COMMERCE REDUX, or REDUCTIO AD COMMERCIUM

So I had a rather radical response to the events surrounding THIS POST, and I thought I would follow up a bit.

I was all set to go to Traffic Court to fight my speeding ticket, using the strategy outlined HERE and HERE.

But then I got cold feet.

Well, not really. I mean, yes, I was scared enough that I was rehearsing at least some bit of my court appearance on a daily basis for weeks. And then I realized it was keeping me from writing. A lot of my creative thought was diverted into how I would stage what would probably end up being a two-minute appearance at the local police station in the town that issued the ticket.

I had backup strategies, even. I was all set to spend an afternoon touring and photographing signage for all the other school zones I could find in Puna and South Hilo districts, thus creating documentary evidence that the stretch of Hawaii State Highway 139 where I was busted did not display sufficient posting for a school zone. Aside from one easily missed speed limit sign, there is NO signage depicting kids in a crosswalk, the words "SCHOOL ZONE", or any such warning. No blinking yellow light. None of that.

But then I learned from the District Court here that I could not subpoena the traffic cop until after the judge had heard my case. In other words, I was not allowed to demand that the officer who had clocked me and pulled me over be brought in for questioning and made accountable, with full documentation supporting his evidence against me, until after an uninvolved third party (the judge) had most likely already ruled against me, based on my testimony at his hearing, which would be, in effect, bearing witness against myself. So I thought, "This system really sucks! And I could be writing instead."

And then I got the wild idea to put away the minivan.

In other words, to simply pay the ticket without:

- enduring bumper-to-bumper traffic on the one-lane highway leading to my appearance at the Kea'au police station on a Friday morning between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m.,
- spending an afternoon taking photos (and then an evening selecting, cropping, and printing the pics via computer),
- continuing to waste valuable writing time rehearsing my appearance,
- and, most importantly, suffering further anxiety and anger attacks.

It embarrasses me a bit to admit that I'd been having those attacks. I wasted my partner's time, and my weekly consultation time with my writing coach at least once on this stupid ticket matter. I tried detachment, afformations, conscious breathing, taking naps, going for walks, and still I felt rage and panic. Helpless anger. So maybe that's a personal limitation, but it's well within the range of ordinary human behavior.

A lot of my outrage had to do with the outrageous fine. If I had been knowingly breaking the speed limit, I don't think I would have felt quite so incensed at having to pay a $172 fine for a harmless infraction. I didn't damage anything or endanger anyone. This was a cut-and-dried case of a local gendarme ringing up the register for the county coffers. Based on my monthly disability income of less than $800, which goes for my rent and utilities, as well as occasional incidentals like, um food, this was a heavy hit to the checkbook.

Garaging the minivan, on the other hand, would allow me to save:

- roughly $100 on the vehicle insurance, given as a refund for the current six-month period,
- roughly $500 per year on fuel costs (averaging $40 per month; no, I don't drive much),
- the annual $500 for my bare-bones vehicle insurance before the inevitable rate increase;
- the annual $100 DMV vehicle fee,
- any risk of an accident in the vehicle.

So that's a savings of roughly $1,200 per year, based on my meager use of the minivan.

The real reason to fight a ticket, as many of us know, is to avoid taking the hit to one's insurance rates. Since I have such bare-bones coverage, mine would not have been too bad, but still would have cost me an additional estimated $330 over the next three years. Plus, the infraction appears on the insurance industry's database for a total of five years, which increases my rates if I want to switch insurance carriers, or need to, such as in the event of a move to a non-covered state.

Now, unlike many of us, I have the luxury of living with someone who drives, has a working vehicle, and already has me listed as a secondary driver on the insurance policy. So it's just a matter of my continuing to minimize my driving trips, pitching in for gas or the like now and then, and I'm covered.

So I paid the ticket at the District Court office in Hilo, using my credit card (might as well rack up a few air miles), just after the card's monthly closing date, so at least I'm getting the maximum cash flow possible before the pay-off hits. Meanwhile, I've already banked my policy cancellation refund check from the insurance company, which covers half the ticket's cost. The same day I got that check, I also made roughly $60 from unrelated, unexpected income. So, in other words, the fine is more or less covered.

The real lesson here extends beyond my rather trivial tale of woe. It's really about how each of us does business with the world, and how you can become more aware of the real cost of doing your business. Better awareness for you equals better choices on how you spend your money.

Now, I'm not saying all of us should rush out and garage our cars – for most of us, that would still be impractical – but it's important to recognize the hidden costs of ownership. Most of us, I believe, give far more of our paycheck to banks and insurance companies than we need to.

You see, the real cost-of-living increases for most Americans over the past three or four decades have come NOT in the area of consumer goods, but in two major areas: INSURANCE (health insurance, mostly) and HOUSING (mortgage payments, largely). You can find out about that HERE, on YouTube, in an informative presentation about the collapse of the American middle class. [NOTE: You can skip the first six minutes, since that is the introduction of the speaker and other formalities.] The speaker is Elizabeth Warren, who teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School.

- Health coverage goes to an insurance company (before I bit the bullet in 2003 and declared disability, I was paying about $600 a month in group coverage), and
- Mortgage payments go to a bank (in my case, I pay housing rent to someone who has a monthly mortgage to pay).

If Americans plan to make it through the next decade or so of economic woes with any semblance of our current quality of life intact, then we need to start looking now at how to cut back on ALL our costs of living, not just the obvious ones. Garaging my minivan seems a bit extreme, but so far, I've been making do without one for a month, and it hasn't significantly affected my quality of my life. On the other hand, once I factor in my estimated rate increase, I'm saving about $1,500 per year by NOT running a vehicle I was only getting minimal use from anyhow. That may not seem like much to someone who considers himself in the middle class, but for someone with an annual disability income of about $10,000, that is huge. I've just slashed my annual cost of living by 15 percent!

That is 15 percent per annum that I can now grow a bit of interest on, and which will enable me to travel from Hawaii to the mainland, whenever I need to. Yes, it would be easy to settle for being "poor," and to state that there is nothing I can do about it. But that's a defeatist perspective. I'd rather reframe my situation and state, "Okay, I'm going to adopt a Southeast Asian Immigrant Mentality." Here are some examples of how I am doing that, and so can you:

- keep rent cheap;
- cut expenses to the bone (especially any recurring ones);
- buy fresh or grow your own (it's healthier and cheaper);
- stay home (don't spend money on "keeping up appearances");
- keep your work ethic strong;
- develop your skills so you can make better money;
- remember that your opportunities here are better than elsewhere;
- eschew instant gratification for the promise of a better tomorrow;
- don't pay retail; shop in the discount markets when it saves you money;
- keep money circulating within your own community.
- and save some for a rainy day, preferably in an interest-bearing account, where it's not too easy to withdraw.

Remember when we used to call this Yankee frugality?

It's worth thinking about.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.06.01, 2:55 a.m. Hawaii time]

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Comments

[Traffic Court]

Interesting. One of my frequent criticisms of traffic court is how unfair the fines and other costs in the sense of progressivity. This is really a tax system. Unlike a lot of taxes, the poor pay just as much as the rich, and often they pay more.

I talk about this on a couple of my blog posts, one about the new surcharges in New York traffic court and another from 2006 about why traffic court lawyers are really just tax lawyers (I tried to link these but apparently not allowed - if you google "Albany Lawyer speeding tax" you should find them.

Your post really expresses how the system is so much harder on someone with a lower income. In NY, the fines are much higher and so are the insurance rates. At 31 mph over the limit, you can get hit for over $1100.

[Speeding Ticket Help]

Indeed the New York reference is a good example. With New York's changing speeding ticket (tax!) laws, there is even more reason to consult a traffic lawyer (almost always free) before doing anything.

[Eric LaCruze]

Bang your elected representatives. I think it was back in the '60s that they changed traffic violations from crimes (beyond a doubt) to civil infractions (preponderance of evidence-'judge subjective belief')
Check this;
http://www.agorafinancial.com/iousa.html