports association? Aluminum bats are still used in amateur baseball all over the United States. If it is the role of government, should congress act to prevent injuries? Should congress deny funding to states and cities who fail to ban aluminum bats? Should the government dictate the rules of youth hockey? The equipment required?
If this is such a huge problem, a life and death problem, why don’t the parents running the youth sports associations ban them and leave the government out of it? Why are they incapable of solving it without government coercion? Is it because they don’t care as much a few people who understand the dangers?
Comment by The Savage March 20th, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
FYI,
As happens frequently, if you question such laws proponents imply you want children to die which isn’t accurate. Kids die thousands of ways. We aren’t debating children dying. I think we are all against that. We are debating a law. Can it be proven that that wood bats cause fewer injuries?
But even if it can be proven, the question still remains… Why can’t parents make this decision for themselves? Is it because we’ve decided parents can’t be trusted to make their own decisions?
I’ve looked for a documented case of a baseball hit by an aluminum bat killing a kid. I can’t find a case. In fact I can’t even find stats on injuries. Anyone have a reference?
Comment by The Savage March 20th, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Savage,
I think you’re main question answers itself. If all the parents and youth leagues were on top of this, I doubt the government would be involving itself. Why haven’t they? It’s probably just not something they have time to think/learn about.
(I’m assuming we’re assuming that there is good evidence on the bat question. If not, obviously we’d want it before making a law.)
Comment by skeptic March 20th, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
Skeptic,
So the government is preemptively acting on behalf of people who don’t yet know they need protection?
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Is it because the average parent just doesn’t understand how dangerous aluminum bats are? How will we ever learn to think for ourselves? Aren’t we fast approaching a time when we can justifiably do something stupid and then say, the government never told me I couldn’t do that? How was I supposed to know? There should be a law.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a friend of mine spent 5 years in the Ukraine helping farmers. He experienced first hand the results of years of government micro management. He said farmers didn’t think critically because for generations the government made all the decisions for them. They didn’t know how to adjust for weather, how to rotate crops, how to make decisions based on changing conditions, because they had been conditioned not to think for themselves. He said that his biggest challenge wasn’t poverty, his biggest challenge was getting average people to think critically and trust themselves to make good decisions.
When we can’t trust parents and baseball associations to set the rules of their own games, doesn’t it seem we are headed in the same direction?
Where will it end? What is the limit to this kind of thinking? Since the average person can’t know everything, must there be a law to protect them from all dangers? How could they possibly commit all of these laws to memory?
As you can see from another reader, in California, the government doesn’t trust average people to transport any baseball bat in their car, even the trunk. If we refuse to take responsibility for ourselves and we surrender the power of decision making to bureaucrats, when will it end?
Comment by The Savage March 21st, 2008 @ 10:41 am
Hmm. Having people learn the dangers (remember, we are presuming here) of aluminum bats by trial-and-error doesn’t sound like a good idea.
I’m a little curious, though–how little government would you like to have? Do you object to restaurant inspections? A police department? Social security? Emergency rooms?
Comment by skeptic March 21st, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
Skeptic,
How else would you find out aluminum bats are dangerous? Baseball is dangerous as are most sports. People get hurt… even killed playing sports. How would the government know aluminum bats are dangerous before anyone ever used them? Should there be a federal Youth Sports Safety Administration - YSSA where all sports products must be tested approved before they are allowed onto the market? Of course I wouldn’t like that, but that seems to be where you are headed with this discussion.
I’ve never given restaurant inspections any thought. I don’t know if I’d object to them. That might be a good topic to discuss on a different post. I have a few friends who own restaurants and they might give me some inside info. I can assume they would say they are opposed. I assume they would say, “If I served poison, I’d be out of business, sued, and broke. So inspections are basically a waste of time and money. Just a make work job for people.” I assume the inspectors are just a pain in the ass and don’t make much of difference. I used to work in restaurants and so did my wife. You wouldn’t believe the crap that goes on in those kitchens.
I once met a vending machine inspector. I asked what he did every day. He said he just traveled around the city making sure the vending machines were clean. I thought it was pretty silly myself. A bit of a waste of human potential. He was a bright guy who could probably be doing a lot more with his life. The opportunity cost was high. Oh well, maybe he liked it, but he didn’t seem very happy.
Police? How else would one enforce laws? Let’s just make sure they have the time and resources to enforce the serious crimes and not bog them down and turn them into nannies. A lot of modern police departments have been turned into profit centers for the city instead of services. I opposed to them being abused as revenue generators. I’m open to new ideas though. If someone can think of a better way… let’s talk.
Social security? I think private plans could return much better results. I could write book about the ponzi scheme that is SS. Do you know that if you owned a business and ran a retirement plan exactly as the Federal government runs SS that you’d be put in prison for a long long time. That should tell you little about Social Security. If I could, I’d opt out in a minute.
Emergency Rooms? Around here they are all private and always have been. But in some areas they are going out of business because people are abusing them and refusing to pay their bills. I think the US medical system is quite good, but it could be far better if we had less government regulation and interference in the market.
Comment by The Savage March 21st, 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Skeptic,
I just talked to my wife about the restaurant inspectors. She knows a lot more about that business than I do. She said, in her experience they do make a difference. She thought they prevent some serious problems and she tends to like government even less than I do. I’d like to hear from others. I’ll post on it someday.
Comment by The Savage March 21st, 2008 @ 2:45 pm
Great post.
I’ve been around baseball my entire life and I’ve seen more injuries with balls coming off of wood bats than I have off of aluminum bats. I am NOT saying that wooden bats are more dangerous, I know very well that balls fly faster off of aluminum bats. What I AM saying is that, based on my experience, there is a chance of getting injured, even killed, no matter which bat is used. Should we just outlaw the sport completely?
I am confident that parents and youth organizations are intelligent enough to make responsible decisions for how to run their league.
This is another area where we’re allowing the government to protect us from ourselves. A colleague of mine and I were discussing seat belt laws and my feeling is that I wear a seat belt because I choose to be safe, not because there is a fine attached to not wearing it. My colleague believes that this, and other personal safety laws, is an important law. At what point did we determine that we needed the government to tell us how to protect ourselves from ourselves? When did we determine that we, as a people, are not intelligent enough to make decisions for ourselves?
I’m constantly amazed by people (such as my colleague) who are ready and willing to admit that they’re not intelligent enough to make responsible decisions. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs says that after physiological needs (food, water, etc) people will protect their safety next. I guess we’ve evolved to the point where this is only the case if we’re told to protect our safety by the government.
Comment by Justin March 21st, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
I just hopped over from your other blog. This post completely met my expectations as to what this blog would be. You’re right–one way we get to totalitarianism because of this expectation that we have that life should be totally…safe. And then we’ll all be shiny happy people.
No way should the government regulate things like this. I work with a whole bunch of people who say otherwise. Two of the teachers I work with will call the cops to write tickets for minor classroom disturbances. They want more laws, just like your neighbor. I hope that a lot of people read this blog and get it.
Comment by Bloggrrl March 22nd, 2008 @ 7:00 am
I’m curious, how do they intend to punish the offenders? And who exactly do they intend to punish? Are they going to cart coaches off the field in handcuffs for allowing kids to use aluminum bats? Or are they going to fine the players individually? How do they intend to enforce this at all? Cops on the sideline? Undercover investigations? Investing a single man hour into it would be an unjustifiable waste of time and money. I imagine most people will just ignore it like the majority of similar laws that we all ignore to some extent.
I can see it now though, a cop standing over the crumpled form of a ten year old with a taser in his hands, “Those things are dangerous kid.. you should know better..”
Comment by MarcusBrutus March 22nd, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
Savage: Great post! I think the biggest problems to removing the govt from all this nanny-managing of us are the trial lawyers and victim-minded individuals. With our lawsuit-happy victim mentality, no one is allowed real mistakes anymore. So the govt is pushed by a variety of groups to enact law after law to protect us from ourselves.
Comment by Jan March 23rd, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
To all of those who are defending this absurd law I have to ask…
Are we going to ban wooden bats next? After all people are beaten to death by them…it just makes sense….
Or maybe we should just ban the ball - after all kids have been killed by pitches too! Shoot - let’s just have government come in and either pad young players in football like protective gear or ban the game altogether. After all - we’re just protecting the kids!
Oh and I am a baseball purist - I think metal bats are an ABOMINATION to the game.
LL
Comment by The Lady Logician March 24th, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
LL,
I agree metal bats are an abomination. I prefer wood bats in every way, just like I prefer outdoor football. But I don’t want the government to build me an outdoor football stadium just because I prefer it. And, in the same breath… And I hope you see the connection… I don’t use drugs, I don’t smoke, I wear my seat belt, I wear a helmet on a motorcycle, my kids wear bike helmets, they sit in automobile safety seats…
And I live this way not because the government tells me I must…
I live this way because I’ve decided to for myself. It is my choice as a free man, and no government can take that right from me, except by locking me in a cage.
Unfortunately, there appears to be a majority who have decided that if I deviate from their prescribed ‘lifestyle’ they have the right to remove me from ‘their’ society…
The use of government is the use of coercion and its power should be exercised with the utmost restraint. Our legislators have become nasty little busybodies with a police force. What an ugly combination.
Thanks much for stopping by and I look forward to the convention on Saturday.
Comment by The Savage March 24th, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
“I live this way because I’ve decided to for myself. It is my choice as a free man, and no government can take that right from me, except by locking me in a cage.”
BINGO!!! That is the same reason why I recycle and I turn the heat down when we are not home and why I live with minimal to no lights on when we are home…not because government says I must but because I choose to!
That is what freedom is all about.
See you Saturday!
LL
Comment by The Lady Logician March 24th, 2008 @ 6:14 pm