Re: Growth of actions definded as crime. Which math formula?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:32 PM 9/6/95, Al Thompson wrote:
>At 02:00 AM 9/6/95 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote:
>
>>Created crimes are few and far between.
>
>You mean like buying a 30 round magazine, or putting a different
>stock of your choice on a rifle, or owning an automatic weapon,
>or mailing crypto out of the country, or hiring someone due to their
>race, or not hiring someone because they are "fat?"

Or drinking alcohol, or owning gold, or possessing a copy of a Traci Lords
video, or selling bullets recently declared illegal, or having a "men only"
gym (but "women only" gyms are legal), or making condoms available, or not
making condoms available, or teaching women how to use birth control, or
denying a Satanist a job at a child care center on the basis of his
religious beliefs, and so on. Too many transient, created crimes.

To answer Lucky's original question, one way to measure the total number of
new laws--most of them covering "created crimes"--is to measure the total
number of volumes of statutes at the Federal, state, and local levels.

I've seen figures on the "linear feet" of regulations, and how they are
growing exponentially, but I don't recall the numbers. Something like the
total number of laws doubling every 10 years or so, but don't quote me on
this one.

Whether these are "created crimes" in most cases is unclear, but certainly
the really basic crimes (murder, assault, rape, theft, etc.) were
adequately covered 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, etc. I can see some
reasons for refining the definitions in the light of new situations, but I
have to conclude that _most_ of the vast number of new laws and statutes
deal with "created crimes," as I understand the term.

--Tim May

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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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