[adventured]

The perpetual cruft stacking seems to be a far greater problem of passing large laws like eg Dodd Frank. In terms of regulation, the biggest problem the US has, is a century of cruft having built up, and the rarity with which it gets fully removed or even looked at + questioned for whether it should be on the books at all. The perpetual, hilariously absurd expansion of the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations is a nice example of that in action (180,000 pages).

My favorite example, that does a wonderful job of pointing out the absurdity of this endless stacking, is the Twitter account A Crime a Day:

https://twitter.com/crimeaday

Who is going through and removing all of that trash? Nobody, it's perpetually expanding.

They almost never actually remove large bills like Dodd Frank from the system, they stack more cruft forever on top. If you want to roll back a section, you add 20 more pages of cruft to do it.

[PhasmaFelis]

May 17: "18 USC §§2340 & 2340A make it a federal crime for a person acting under color of law to commit torture overseas."

...That doesn't seem to fit the general "frivolous law" theme...

[adventured]

The point was hardly that every law on the federal books is bad. If you read the first 100 tweets on that account, my opinion is maybe 90 are bullshit that shouldn't be on the books. Nobody is going through all of those and removing the trash. Every little thing doesn't need a law, everything shouldn't be a federal crime.

eg

"18 USC §1465 makes it a federal crime to produce an obscene, lewd, lascivious, or "filthy book" for sale in interstate commerce."

"10 USC §2674(c) & 32 CFR §234.11(a) make it a federal crime to drink alcohol at the Pentagon without written authorization."

"40 USC §6307 & 36 CFR §520.4(h) make it a federal crime to play a ball game at the National Zoo, except in an officially-designated ball game area."

"21 USC §§331, 333, 343(g) & 21 CFR §139.150(b) make it a federal crime to sell "egg noodles" that aren't ribbon-shaped."

"18 USC §46(b) makes it a federal crime to knowingly barter for out-of-state water chestnuts."

"16 U.S.C. §§707(a), 718g & 50 C.F.R. §91.14 make it a federal crime to submit an entry in the Federal Duck Stamp contest that you copied from a picture on the internet."

[perl4ever]

I disagree with treating every specific refinement or implication of an age-old law as some irrelevant newfangled detail we don't need.

I looked up "21 USC §§331, 333, 343(g) & 21 CFR §139.150(b) make it a federal crime to sell "egg noodles" that aren't ribbon-shaped."

21 USC §331 is just about regulating fraud in commerce. It starts:

"The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited:

(a) The introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded.

You could show that to someone a couple thousand years ago, and nothing would prevent them from understanding the purpose of it. You could probably get someone from the time of Hammurabi to understand the concept.

21 CFR §139.150(b) doesn't make it illegal to sell egg based pasta that isn't ribbon shaped, it defines "egg noodles" as such, as opposed to tubular shapes which are not "egg noodles". Standards to facilitate commerce are normally considered legitimate even by libertarians who wish to radically shrink the federal government. So unless you are an anarchist or particularly wish to abolish egg noodles or inhibit commerce in them, I don't understand where you're coming from.