New Laws Are No Substitute for Individual Responsibility

By Steve Strayer

Two days after my friend, Norma, purchased a new car from a dealer in Hayward, Calif., she reexamined the paperwork and discovered some hidden charges and other misrepresentations. After my vain attempt to help her negotiate some reasonable remedy, Norma decided there should be a law mandating a cooling-off period for car buying similar to that required for some real estate transactions.

I understand her frustration and sense of helplessness at being victimized by an unscrupulous merchant (let's call him Fred). I also understand the temptation to lash out with any expedient, such as a new law, to punish the scoundrel. But would that new law my friend proposed solve the problem, or even accomplish any good at all? Unfortunately not, other than maybe providing some fleeting sense of satisfaction.

Realistically, that law would only result in higher prices for cars, higher taxes, less freedom for people to negotiate transactions according to their individual preferences, and new opportunities for crooked car dealers to fleece other consumers. A new law would not prevent Fred from ripping people off. He and others like him would be in the forefront of lobbying efforts to influence the details of the law.

On the other hand, my friend and other honest people would be unwilling to sacrifice energy, money, time and the personal integrity to engage in the sleazy activities required to effectively influence politicians. Once any new law affecting Fred's business came into effect, you can be sure he and his lawyers would analyze its implications and devise tactics for exploiting it to his own advantage. How likely is a typical customer to review the law before kicking tires in a showroom?

As more and more laws affect businesses, financial success depends less and less on satisfying customers (the focus of ethical merchants) and more on legal and political gambits used by the less ethical. In such an environment, unethical merchants gain competitive advantage, and some ethical merchants get fed up and quit (a few are driven out by dishonest or unethical customers using crazy laws to take advantage of them).

In my friend Norma's situation, Fred made constant references to legalities, court action, and so on in response to our calls for truth, ethical practices, and reasonable behavior. Can anyone (except a politician) reasonably think another law would help here? Or would it just give this turkey and others like him another weapon to use against honest and trusting, but legally uninformed consumers?

A new law would promote carelessness by consumers and deferral to government-mandated fixes as a substitute for individual responsibility for their own affairs. This situation would lead to more abuses by unethical merchants, calls for more new laws, and so on.

Certainly my friend's recent trouble was partly due to her own carelessness in reviewing the transaction before committing to it. Couldn't it be true that her expectation that the law would override her errors contributed to her carelessness? In an environment where individuals expect no law to protect them, people typically are more careful to protect their own interests, and this problem would probably be less likely to arise in first place. With fewer laws on the books, transactions would be less complex, less confusing, and unethical merchants would have a harder time fooling customers.

If my friend is successful in promoting her new law, all of us would have to be "protected" by it whether we want to or not. We would all have to wait some government-mandated period before consummating a purchase. The next time I buy a car, quite likely I will want to complete the transaction without the inconvenience of a politically inspired cooling off period; and it's a certainty I would prefer not to pay the taxes and higher price necessitated by the costs of compliance with yet another law.

The tendency for Americans in recent times to turn to the government for a "new law" to right every wrong and solve every personal problem has brought us to the present situation where nobody can be aware of all laws that may affect them. The result is that all of us have become inadvertent lawbreakers and we've been encouraged to have disregard for the law in general. This attitude in turn is rapidly leading to the destruction of the freedom, individuality, instincts for ethical behavior, and prosperity that once made the U.S. and her citizens the envy of others throughout the world.

Steve Strayer earned his engineering degree at the University of Kansas and completed USAF Navigator and Electronic Warfare officer schools, After five years in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, he completed MBA coursework at California State University, Hayward. He currently serves as a systems engineering consultant.

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