I'll Have Liberty, with a Side of Two Million Laws!

So, I have read that tiger selfies are now illegal in New York. Yay! We're safe! Okay, is this real? The best I can tell, it's not a joke.

Maybe we really needed a rule for that. I don't really know what it was all about. I don't actually care. Maybe the tax payers needed their ever-inflating legislature to use their expensive time on that subject. After all, rules solve all problems. Right?

We do love our rules. We hate our rules too. Humans are a weird species.

It seems that it is imprinted in human nature to place a high value on rules. We often carry the notion that “The Rules” are equal to “The Truth.” The human response to just about every problem is ... more rules.

There is a cruel irony to that tendency. Another part of our human nature longs for freedom and, consequently, rebels against rules!

Yet we, the human race, continue against this obvious paradox, and thousands of legislators around the world make millions of rules in an attempt to control the very human nature that rebels against them. We have rules to exempt rule makers from their own rules, and we even have rules against making rules!

Have we all lost our grip on sanity?

I think so. There is no definitive quantity of laws in America. It is estimated to be about two million. 2,000,000 laws! Be sure to keep them all straight. I wonder if there are any laws against blogging about how many laws we have.

If all those laws were written on only five pieces of paper each, the stack would be a mile tall! That is ridiculous! Maybe there should be a law against having so many laws.