I Have a Libertarian Impulse

I just found out today that it is illegal to tamper with your car's odometer. Now I can understand some of the reasoning behind that law. Selling someone a car that has run for five million miles when the odometer says it has only run for five hundred is not something the government wants to encourage. It could destroy faith in the used car industry.

But the way the law is designed is very odd. It is a crime to reset your own car's odometer. Even if you have no intention of selling it. What harm could a mis-set odometer do you if you aren't intending to defraud anyone? What if you just wanted to create upside-down calculator-style words like 58008? Laughs aplenty that the government doesn't want you to have.

Maybe they want to limit your opportunites for false alibis. "But how could the defendant have been in Fairbanks at the time of the murder, like he claims, if there are only 2000 miles on his car?" That aside, I don't even see the purpose of even a stripped-down law. Why should it be a crime to sell a car with a tampered odometer? It could be a novelty car shop! Buy a car with Pi on the odometer. Buy a car with the first letters of the Torah in numerological format. Buy a car with an odometer permanently set to 666. Just so long as the salesman tells you how many miles are on the car, there's no problem.

Not only is this a stupid law, it's unenforceable. The government shouldn't waste its time on this stuff. They should concentrate on making the X-ray laser. Kaboom!