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| I am not a politician; I have no charisma nor political skills, nor the skills required to hire such people, nor the money it would take to successfully lobby against even one law (and there are many bad ones). In practice, I cannot get a law changed. My choices are obey or not.
Bummer. I think you're being a little bit of a negative Nancy and you are able to meaningfully participate in the political process more than you believe, but it's true that people can have diminished capacity to engage with or even understand some laws / politics. There are many unfair disabilities that nature inflicts. I hope that in the future we will have the material, technological, social, etc. ability to have much finer instruments than current legal systems for structuring behavior. That is not currently possible. Your impairment, though, doesn't result in an outcome substantially different than someone who must live under a law they dislike but is enacted through the existing legitimate processes.
| No, of course not. If I'm breaking the law I'm doing what I want because I want to do it, and I don't much care if The Man doesn't like it.
That's chill. Just don't shoot the cop that pulls you over for speeding and if you lose the court case pay your fine.
If nothing else, the country (and the state and even my town of ~50,000) is simply too big for all but a small percentage to meaningfully participate in the political process. And that small percentage is made up mostly of those who make a living of it.
All depends on how high those penalties are. At some point, it will be worth shooting over.
ETA: You would think that in a first world country it never would be. But some years ago in New York City, a cop stepped into the road front of my bicycle, forcing me to go onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting him. He then arrested me and charged me with riding my bike on the sidewalk. When I went to court, the judge in the Midtown court -- who was not the regular judge -- told me I was lucky the regular judge wasn't there or I'd be going to Rikers Island. Rikers Island is the rather notorious NYC jail; the chance of a middle-aged white collar guy getting out of there alive, with his ass intact, and without any bones broken isn't very good. It's not an original observation with me that if the penalty for speeding is death, no one stops for the flashing lights. So be it. Anyway, I don't ride a bike in NYC any more.
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