This type of thing can get out of hand quickly. Without me giving controversial examples, just imagine for yourself the types of things that different states can make a crime, add a fine, then offer to give other citizens part or all of that fine if they turn in others. After that, think of how unscrupulous businesses could use it against competition.
As for businesses using it against one another in competition: Same deal, I think that's an excellent thing. If this idling law causes NYC businesses to shift en masse to faster loading and unloading practices because their competitors are watching them like hawks, I don't think that's a bad thing.
Agree. More of my thought is what happens when everyone is incentivized with money to spy on everyone else? How can you misuse this as a government? How can unscrupulous businesses misuse this?
>If switching to a fine-based bounty system like this suddenly causes an uproar over a given law, then I submit the proper thing is to look over that law and perhaps tear it down.
I would submit that there is the danger that people might want to keep a bad law if they continue to make money by snitching. In fact, money is the exact wrong incentive for this sort of thing.
>Any "law" that people put up with because it isn't enforced 9 times out of 10 is little more than a tax upon those too honest to get away with it.
Think a little harder and see if you can imagine why a law that isn't strongly enforced still might exist.
Think bigger. If the activity were really a money-maker, then it will inevitably be scaled and industrialized. A cottage industry of snitching would spring up. If that industry got sufficiently wealthy and politically powerful, we'd see all kinds of "easy-bounty" laws getting enacted to allow these companies to further sponge up fines from the public.
If speeding fines were shared with whoever reported them, I guarantee 100% that companies would buy real estate every 10 miles along every freeway and put up speeding cameras to automate it.
(EDIT: Looks like you also already predicted the speed trap cottage industry in another comment. Oh, well, I'll leave this one up too)
The example I like to use is littering. If I lived near a high traffic area, and there was a $200 fine, $100 payable to the first successful reporter, you'd better believe I would invest in some webcams and some software to do nothing but watch for signs of littering nearby 24/7, run the last 15 seconds through AI to weed out false positives, and maybe even file the report automatically on my behalf. That's almost literally money lying on the sidewalk.
At first I would probably make thousands with a $20 webcam and some manual review. Even one true positive pays for itself 5 times over. Eventually other people on my block would start doing a similar thing. The fine can only get paid to one person, usually the person who "gets there the fastest with the mostest". So then there is competitive pressure on me to make my software faster, my webcam higher resolution, my detection methods and ability to prove non-repudiation more reliable.
If you prefer walking through trash I can understand this may dismay you. If you like clean streets, I can think of no better chilling effect to anyone who might be crossing by. You can apply this enforcement mechanism to basically any kind of crime and get similar results - even and especially organized crime, which traditional legal enforcement historically has a very hard time breaking up. Hence why it's already in use by the SEC to break up the highest level of financial crimes, via things like the False Claims Act where often the only way to prove the crime is happening in the first place is to have a man on the inside why can patiently collect evidence for years before making his move. What better way to make something worth a man's time than to pay him?
Besides, we don't have anything like this now, and I'm not walking through trash in the city I live in. If you have trash everywhere, you have other problems.
I've said elsewhere the optimal mechanism here is for that money to be paid to the snitcher, from the person who is being turned in. This would lead us to assume that for most crimes of a personal nature, we would have about as many people losing money due to the law as making money due to it, and so the effect cancels out.
In situations where many more people make money and only a select few are losing big, well... Somehow I feel like that's usually for the best anyway. See my other comments on eg the runaway success of the False Claims Act. Or just consider the class action lawsuit and whether you think it fills a valuable role in society.
>Think a little harder and see if you can imagine why a law that isn't strongly enforced still might exist.
Thanks for letting me pick the reason, that's very thoughtful of you. Obviously it's because said law being strongly enforced would cause such a public backlash that it would quickly get repealed in its entirety, and thus further erode the monopoly on violence the state holds over its citizenry. Cops then have fewer en passants they can pull when they don't follow procedure, etc etc. I'm glad we're in agreement on this.
Could you link some examples of such comments because I can't find them, please?
> Or just consider the class action lawsuit and whether you think it fills a valuable role in society.
This is an odd one. They are extremely rare in the UK, but in practice I think we have better consumer protection because it's handled through ordinary politics and legislation, rather than litigation.
ref. https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/what-status-class-act...
I also wonder how this is going to interact with politically connected people who are used to ignoring the law, such as Cuomo https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/06/16/no-mo-cuomo-scofflaw-...
In some cases, which seem like a good idea like corporate malfeasance whistleblowers or government grift whistleblowers. This is because the people paid by our tax dollars would be at a disadvantage compared to an insider in the company. In others, you could see the direction it must go.
>Thanks for letting me pick the reason, that's very thoughtful of you.
Cheers!
>Obviously it's because said law being strongly enforced would cause such a public backlash that it would quickly get repealed in its entirety, and thus further erode the monopoly on violence the state holds over its citizenry. Cops then have fewer en passants they can pull when they don't follow procedure, etc etc. I'm glad we're in agreement on this.
There might very well be laws like that. However, let me offer a non-controversial and obvious one. Speed limits. Many places have 65mph listed as a speed limit. Everyone knows you are not allowed to go faster. However very few place will pull you over for going 66mph or even 70mph. If they started pulling over everyone going 70 in a 65 there would not be "such a public backlash that it would quickly get repealed in its entirety" because we all know and they all knew they were breaking the law. But it isn't enforced in an authoritarian way because we have different vehicles, sometimes you need to pass, and frankly 70 and 65 just aren't that big of a problem. But almost everyone would agree that we do need a speed limit, although they might not agree on the number and a number has to be picked.
Now, I don't want to assume your political leanings, but I am getting some strong libertarian vibes. And you seem like a nice and thoughtful person, so maybe bad ideas don't even occur to you because you are honest and just don't think that way. But imagine, or go ask grok, some other ways this could work out. And while you are at it, imagine a law that did not effect all citizens the same. Now imagine that a bad law could effect a relatively small group much more than others. In what way could they cause affect a backlash that would quickly get a law repealed in its entirety?
Using money to incentivize any public action on behalf of the government should be a sort of last-resort situation where it makes sense and the people already being paid to do it can't for some reason. This is a very libertarian idea, in fact. A more reasonable idea, although much less libertarian, would be to pass a law that makes it where cars can not idle for more than a specified amount of time in certain situations, but that would come with its own can of worms don't you think? And I personally wouldn't be for such a law. In fact I am against the snitch on idlers law. If someone wants to pay $7 a gallon for gas to set there and idle it away, why shouldn't they be able to? How is it different than them driving the same gas away?
- traffic designers lay out road
- there is nowhere for delivery trucks to park, or extremely limited parking
- this is justified by a lengthy set of arguments about other road users
- deliveries still need to be made
- truck parks in bus lane, cycle lane, or on the pedestrian paving (cracking slabs!)
- everyone is now mad with each other, on the street or in the local newspapers
If an area doesn't support trucks, then deliveries need to be made without trucks. That means parking the truck far away and using a hand truck to make the delivery on foot using the sidewalks.
The shipping companies can either eat the cost, pass it on to consumers or refuse to deliver to those areas.
You mean if a red state (like Texas) potentially handing out bounties for snitching on abortions? Texas already passed that law in 2022[1]. We are already way down the slippery slope you alluded.
1. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bou...
A lot of civil penalties carry fines in excess of what you get for a first offense for a violent but not professional criminality type crime. It's absolutely insane. NYC's idling laws are just the tip of the iceberg in this regard. And the fact that these are "civil" penalties means the due process requirements are basically nil and when they do exist (like they do for traffic infractions) they basically only exist so far as they need to to keep the racket going.
Like you'd be hard pressed to wind up with tens of thousands of of fines doing actual criminal stuff, they'd just throw you in jail. But a government official can notice (or be tipped off to) some violation then go look back at their info sources and decide unilaterally when the violation started and fine you for presumed months of violation and you often have no recourse but to sue.
Or if you need to avoid the a-word because of the particular fruit that falls from that tree when shaken, just look at predatory towing.
We’re already sliding down the slope, to be sure, but this is an acceleration that we should expect with our eyes wide open.
You can run a thought experiment to confirm this. Suppose 1/2 of all crimes committed in your area currently get reported. You are offered the option to move to two new places, identical in every way to your starting point, except New Town A has 3/4 of the crimes committed get reported*. New Town B has only 1/4 of the crimes committed get reported. Do you move? Where to?
The important thing to notice is less that New Town A seems like a pretty good deal, than that New Town B seems like a really bad one. Plenty of people would move to New Town A for the obvious additional security. Some of people would elect to stay, for reasons like New Town A isn't guaranteed to be exactly like where you currently are into the future, and home is home. But almost nobody would move to New Town B. The people who would jump for joy at moving to New Town B may even be criminals themselves trying to escape charges or just hedge their futures.
* For the sake of completeness, you can consider this property preserved across different types of crime. E.g. if 90% of homicides get reported in your current locale, 95% do in New Town A, and only 45% in New Town B do. If 20% of money laundering schemes get reported, 60% do in New Town A, and 10% in New Town B. Etc. The general idea of everything being more or less detectable is more important than the specific numbers.
I'm curious, when there will be apps to report citizens that threat democracy. Like those who wear red hat. Or sleepong on street. Or make weird talks at home...
I hate people leaving cars idling, but I don't like any form of bounty app. This is the wrong kind of law enforcement.
> Exceptions include, but are not limited to, when an idling on-road medium/heavy-duty vehicle is: Stuck in traffic or otherwise required to remain motionless. Performing maintenance tasks or powering an auxiliary function or apparatus, such as a refrigeration unit or lift, requiring power from the primary motive engine.
[0] https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/cont...
Arbitration is done by the NYC Dept of Environmental Protection. While it is unknown whether their workers are white collar, no evidence of snoot is manifested.
Like letting the police install a permanent speed trap on your property or even pay for the privilege of them doing so. I'd bet that'd curb a lot of speeding in short order
If you want to curb speeding, the solution looks much the same: Pay reporters some portion of the fines collected from the speeder. You will very quickly see a cottage industry of Internet connected dashcams and on-board AI solutions spring up, because it's practically free money if you drive safely yourself for long enough. Pretty soon nobody will be speeding, simply because you never know who or what is watching.
This is a set of economic-legal policies I've been writing about here and there for a long time. It's great stuff.
1. A safety hazard
2. Causes high noise pollution
3. Measurably increases air pollution
Under these circumstances I feel like a citizen driven enforcement for the law is not quite bad as you are portraying it. I would even call it apploudable, because they increase the quantity of life for everyone in their neighborhood.
The guy who reports one person for driving 100mph over the limit can and ought to sleep soundly knowing society more or less agrees with his actions.
The guy who reports 100 people for going 1mph over the limit ought to be be worried. His actions are not something society generally thinks is a good thing.
EDIT: I've been away from the States for too long. I was indeed thinking about speed bumps, not traps. Traps are cameras, and they therefore get a thumbs up from me in the beautiful bounties-on-everything-we-care-about future.
You also have it backwards because it already reliably makes society better for you. Take the case of Biogen employee Michael Bawduniak, who spent seven years documenting covert payments that steered doctors toward Biogen’s multiple‑sclerosis drugs illegally. When the United States Department of Justice settled the case for $900 million in 2022, Bawduniak received roughly $266 million, or about 30% of the federal proceeds, under the False Claims Act. It's a very similar mechanism, and anyone you may know who suffers from multiple sclerosis has likely had their treatment options materially improved thanks to Bawduniak's actions. But those kinds of actions only happen when you have the right mechanisms in place, to reward people who do the right thing.