Law and negative space
Feb. 17th, 2020 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feotakahariA proposal: the value of law exists in negative space. Rather than it being a good or bad thing that there is a law, it is a good or bad thing that there is no law about something.
Let’s start with a society that has no law at all. If you hurt someone’s child, they can beat you up. If someone doesn’t like that you’re gay, they can beat you up. In effect, the unwritten “law” is not to do anything that annoys people who are capable of beating you up.
Now let’s suppose the society bands together and creates law. If you beat someone up, the community’s chosen enforcers will beat you up in turn. Assuming the enforcers don’t become corrupt (admittedly a big assumption), this is the “freest” possible society. No one is getting beaten up for their actions.
But someone steals your television, and you want to beat them up for that. So you pass laws against thievery and a few other things. Now, this is already butting up against other liberties, depending on what other issues your society has! If you’re gonna beat up thieves, you’d better make sure everyone has enough food to eat without having to steal it! But there’s a large amount of negative space, in that no one’s going to beat you up for being gay. I consider this the ideal setup.
Now you pass more and more laws against things you don’t like. It’s illegal to smoke pot. It’s illegal to cut hair without a license. The negative space shrinks, but it still exists. It’s at least theoretically possible not to get beaten up.
The worst case scenario is when enforcers realize they can beat you up, then put pot in your car and say you were beaten for smoking pot. The negative space is now gone, just as if you had no law at all. You can be beaten whenever the enforcers want to beat you.
The million-dollar question, of course, is how to keep the enforcers from being corrupt. I don’t have an answer, but it’s probably easier if you have fewer laws they can possibly enforce to justify beating you up.
(Another possible objection is that punishing you won’t actually stop you from breaking the law again. I can’t speak for every circumstance, but the prospect of getting thrown back in prison seems to be the main thing stopping my nephew from outright murdering my niece, instead of just breaking into her house and destroying all her stuff with his machete. I don’t know where he even bought that giant machete.)
Let’s start with a society that has no law at all. If you hurt someone’s child, they can beat you up. If someone doesn’t like that you’re gay, they can beat you up. In effect, the unwritten “law” is not to do anything that annoys people who are capable of beating you up.
Now let’s suppose the society bands together and creates law. If you beat someone up, the community’s chosen enforcers will beat you up in turn. Assuming the enforcers don’t become corrupt (admittedly a big assumption), this is the “freest” possible society. No one is getting beaten up for their actions.
But someone steals your television, and you want to beat them up for that. So you pass laws against thievery and a few other things. Now, this is already butting up against other liberties, depending on what other issues your society has! If you’re gonna beat up thieves, you’d better make sure everyone has enough food to eat without having to steal it! But there’s a large amount of negative space, in that no one’s going to beat you up for being gay. I consider this the ideal setup.
Now you pass more and more laws against things you don’t like. It’s illegal to smoke pot. It’s illegal to cut hair without a license. The negative space shrinks, but it still exists. It’s at least theoretically possible not to get beaten up.
The worst case scenario is when enforcers realize they can beat you up, then put pot in your car and say you were beaten for smoking pot. The negative space is now gone, just as if you had no law at all. You can be beaten whenever the enforcers want to beat you.
The million-dollar question, of course, is how to keep the enforcers from being corrupt. I don’t have an answer, but it’s probably easier if you have fewer laws they can possibly enforce to justify beating you up.
(Another possible objection is that punishing you won’t actually stop you from breaking the law again. I can’t speak for every circumstance, but the prospect of getting thrown back in prison seems to be the main thing stopping my nephew from outright murdering my niece, instead of just breaking into her house and destroying all her stuff with his machete. I don’t know where he even bought that giant machete.)
