Safe Spaces for All
He ain’t wrong he’s just different.
—Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
Written by Ed Bruce in 1975 and popularized by Willie Nelson
I think I finally understand safe spaces. The world is going so fast and there are so many people who criticize you for doing or thinking differently that you want a space where it’s OK just to be you. We also want a safe space from worrying about thousands of laws that can affect anyone at any time even if we don’t know they exist.
For individuals, we are less and less tolerant of people who think and act differently. A new study shows that more and more people are afraid to say what they think, in fact, 9 in 10 people felt “emotionally or physically unsafe to speak their mind in the past 18 months.” Too many rules coming at us too fast creates fear and anxiety. Shouldn’t we make America a safe space by having less rules for what people do and think?
In fact, how can a democracy work if people are even afraid to discuss the issues?
How about giving everyone a safe space to speak their mind? If you don’t like what people say on Fox or MSNBC, you simply don’t tune them in. In effect, the choice of channels is a safe space. If you don’t like either, or all news for that matter, you don’t have to listen to any of it.
Those are informal rules, but we have also wrapped ourselves in formal rules that smother us.
Those are rules produced by governments at every level and there are so many of them that no one can possibly know every law and regulation that applies to them. No one.
At the federal level, we add 9.5 new regulatory requirements every hour.[1] A regulatory restriction is a requirement in a regulation that says, for example, you must or shall do something. We now have over one million of them in the federal Code of Federal Regulations. In addition, we pass an average of about 400 federal laws every year bringing our total to 30,000 federal laws.
Not knowing every one of those laws and regulations can do real harm to people. One small businessman, Robert Cox, lost his entire business because of the way the Superfund law works. In 1986, the Gilbert Spruance Company manufactured industrial coatings for wood furniture and had annual sales of about $7 million. He was environmental conscious and made sure his products were “environmentally and end-user friendly.” However, his trash truck company was taking his trash to sites that became Superfund clean-up sites. At one site, it was determined that the percent of his company’s waste was .023 percent (2/100ths of 1 percent) of all the waste at the site. He was fined $150,000 in clean fees. Because his trash truck went to multiple sites, he was ordered to pay for each, one costing $1.3 million. His insurance company sued him and won the right not to have to pay. He spent $300,000 in legal fees and went to Washington D.C. to complain.
Nothing worked, and he lost his business in 1993.
That’s just the federal government. States on average have 135,000 regulatory restrictions each and California alone has nearly 400,000. And of course, localities have their own laws about rent, zoning and safety.
It goes on. There are homeowners associations that also have their own “laws,” colleges that have student codes of conduct laws and some families have their own rules. There are also rules for working in many businesses.
Robert Cox didn’t know the details of how his trash might ruin his business, but insane rules can get to anyone. The book, How to Become a Federal Criminal talks about the fact that you can go to jail for wearing an inappropriate Halloween costume, teasing an elk, or bringing too many pennies on a trip to Canada.
To make sure that we are intimidated by laws and regulations we don’t know exist, there is a universal general principle in law that says: gnorantia legis neminem excusat ("ignorance of law excuses no one).
Too many rules for people and for business. Maybe we need a general Latin principle to apply to a lot of situations—
Non est malum quod suus 'iustus diversis
He ain’t wrong, he’s just different (or rationally ignorant).
[1] There are an average 3,750 regulations per year resulting in 82,939 restrictions per year, 227 restrictions per day, or 9.5 every hour.