One of the most cancerous examples of the state reaching into lives beyond its human abilities is the highly impersonal speeding camera. Roads develop emergent group dynamics that rise to suit the conditions of the moment; speeding cameras destroy that spontaneous form of self-organisation and force the citizen to deal with the bureaucracy by rote - learning where the cameras are to avoid penalty.

It is all the worst aspects of central decision making with no feel for fluent local requirements, and the matching of impersonal technology for the purpose of revenue. It is the state at its most opportunistic, inhuman and cynical.

I am not suited to politics, but if there is a single issue that would make me participate in the election process it is speeding cameras. They are the most physically affrontive form of local government to republicanism.

One of the purposes of minimal government is to allow the liberty of individual thought and response to the moment to create new efficiencies through self and social organisation. The economy is often used as the example where spontaneous self-organisation out does central planning or even state interference in achieving the most efficient outcomes.

It is the same for the road.

If anything shows humanities capability for self-organisation it is that our ad-hoc road system functions at all. Every morning and night nearly half the first world's population drives to work and back. It should be chaos but the daily routine is dominated by how few accidents, deaths and disruptions there are. It is a testament to human's adapting - through liberty - to the situations of the moment; letting people in; being patient, etc etc. It is a monument of self-organisation.

The irony is, the quickest way to make the self-organisation collapse is to involve the state. New Jersey policemen know that if they turn their lights on during rush hour they will back up Rt.287 for ten miles as pulling over someone will cause a concertina effect and eventual traffic jam.

Another quick way to make the self-organisation break down and force itself to re-organise is for there to be a disturbance on the side of the road like road work, or speeding cameras. They all cause drivers to stomp on the brakes and lead to the consequent concertina effect which becomes a traffic jam. People actually brake several mph/kmh below the speed limit, often ten to fifteen kmh, for a speeding camera which shows their mistrust of the state and surveillance technology and the fear that enforcement is arbitrary.

Because the state has come so large there is a constant push back against increasing taxes. This is obvious in the United States which has a political culture of lower taxes in the electorate. Consequently it has become fashionable for governments to try and raise greater revenue through increasing fines for breaking the law.

Australia at the state level is enacting legislation to make road fines increasingly higher and higher. Queensland offers repayment plans to pay speeding fines. Once it gets to this level that a citizen who uses the road needs a repayment plan to continue to use it, then it has moved into the realm of cruel and unusual punishment.

Virginia in the United States recently had a law which increased fines on drivers to arbitrary levels. It failed under the equal establishment clause and county judges have been throwing it out for those charged under it. Apparently it is not a popular law with Virginian police officers either as it makes their job appear more arbitrary than it already is.

One of the fears of the state using civil and criminal fines for revenue raising is that it takes on the arbitrary nature of proscription from the Roman days. This was used during the Roman Civil Wars from Sulla to Augustus to confiscate property from the wealthy in order to fund the state's continuance. The state, as defined by the Consul or Triumvirate, arbitrarily decided who was a criminal and fined them - with the result of the loss of their property.

Taxes and the upkeep of the state are a shared commitment from all citizens, not one levied against those that infringe civilly or criminally. The state should never include as consistent revenue that which is raised from fines. Otherwise the state will use the criminalisation of its citizens to maintain itself and seek new ways to cause greater numbers of its citizens to fall under civil or criminal penalties of increasing size. This is beyond what a state is and moves it into a modern analogy of proscription under liberal democracy.

More

• Reduce Speeding Fines in Queensland
• Virginia Speeding Fees Unconstitutional
• When is a Law Unjust and Unreasonable?

Laws are restrained by politics, society and culture to an extent. A law which goes against standard and common practice will get openly disregarded. In the same manner that a law which is too conservative or archaic will be disobeyed as social and cultural practice increasingly liberalizes. The laws can be enforced but at great expenditure of energy. Most police-states end up consuming so much energy that they require propping up by some resource (oil for instance) or they represent a factional interest so exclusively they force the nation into poverty and ruin (Myanmar).

Biopolitics is the process put forward by Michel Foucault to describe how modern liberal democracies protect life through law; whereas before laws protected against violence. The conservative right to life faction has ridden this wave and is many respects the most visible face of this process. However the nanny-state style policies of protecting people from themselves is another insidious biopolitical practice. Alcopops is a very recent example.

As Chris Berg writes trying to establish conventions through the state that contradict common practice means the convention is devalued, the institution ignored and the process brought into disrepute as non-relevant:

It may well be that a third glass of wine dramatically increases the risk of accident and injury to the drinker. But what good are the federal government's new healthy drinking guidelines if they deviate so far from the norm of usual social drinking practices?

The principle of self-governance seeks efficiencies through spontaneous self-organisation with minimal regulation. This process is accepted economically within a free-market with minimal state interference. Yet in other areas governments consistently intrude using biopolitics; or the protection of life; or protecting people from themselves; as the validation for the intrusion.

This week I was coming home down Route 101 north. It is a three lane high way that runs up the East Valley of Phoenix. There is currently a fourth lane being added to the highway and there are jersey barriers in the left lanes. Because of this construction the speed limit is reduced to 55mph.

No-one does it. Not even the police that travel the 101.

The safe speed for this highway is somewhere between 65mph and 75mph. This is what everyone does. Foolishly on Thursday night rush hour a mobile radar detector was put on the 101 north. It caused a traffic jam. People jumped on the brakes, and the free flow of self-organisation was broken. Whoever did it worked out the speed camera was a bad idea as it was removed the next day.

A study was done in New York where speed limits were arbitrarily reduced to see what commuter behaviour was. It turned out the speed limits were ignored and the traffic continued at the speeds commuters considered safe and appropriate.

When people see speeding cameras, whether in NSW or Arizona, they throw the anchors out and pass by the camera at 5pmh below the speed limit. This is more dangerous than the free flow of traffic.

[US] federal and state studies have consistently shown that the drivers most likely to get into accidents in traffic are those traveling significantly below the average speed. According to an Institute of Transportation Engineers Study, those driving 10 mph slower than the prevailing speed are six times as likely to be involved in an accident. That means that if the average speed on an interstate is 70 mph, the person traveling at 60 mph is far more likely to be involved in an accident than someone going 70 or even 80 mph.

The local council of Scottsdale has peppered the north Route 101 from Shea Rd to Scottsdale Rd with speeding cameras. In rush hour there are always traffic jams in that area. Yet the free flowing East Valley 101 from Shea Rd to Warner Rd does not have the same issues. The difference is that the cameras are causing traffic jams.

I have driven on the German autobahns. They are not as open as they used to be, between construction and local principalities putting speed limits on the autobahn (to protect life, not enable liberty) means that much of it is speed limited. As someone from a country that is speed limited everywhere was that Germans were very rule oriented in their behaviour; just general consideration was enough to make the principle of spontaneous self-organisation safe enough at speeds of 170 kmh. The other interesting aspect was that people did the speed they thought as safe and no-one beeped, hassled or drove at them aggressively for it.

This is what gets lost in the over-regulation of the biopolitical state.