The Citarum River: Jakarta, Indonesia
6th June 2007
by gordo
No, that’s not an old boat that was thrown onto a trash heap. That boat is actually floating on the world’s most polluted river.
From the Daily Mail:
So dense is the carpet of refuse that the tiny wooden fishing craft which float through it are the only clue to the presence of water. Their occupants no longer try to fish. It is more profitable to forage for rubbish they can salvage and trade - plastic bottles, broken chair legs, rubber gloves - risking disease for two or three dollars a week if they are lucky.
More than 500 factories, many of them producing textiles which require chemical treatment, line the banks of the 200-mile river, the largest waterway in West Java, spewing waste into the water. On top of the chemicals go all the other kinds of human detritus from the factories and the people who work there. There is no such luxury as a rubbish collection service here. Nor are there any modern toilet facilities. Everything goes into the river.
As recently as the 1980s, the Citarum supported fishermen and irrigated rice paddies. Now, its pollution threatens Lake Saguling, site of a massive power generator. Soon, the power generator will not be able to function properly, and Jakarta’s 9 million people will have a power crisis to go along with the new scarcity of food and potable water.
Remember the Citarum River, next time some Libertarian tries to tell you that government regulation is a bad thing.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I know what the Libertarian would say to that.
“Give people ownership rights to the river and they will take care of it themselves.”
One of the things I hate the most is litter. I absolutely detest it when I see people toss their McDonalds bags and empty soda cups out the window and onto the parking lot pavement.
I once e-mailed one of the more prominent Libertarians, Jacob Hornberger, and asked him what the Libertarian solution to littering was. His terse reply was “Privatize the sidewalks.”
I thought to myself, “Who the eff would want to own a sidewalk? I mean, what would you do with it, charge companies a fee to have their advertisements spraypainted on to it?”
If I lived there and had free time, I would probably spend a couple of hours a week picking out trash out of that river to try to help clean it up.
I have a good friend who lives in Jakarta. She is part of the Christian Chinese minority there. She can’t wait to get out of there and come to either the US or Canada.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Tommy–
The idea of privatizing sidewalks is a good example of why libertarianism isn’t very popular. Most people like sidewalks, and are willing to pay for them. But they’re not willing to invest in a small stretch of sidewalk that doesn’t go anywhere. For the sidewalk to be useful at all, it has to be a large project. So it’s a worthwhile investment, but only if you can get everyone to invest.
Indonesia is the country I like to point to when the Libertarians start spouting their BS. It has a central government that is very weak, except where it comes to law enforcement and national defense. Taxes are low, and public services and regulations are almost non-existent. A Libertarian’s economic dream.
Indonesia also illustrates why Libertarianism can’t work. At some point, the people are going to demand the sorts of services and protections that only a strong government can provide. So in a free society, libertarian economics will eventually give way to socialism or New Deal capitalism. So the only way to preserve libertarian economics is to keep the people away from the levers of power; libertarian economics requires authoritarian government, which is precisely what we see in Indonesia. And in South America, the libertarian economic systems of the past have been replaced in just about every democratic country.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:15 am
If I own sidewalk.
I will turn it into a garbage dump, the industrial toxic type. And let other people clean it up when they can’t stand it anymore.
sure as hell cheaper than propal disposal of industrial dump.
It’s all in the “cost” right? So If I can push out the ‘externalities’ to other people why not.
eh hmmm.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Squashed–
Right. Most economists accept the fact that there are many situations in which everybody loses if everybody pursues their own self interest. This has been the mainstream view, even among conservative economists, since the 1950s. But the libertarians never quite caught up.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I know that the opinion if a 12 year old boy is not much but I belive that Citarum river has got to a state where even major orginizations like WWF could not save this poor clogged polluted river but at least there could be some way to make the river less hazourdous to the people who live beside the river bank and I would enjoy to hear anyone who has a good enough suggestion
November 29th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Luke–
I think you’re right when you say that the Citarum River can’t be saved by environmental organizations. History tells us that repairing the damage to the river will require action by the Indonesian government.
But with the help of the government, it is possible to undo a lot of the damage. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio used to be so polluted that it would catch fire. The water quality didn’t improve until a series of government actions, which included laws against polluting the river and large cleanup projects.
Various organizations, such as the Asia Development Bank, have shown an interest in studying and helping to finance projects that would help clean up the Citarum River, but any efforts to do so have to be accompanied by government action. It seems to me that individuals who want to help can do so by organizing letter-writing campaigns to the Indonesian consulate, to their own government representatives, and to environmental organizations. The idea is to persuade other governments and environmental groups to put pressure on the Indonesian government to take action.
Letter-writing campaigns that have originated in schools and churches have had a great deal of influence in the past. It takes awhile to have an effect, but the longest journey starts with a single step.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:44 am
I am very happy you have replied to my comment, I thought it would take at least a month before anyone noticed that a new message had been put up. Even if the Indonisian government was put under pressure by enviormental or governmental agencies I dont think it would have enough money to deal with the problem without funding from various orginzations but those orginizations would either not care or not have enough money EITHER. I think that some people DO care about the Citarum river but not enough to actually save this river.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:56 am
Luke–
Fortunately, I still get few enough comments that I can read them all as they appear. If you look at the upper right corner of the page, you’ll see a feature called “unread comments”, which has links to all of the comments that you haven’t read yet.
December 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Libertarians have difficulty understand the “tragedy of the commons”, folks.
In some sense they are philosophically as confused about human nature as the communists are.
Both philosophies insist that if only people would buy into their goofy scheme, the world would be utopia.
While I am sympathetic to their complain that governments inevitably become corrupt, they apparently do not realize that power, no matter how it is vested inevitably corrupts those who have it.
Corporations kill people, too.
They never want to admit that, but history (past AND present) keep proving that to us.
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:39 am
You are missing out on some important facts. Libertarianism can work, and you are missing out on some of the important facts about how it has to work. I will agree, things like roads and lighthouses require the involvement of government to be built, because no private entity has reason to build them. But one they are built, they can be kept and maintained by private entities.
Lets take that sidewalk you were talking about. Sure enough, it can’t be built by anyone but the government. But once it is built, you can make back a percentage, if not all of what it cost to build it in the first place. Sell that sidewalk to private companies. It has value to them. Lets put some advertisements on it. In return, it’s upkeep and its initial costs are covered by the private sector.
Now lets apply this to the river. I agree, there is no way to solve a problem like this once things have gotten this bad without government involvement. But that government involvement doesn’t have to cost the tax payers a thing. Some controls must be levied on pollution. There are other ways to solve the problem, but they require even worse infringements on the rights of the corporations and the tax payers. So, set a limit for the amount of pollution to be put into the water. Make that limit sustainable, meaning the government can effectively clean out that much pollution. Now, that money to clean things out has to come from somewhere. So we are going to charge the companies to pollute. This is effectively a tax on the consumer, as the increased cost of manufacturing will be passed to the consumer. However, this is not an affront to libertarian views. Rather, it is simply a change in cost to reflect the actual costs of production. The pollution in the river is certainly a cost of production, so let that price be reflected in the final price of the good.
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 pm
That makes no sense. If a private company cannot see a reason to build a road/lighthouse/etc why on earth would that company buy the project when it is finished?
That may be all well and good for times square or wallstreet but for the other 98% of sidewalks in this country there isn’t a huge incentive for ownership. Even in places where there is an incentive for ownership the value of a slab of concrete is pretty low. Again we go back to the old, if a private company cannot see a reason to build it in the first place why would they buy it even at cost?
Lets come back from dreamworld for a moment. The cost of a cleanup of this size will likely hit the billions (if not tens of billions) of dollars there is just no way that tax payers will not see a hit. Heck even if you shut down and liquidated the companies it’s unlikely to raise enough money.
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Because the projects, once finished, have value. You’re right, this isn’t true in all cases. But it is true in many, and more importantly, for the ones that are hugely expensive in the first place.
Because building a piece of sidewalk that doesn’t connect to anything makes no sense. But once a network has been established, that sidewalk is suddenly connected to lots of other sidewalk, lending it value. Thus the initial construction would have to be done by the government, but once its done, the finished project has value to private companies. I agree, not all sidewalk would be top ad space. But the parts that are can cover some of the cost of the rest.
Tens of billions of dollars? I think not. I don’t know enough about this river to make a call about cost, but it seems to me that you could just impose the controls I have suggested, and the problem will begin to take care of itself. With a hugely decreased load on the river, things will begin to improve. After all, all rivers lead to the ocean.
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Libertarian–
You’re ignoring the fact that this problem was caused by Indonesia’s libertarian policies with regard to environmental regulation. So now you’re saying that government action is required to clean up the river, and then Indonesia can go back to its libertarian policies again. Until next time.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t help in this case. The Citarum River is dammed, and the water flowing over that dam provides much of Jakarta’s power. That’s the main reason that the government is at all concerned over the pollution of the river.
There are a lot of countries like Indonesia that embrace libertarian economics. They have low tax rates, depend on private companies to build and maintain much of their infrastructure, and they are virtually unregulated in terms of environmental impact, worker safety, consumer protection, and labor relations. Countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and the Philippines. We often refer to these countries collectively as “the third world.”
Libertarian economics are a lot like communist economics: they work great on paper, but they’ve actually succeeded 0% of the time.
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Not to mention that the owners of those companies polluting the Citarum are connected with the government.
Take the case of the mud “volcano” in Indonesia. An Indonesian company called PT Lapindo Brantas was digging a gas exploration well. They pierced through the mudstone into an aquifer that caused hot, high pressure water to shoot up into the mudstone, liquefying it, sending a virtually endless stream of mud up to the surface. It might take decades for the mud to stop erupting.
The company responsible is partly owned by the family of Indonesia’s welfare minister. Indonesia’s president, Susilo Yudhoyono, is apparently unwilling to sack the minister or come down hard on the company because he needs the family’s support. It would not surprise me if the situation with the Citarum is similar. The polluters are well connected families, some of whom probably have family members serving in the government.
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I agree, things aren’t working in any of the countries in which libertarianism is currently practiced. I am not arguing that libertarianism is the be all and end all of political/economic systems. I resent the comments comparing libertarianism to communism though. Libertarianism is not just an economic system like communism is. The comparison implies that both are economic systems that necessitate crippling political systems.
The mud volcano in Indonesia is the fault of a private company. I don’t know much about that situation, having read only a couple of articles. However, I do know that all of the proposed solutions have been put forward by private companies. (Granted, none of them from Indonesia.)
I didn’t know that the Citarum was dammed. Once again, I’m no expert, but I’m sure that the extensive cleanup that is necessary could be accomplished through a system similar to the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon credits. (Not that I am a huge supporter of the KP, but its carbon credit system has solid libertarian economics behind it.)
December 24th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Libertarian–
The paradox of libertarianism is that you can have libertarian economics or libertarian politics, but you can’t have both. At some point, the people will demand that their government provide services and protection from exploitation. When that happens, either the people will elect an interventionist government (USA 1932, Chile 2000, Brazil 2002, etc), or the government will repress the will of the people (El Salvador 1979, Congo 1961, Chile 1973, Haiti 1991 and 2004, etc). That’s why all of the countries that currently embrace libertarian economics are either current or recent dictatorships.
So what’s keeping those companies from implementing their solutions? Surely, the cleanup of the world’s most polluted river promises to be an incredibly profitable enterprise. They could sell advertising space on their cleanup vessels and on the uniforms of the cleanup crews. It wouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything!
You’re sure, huh? Well, I’m sure that the system would do as much to clean up the Citarum River as the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon credits have done to stop global warming.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:23 am
I have a health project with some of my friends were we have to clean up the river, and do a report on it, and all that stuff. I know the twelve-year-old already asked this, but if anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:23 am
I think the first step would be to impose regulations on the industries that use the river as a dump, in order to keep the problem from getting worse. You’d have to find a way of treating and disposing of the industrial waste as an alternative.
You’d also have to find alternatives to the city’s dumping its sewage and garbage in the river. The entire process of cleaning the river would be expensive and take a lot of time, and would require the government to raise taxes.
For more ideas, you might look into the cleanups of the Cuyohoga and Thames rivers, as these were cleanup projects that had a lot of success. And don’t forget to take into account the special challenges posed by the dam and power generating station.
March 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Okay, corny headline from our local (Liverpool) daily paper, I know. (.)(Maybe that’s where I picked up the habit, eh? I did some stuff for them for a while.)
Anway, here’s what happened with our own River Mersey.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Is It Just Me Or Is The Libertarian sounding like he is playing Monopoly^
I mean it sure sounds like it, and why cant the company just pollute somewhere else. I Mean Damn whose idea was it to use the RIVER as a a sewage and trash. Its A River I Htae Religions And all but its like a priest setting fire to the Bible, its destroying something useful for that religion to work or make sense.
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:47 am
Lio–
The problem is that there’s a competitive advantage to polluting the river instead of disposing of waste properly. Any company with a factory along the river that treats its waste before dumping it into the river will have higher costs than its competitors, and will soon be driven out of business. The only way to keep the rivers from being destroyed is through government regulation.
This, by the way, is why the Libertarians never get more than a 5% of the vote in national elections. Their hostility to government regulation and government action leads them to oppose popular programs like Social Security and it leads them to absurd positions like “It’s OK that lack of regulation led to the destruction of this river, because the market will soon create incentives for private companies to clean it up. Any day now. Just wait and you’ll see. Yep, any day now…”
So the Republican candidates can always kneecap the Libertarians by saying, “Yes, I agree that we should spend less money on welfare, but I think we should continue to have public schools, libraries, and parks.”
And when you think about it, Libertarians DO think that they’re playing Monopoly. In Monopoly, the government has only three functions: it charges taxes, it requires businesses to make useless “repairs”, and it randomly sends people to jail. In other words, nothing the government does helps anyone, and everything it does has the effect of either impeding commerce or sucking money out of the economy.
That pretty much sums up the Libertarian view of government. What they don’t take into account is the fact that at the end of the game, you have one player who has all of the money, and five who have nothing.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Gordo- thanx for the reply
Well yess i understand the regulations and governments have different suggestions about laws..but why don’t they not pass laws that appose the dumping of waste and trash into rivers and such important resources, i mean then costs would be equal in some way?? i may just be 15 and not really have a clue about those things, but it sounds good to me, i don’t think the government will lose much. Even So, they would win a little by fixing up there economy.
Libertarism really sounds like a waste of time,because most things that we are destroying CANNOT be recreate to its natural existence, and even if we do those things take time, and certain occurrences.
The Repulican, hmm i have always favored the Democrat not that i no much about either, but just Democrats seem to have more of an appeal =]
Well wouldnt the way things break down in Monopoly work the same in real life.?? If the connecion of w/e it is, say sidewalks gets blocked or broken, then all of their values would be reduced as well? If Soo That Sounds like a horrible plan.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:05 am
The difference is that in real life, the services provided by the government are required to keep the economy functioning. In monopoly, the government charges a tax for street repairs, but the players don’t see any benefit. In real life, those streets are necessary to keep the game going.
Indonesia is an instructive example. In most respects, the Indonesian economy is exactly the sort of low-tax, low-regulation environment that Libertarians favor. The river has become polluted because the government doesn’t regulate the companies that dump pollutants and garbage in the river. Also, the government provides very little money for education, which hurts overall economic efficiency because of widespread illiteracy. Lack of health care and lack of access to clean water also hurts the productivity of the workforce. Lack of poverty relief also creates inefficiency and hampers economic growth, as this World Bank report demonstrates.
So the libertarians have it exactly backward. Lack of government involvement doesn’t make the economy more efficient, it makes the economy less efficient. There’s a point of diminishing returns, of course, which is why there’s always a debate between the Democrats and Republicans as to how much government involvement there should be. But the Libertarians favor a level of involvement that’s clearly insufficient.
October 24th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Indonesia also has the problem of crony capitalism. The government ministers are also members of the wealthy business owning families there. So they naturally rig the game to favor them, and the common people get screwed. If I recall correctly, one of the ministers owns a company that was responsible for unleashing the mud volcano in central Java while drilling. No one can find a way to make the mud volcano stop and its just going to keep spewing crap out until it finally exhausts itself. Meanwhile, a lot of people are being displaced from their homes.
October 24th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hmm yea i get it now, i understand that all Libertarianism is just like a group of opportunists looking for some way to get things for themselves, and trying to hide it with money,and freedom. Which i MAY be able to understand to a point. Who Doesnt like money and freedom, Everyone likes those things. So if Libertarianism is spposed to be such a good thing and a solution to thing.. Then why hasnt it worked.. XD haah id like to tell a Libertarian that..
yea well i have learned more than have learned in History class =D
thank you guys for being soo friendly.
December 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
In the end, nobody disagrees that this river needs cleaning up. It is just a matter of who will pay for it. Inevitably the answer to that is “not I!” It is quite the same with healthcare in the US. We all agree that we should care for everybody. I do not know of any person who thinks somebody should be denied treatment for some serious problem because the have not the money to pay for it.
The difference between the two situations though, is that in the US, all health care bills are paid, one way or another. Either through local governemt, charitable organizations, insurance of one kind or another, or what have you. The cleanup of this river is clearly not being paid for. I have visited Jakarta and to think that the water coming from the tap in the places I stayed was from this huge open sewer is quite alarming. It is not only the companies that are causing the pollution, but the average person in Indo also contributes a large amount of the problem.
Perhaps one way is to make the people of Indo more aware of the consequences of pollution, and instill a sense of caring about the environment in them. I always recall the famous TV ad from back in the 1970’s, with the Indian with a tear in his eye. It had a huge effect on peoples perception of the world around them. It played a large part in the beginnings of the environmental movement in the USA. Really, to change the country, change the thinking of masses of people. We are so fortunate here to have one of the cleanest industrial societies on Earth. It is only because people are truely concerned and not just willing to “pass the buck” to others that it is so.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Bruce K–
Every person who doesn’t think we should have universal access to health care believes this. So you probably know a lot of people who think that people should be denied treatment for serious problems if they don’t have enough money to pay for it. You might buy into the myth that nobody in America is ever denied care because they can’t pay. Nataline Sarkisyan probably believed that, too.
To the extent that we have a relatively clean industrial society, we have it because of government regulation. Without that, environmentally conscious factory owners would be forced out of business by competitors with lower cost structures.
In the US, increased public awareness of environmental problems led voters to demand regulation. But in Indonesia, lack of public awareness isn’t the problem. As you say, there are open sewers and the tap water is alarming. Everyone knows that there’s a serious problem. But nothing gets done because the government isn’t responsive to the people, but to the corporations that own the factories.
This is exactly the situation that the Libertarians are trying to create in the US with a new legal interpretation of government “takings”. According to them, the government “takes” a portion of your property whenever it regulates what you can do on it. In their view, if the government tells you that you have to start treating industrial waste before dumping it into a river, then the government has to pay for the treatment. If they’re successful, the government will be unable to effectively respond to citizen demands for regulation, and American cities will start to resemble Jakarta.
December 9th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I vote Liberterian = I support and encourage anti-social behaviour.
December 14th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Yes, government regulation is a major reason for our cleaner environment here. However, it is because our government more a reflection of the true will of the people, more so than the government of any other large country on Earth. For good or bad, what the people believe here is sooner or later translated into public policy. It may not necessarily be a reflection of YOUR idea of what should be done, but it is a fairly accurate amalgamation of the totality of the public will.
The problem, as I see it, in Indonesia and other Asian countries, is that the people have yet to realize and have not been able to put to effective use the life changing power of a true functioning democracy. For too long the people of this area were simply told what to do, and they did it more or less, for fear of their own lives and safety. Indonesia has a functioning democracy now, such as it is. It will take time, years, decades perhaps for the people to fully take control of their situation. I do believe it will happen though. It took a long time even in the USA for people to acheive this. It takes education, and the slow realization by the people of the power they hold.
Factories are not the only source of the problem. People in their day to day lives can also make a difference. This is true in the US as well. It is not some law which makes the difference whether you toss your candy wrapper on the ground, or if you choose the disable the pollution equipment on your car. It is a sense of what is “the right thing to do” and the feeling that what you do as an individual does make a difference. Look at the filth clogging the river in Indo. Most of it is common household waste. When I traveled in Vietnam I noticed this firsthand. When someone in a car had something to get rid of, the window opened up and out it went. You should see the mess it makes along the highways there. For that matter, look at the ground in any left turn lane in an intersection in the US. See how many cigarette butts you can count while you wait for a green light. How many laws would we need to pass to clear this up?
December 14th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Actually, it is THE reason for our cleaner environment. Because protecting the environment adds to the cost of extraction of resources and manufacture of goods, businesses would completely despoil the environment if left to their own devices. Those businesses that acted responsibly would be quickly swallowed or run out of business by competitors that kept their cost structures low. If you need any confirmation of this fact, have a look at the US before the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, or at present day Indonesia, Philippines, El Salvador, Haiti, etc.
Our government is more responsive to the people than the governments of most countries, but I think it would be hard to make the case that it is more responsive than the governments of Canada, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, etc.
You seem to think that the lack of democracy in much of Asia is the function of culture. But Japan has been democratic for more than half a century, and Taiwan and South Korea have recently emerged as states with viable democratic governments. And it’s a bit hard for me to take seriously an American’s smug condescension as he talks about how Asians just do what they’re told to do. In the past decade, thousands of Burmese, Chinese, Thais, Indonesians, etc., have been killed, tortured, and “disappeared” into secret prisons for demanding basic rights. We Americans love to say that we cherish our freedom, but few of us would undergo that level of personal sacrifice for it.
I think we have a huge disagreement as to what constitutes a functioning democracy. The largest political party is the one that ruled Indonesia during the Suharto dictatorship. In 2004, its candidate for president was a retired general who had been responsible for much of the recent killing in East Timor. The second largest is headed by Megawati Sukarnoputri, who took power in 2001 in a bloodless coup, and who is the daughter of former dictator Sukarno. Many of Indonesia’s provinces have active separatist movements. It’s hard to imagine Indonesia’s government becoming an instrument of the people, rather than an instrument of narrow special interests, anytime soon.
OK, so by your admission, people in the US often litter. But you also recognize that the environment in the US is much cleaner than it is in Indonesia and other nations where industry is largely self-regulated. That looks to me like pretty good evidence that government regulation is what keeps the environment clean.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
We in the US suffer under the delusion that simply by passing a law or issuing a regulation that we can change the world. Yes, it does have some effect here. It is our way of life. We have more laws than any other country in history. Even the games we play, just look at the NFL and listen in when we have a couach throw a “challange flag”. It is a great testament to our orderly society, that people willingly submit themselves to laws and abide by the decisions of courts. If Al Gore had decided to fight on in the year 2000 election battle…who knows where we would be now?
Unfortunately, for most of the rest of humanity, those living in Asia in particular, written laws are a relatively new thing. Their scope and the respect regarded them is small compared to here in the western world. When discussing this with my Asian friends, I give an illustration with my hands, saying in the US written laws are “this much” (showing a wide gap) and unwritten laws (culture, tradition, superstition, etc.) are much less (showing a small gap). In Asian cultures, it is just the opposite. I have never heard a disagreement on this.
It is easy to change a law. It is quite another thing to change people, or peoples basic behavior. We have to look no further than the 55 mile per hour speed limit, or laws which prohibit racial discrimination to see that their practical effect is limited by the willingness of those governed to be controlled by them. To have any effective law, you first must at least begin to change the attitudes of people on a large scale. It is often a long, slow process. It can be accomplished through the media, of course, most effectively. As we have the most well developed media I know of, it is a relatively easy thing to do. With a people more remote from media contact, less influenced, or even unable to comprehend what they are being told (illiteracy, a mish-mash of hundreds of languages and a multitude of other factors being present) this process can truely be overwhelming.
Pass laws, yes, good thing. Make effective laws, or, make law something that is an effective force in society…you have quite allot of work to do.
December 18th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Sorry, but you’ve stumbled on one of my pet peeves: people saying that Gore didn’t fight hard enough in 2000. Gore did everything in his power to get the votes counted in Florida. The US Supreme Court halted the ballot counting and then ruled that a recount would be unconstitutional. It was a purely political decision that contradicted the letter of the constitution, but the fact is that it is the Supreme Court that interprets the constitution, rightly or wrongly. Once they had ruled, the only thing Gore could have done was ask congress to object to the certification of the election results in Florida. Such a challenge would have had no chance of overturning the election result.
You can’t be serious. Written laws are a relatively new thing in Asia? The Book of Punishments was published in 536 BCE.
It’s fairly easy to change basic behavior by enacting laws. You just pass a law against a traditional practice, and lock up everyone who continues the practice. There were huge changes made in Turkey, Utah, and elsewhere in less than a single generation. In the case of industrial pollution, you can make a big difference in a very short time simply by passing and enforcing a few laws.
You mention the laws against racial discrimination. Once the federal government began effectively enforcing those laws, there was a huge change in a single generation. The difference between Alabama in the 1950s and Alabama in the 1970s is like the difference between night and day. Prejudice was not eliminated, but the effects of prejudice were severely mitigated.
The bottom line is, changing the culture by changing the law is much more effective than sitting around and waiting for the culture to change on its own.