> Reason wrote:
> > Laws, as they stand right now, don't work as they are intended to.
>
> Oh, agreed. They provide the illusion of working - which, itself, is
> enough to stimulate the economy and do a bunch of other good things -
> but as to what they were originally intended to do, they fall down.
> Still, most large corporations buy into the illusion enough that their
> actions are based on a belief that the laws work; if they think the law
> will protect them against all assaults, why invest in further defenses?
Speaking as someone who deals with the internal workings of many
corporations, I'm of the following opinions:
1) The system works for companies because a fairly predicatable cost can be
assigned to *initiating* legal action against another company, based on size
of company and a couple of other factors. As we all know, predictable costs
are a very good thing in markets.
2) This cost can then be factored in whenever dealing with another company.
i.e. you know it's going to cost them X to start sueing you, so provided you
inconvenience them to a value < X, you're probably fine. You try very hard
never put yourself in the position of possibly netting Y >> X for someone
who could sue you. My point being, it all factors in very easily.
3) No C-level person I've ever spoken to believes that the laws work, but
all try very hard to propagate that illusion in public. This is no different
than all the normal illusions put out by companies with
investors/employees/etc to keep happy.
So it's not really a matter of certainty in anything other than the costs
associated with conducting business by legal means.
Personally, I'm very much in favor of eliminating almost all current laws
and advancing to a principals of power society (i.e. only three rules, all
of which pretty much boil down to no coercion, everyone is responsible for
the results of their own actions, do no harm) in which judges are assigned
at random from the local populance on a per-case basis, judgement is
completely subjective, precedent doesn't exist, and the penalty for repeat
offences is permanent exile. Of course, this would take a revolution and
probably a completely transparent society to put in place, but oh well. Add
it to the list of things I'd like that would take a revolution to put in
place.
More reasonably, it would be nice to get rid of the laws that remove
personal responsibility for actions. All drug laws, all prevention laws.
Hmm, all corporate law. Never mind. Back to the previous paragraph very
quickly there. Is it just me, or is the vast body of Western law all there
to implicitly deny that people have any responsibility for their actions?
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:33 MDT