link to original reddit post by /u/OverzealousMonologue
So, my family is trying to figure out where we want to move to in the US, and I remembered that I saw a post the other day saying that there was a state that had something like 40,000 pages of laws, just on the state level.
That got me thinking, well, if I want to do the best for my family, I should know the laws of the states and then pick from the ones I can reasonably abide by.
So I did some quick maths, and came up with the following.
If each state has an average of 40,000 pages of laws (I'm just pulling this out of my ass here) then that would be approximately 2,000,000 pages of law across the country.
I am a semi-slow reader, and I read about 1 page (obviously depending on the reading material) every 1.5 - 3 minutes give or take.
If I sat down with the average of 1 page every two minutes, and I were to read 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, it would take me 8 years to read all of the pages.
(30 pages/hour × 24 hours = 720 pages per day)
(720 × 365 days = 262,800 pages per year)
(2,000,000 pages ÷ 262,800 read per year = 7.61 years)
Obviously comprehension is out the window and it's impossible to read 24 hours per day, let alone for 8 years, so perhaps a more reasonable goal would be as follows.
Let's say I read 4 hours per day, it would come to about 45 years of reading...
(30 pages/hour × 4 hours = 120 pages per day)
(120 × 365 days = 43,800 pages per year)
(2,000,000 pages ÷ 43,800 read per year = 45.66 years)
4 5 Y E A R S to just read the damn laws not even to hope to understand them.
Don't worry though, we are totally free people here in this country. Freer than most, but definitely not free under a State like that.
EDIT: Formatting