#walter olson

[eccentric-opinion]

[W]hen people show contempt for your liberty, it can be a sign that they have contempt for you, too.

Walter Olson

[pejmanyousefzadeh]

This is "free enterprise"?

[pejmanyousefzadeh]

Amazingly enough, this is not a joke.

[pejmanyousefzadeh]

Mandating Safety

It turns out that bikers oppose mandatory bike helmet laws. Walter Olson's thoughts on the matter mirror my own:

For bike advocates, the main problem seems to be that fear of being ticketed under a mandatory law is likely to discourage casual short-hop users from participating in the sort of Bikeshare program that has become popular in Washington, D.C. and is expected to spread soon into the Maryland suburbs.  Bike advocates cite a “safety in numbers” theory: once the novices and impulse users drop out for fear of being hassled by police for their lack of head protection, the only urban bicyclists will be the dedicated types who carry a helmet around with them just in case, and motorists (the theory goes) are more likely to ignore bicyclists’ safety needs when they don’t see them around much. Farthing, of WABA, is also concerned that once helmet use is legally obligatory, officials may be unwilling to open Bikeshare docking stations “for fear that they would be legally liable” after an accident for facilitating unhelmeted use.

In other words, you can care about safety, but not want it enforced by government decree. Kind of a revolutionary idea – especially in today’s Washington, D.C.

A revolutionary idea in other places as well.

[mouthyheritage]

Yesterday, the San Francisco Examiner featured an Op Ed by Walter Olson, editor ofOverlawyered.com, on the demise of the “innocuous” hobby of coin collecting. Olson belittles the recent repatriation requests of Egypt, Peru, and Greece, and bemoans the domestic laws that ban the trade of pre-Columbian and indigenous remains and artifacts. He calls the rights of origin countries to their cultural property a “dubious premise”, citing the fact that national governments and modern cultures are often distinct from the culture whose artifacts they want returned. Olson broadly claims that these national governments “often lack the will or the means to conserve fragile artifacts as well as collectors would.” He asks if some sort of property right is at issue, and muses,

“Well, one might conceivably argue that certain artifacts, such as funerary urns and temple friezes, must by their nature be regarded as stolen property since at some point they must have been looted from sites originally contemplated as permanent. However, temples might choose to sell their friezes, dynasties go out of business with no receiver in bankruptcy and so forth.”

However, he believes that coins should be treated differently, stating that they “were meant to circulate”. He ends by asking, “Yet modern antiquities law falls over itself to cater to the wishes of the jealous sovereign, at a cost to both fairness and the interests of conservation. Why?”

I’ll tell you why, Mr. Olson.