Sunrise With Schubert

For years, I’ve used the simple four-way traffic stop as an amateur “game-play” example of rulemaking in public administrations. No, now stay with me here.

Think about it. It is a perfectly fair, non-discriminatory, self-policing phenomenon that requires little, if any regulatory framework. We don’t need an entire bureaucratic apparatus writing volumes about how to maneuver through a four-way stop.

Ever who gets there first, goes next. Gee, that’s simple.

Oh, there are other considerations maybe. There are oddly designed intersections that can cause confusion. And there is the tendency of “control freaks” to motion for you go ahead, not realizing that their deeply tinted windshields prevent your processing their generosity.

And police departments do demand their overuse on streets that should move traffic. Sadly. In the age of so-called “helicopter parents,” police in suburban cities had rather hold up the traffic flow for everyone than face a two-hour cursing from a parent whose “precious innocent” had been ticketed for speeding.

All in all, though, four-ways have served us well.

Yes, I had often used the four-way stop as a lesson in self-regulation. I also used the example of Ebay and others in maintaining honesty through a voluntary rating system. Then, there is the notion, so hated by regulatory purists, called “nudging.” That is a process of governing that rewards and makes life simpler for those doing the things considered proper.

But back to four-way stops as an ethical and moral lesson. I would, in the past, proclaim, to whomever, that in all my years of driving, I had only seen two flagrant examples of perfidy at intersections governed by four-way stops. One was nearly fifty years ago when they were first introduced in my home town. An elderly matron in the “high-rent” district, totally unused to restrictive rules, sailed through one as she had sailed through most events of her life.

The second was ten years or so by a teenager driving a pickup truck on a street near a school in one of our state’s “white-flight” cities. The driver embellished that action with a hand gesture and the facts speak for themselves.

As long as it can affect them personally, though, Americans love fairness, and will abide fair restrictions.

That all may have changed now. In the last week, I’ve witnessed two additional and flagrant violations of the “first come, first through” behavioral contract.

I fear that this signals a new social paradigm, and, if I’m right, I will blame politics. We are drifting off into a lawless world in which educated people are increasingly skeptical of rules of social interaction. We even have a small, but scary, political party dedicated to the sophomoric concept of libertarianism (the style of non-government that works so well in Somalia).

Whether it be denying a sitting United States president the right to nominate someone to fill a Supreme Court vacancy or developing laws to restrict citizens' right to vote, we daily witness a departure from civilized behavior.

The best example I can give is a society in which any behavior is allowed as long as the referee doesn’t see it. Concomitantly, aberrant behavior is allowed even if the ref sees it but is powerless to do anything about it. The increasing acceptance of that as an allowable form of government simply scares the hell out of me.

The problem is, as I see it, that an abandonment of social norms—at least those properly dedicated to the health, safety, and welfare of us all—may not lead to less social restrictions, it may lead to greater and more tragic social restrictions. At least that’s how I think the victims of the French, German, and Russian revolutions would see it.

I increasingly fail to understand how we would make America great “again” by abandoning any cultural foundation-block that ever served to make America great. I’ll keep trying, although I’ll have to disregard slavery, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, Vietnam, and Iraq. Yes, that narrows the window.

In the meantime, be wary of four-way stops. They may not be safe in this era of “government as professional wrestling.”

The Libertarian Dream