Why Can’t You Pump Your Own Gas In New Jersey?

When discrepancies in state laws are obviously for no good reason, legislatures should revisit those laws. (I am not talking about silly laws or laws that should reasonably be different depending on the state. The best examples are those that force commercials to say something like “not available in Florida, North Dakota or Kansas.)

There are a few reasonable reasons states would have different laws about the same issue. The most obvious one is that citizens of some states have different values from citizens of other states. Or maybe the lawmakers have different values Possibly there is something physical about the states that would justify different laws. Some unusual law may even be on the books because it is a source of pride for that state. I have no problem with any of them. Nor do I care about silly laws, usually from a long time ago, that no one bothers to change because they are never enforced (in Connecticut it is illegal to sell pickles that don’t bounce.) But there are somewhat serious laws that some states have that differ from the rest. You hear about many of them at the end of commercials where they announce “this offer is not available in ……….. and they mention a few states that have little in common. It doesn’t make sense. The lawmakers from these states should be asked to justify why they are disagreeing with most of the other states. I suspect that they often can’t except by chalking it up to randomness.

2 comments

  1. A bigger problem is what to do with the 168,000 gas stations in the US as the public and private car and truck fleet gets increasingly more electrified.

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