Normative Signs: The Poetry of "Ought"

Here’s a sight familiar in many residential neighbourhoods. Nestled within the cluster of parking restrictions: a “No trucks” icon. You can imagine all kinds of reasons for forbidding trucks on particular streets, including especially the width of the street.

But limiting trucks (and commercial vehicles more generally) is also famously an instance of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) thinking. This is a reminder that normative signs can have moral consequences — in particular, in terms of distributive justice.