At 05:52 PM 08/02/2003 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
You seem to miss the fundamental point of what 'law' is for in a democracy.
No, Jim, he understands exactly what law is for in a democracy, which is enforcing anything 51% of the people want until something else gets its 15 minutes of public attention, and that includes "doing something" about spam, or about people with the wrong skin color or nationality wanting to live in your neighborhood, or making sure that people with the wrong combinations of number or gender can't be married, or providing landing zones for visitors from other planets. What law is for in a free society is an entirely different question - I think you're saying that laws that define spam as a tort are wrong as well as not useful, and I think agree with you. But democracy is only compatible with a free society when everybody remembers to bash politicians who interfere with freedom. Laws _could_ help by defining use of nuclear weapons on spammers to be justifiable homicide (or litterin' an' creatin' a disturbance.)