the current order collapses, and a scramble for control of resources ensues
Why the hell do you expect civilization to collapse?
No, you have it backwards… judges’ decisions are distorted by written law. The problem with written law is that it is a form of liability limitation. Think of the deaths due to E. Coli poisoning of spinach not too long ago. Suing the farm on which that spinach was grown is hampered by regulation (which is created by statutory law and adminstrative bureaucracy) because the farm operator will invariably appeal to his long track record of regulatory compliance. Unless the person suing can prove some kind of corruption as with Enron, they’re going to end up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Written law leads to compliant legalism. “I’m not liable, I haven’t broken any laws.” Similarly, written law criminalizes by fiat. “Smoking pot is a crime, punishable by blah blah blah.”
Why should it get lost? Just because the law isn’t written doesn’t mean it can’t be written about. Are the laws of physics the physical world? No, they simply describe it. The Confucian conception of law conforms with this analogy… law is some kind of “physical reality” which it is the job of lawyers, arbitrators and individuals to uncover through the process of resolving disputes with verbal arguments based on reason, facts and evidence.
Quite the opposite. Fiat law imposes uniformity through dictate. It is possible for there to be large variations in law from one locale to the next unlike statutory law which imposes a “blanket solution” across vast regions. Look how frequently urban and rural people in the surrounding region disagree about what the law should be. The obvious solution is that the law should be one way in the urban area and another way in the surrounding rural area. Statutory law is incapable of addressing this scenario without creating new political subdivisions.
This is why secession is the path of the future. As we disaggregate political unions, we free up people in different geographic regions to live according to the laws they prefer.
Clayton -
I think it’s time to resurrect this.
Clayton
Written law leads to compliant legalism. “I’m not liable, I haven’t broken any laws.” Similarly, written law criminalizes by fiat. "Smoking pot is a crime, punishable by blah blah blah.
You make the first assertion as though there were no benefit to guidelines for compliance–as though humans ought not be forewarned in writing that such and such an act will result in this or that consequence. This leaves wide open a defense that since one cannot know law and its consequences prior to its violation; since its interpretation and application depends upon how previous, similar actions were interpreted and a law applied by previous “judges”/“juries;” then one cannot be charged with violating such law. “I’m not liable, I haven’t broken any laws.” then becomes a national motto, a running mockery of justice.
That this hasn’t occured in small, undeveloped societies formed by family clan units, where the forces of evolution, vis a vis, the propagation of common genes, are literally still fully at work, doesn’t indicate that it will translate into a modern setting, where very different sorts, with very different interests and impulses, are brought into constant contact and conflict, and no material/ego/DNA benefit accrues to the one, for cooperation with the other.
And while I concede that rank distortion of the law and of regulation does in fact take place quite often–that it is actually a part of doing business in a society of written, predetermined law–I contend that the common-law alternative is no less subject to the ambiguity, arbitrariness, and corruption of its practitioners. Weren’t petty thieves sent to the gallows for lifting a morsel of bread under common law? One hesitates to imagine what grotesque punishment would follow as a result of a bong hit; since such common-law expediencies depend upon the current sensibilities of the citizenry–with all their many modern pretensions and hypocrisies.
Why should it get lost?
Not lost, as in forgotten or misplaced. I mean to say: Once the society within which such a common-sense common law has developed is lost, generally to modernization/colonization/standardization, once that intimacy of relation and sense of a shared community and a shared fate is trampled by the incursion of an assembly-line, modernistic, statutory mentality–either from within, or imposed from without–then those intimate relations upon which common-law systems are predicated are supplanted by an increasingly-selfish, alienated, dispersed way of life–and are lost forever.
Why? Because Henry Ford makes a damn fine automobile. And progress itself, via standardization, offers tangible, flashy, fearsome benefits that even convince otherwise-quaint, modest, good people that their former Eden didn’t have enough apples to satisfy them, afterall. That their comfort in their assured survival would be far enhanced if they left to “specialists” the practice of writing and applying standardized, de-personalized laws–and to others, the making of widgets, trinkets and weaponry that transform an impersonal, standardized, statutory state system into such a shiny, irresistable Pandora’s box “in the beginning.”
law is some kind of “physical reality” which it is the job of lawyers, arbitrators and individuals to uncover through the process of resolving disputes with verbal arguments based on reason, facts and evidence
Practically speaking, given human nature and its many flaws, and given a modern society with its heterogeneous populations, that term, “physical reality,” ought to be replaced with “ambiguous goldmine;” for the only thing more subject to modern abuse than poorly written laws is no written law at all. That you cited a philosopher from a culture which is the epitome of “cultural conformity” and a “submission to custom,” only furthers my own contention that this is not a system well-suited for any but a clan-based, undeveloped (in relation to a modernized society), homogeneous society.
The obvious solution is that the law should be one way in the urban area and another way in the surrounding rural area. Statutory law is incapable of addressing this scenario without creating new political subdivisions.as
My document, however far removed from public scrutiny, was specifically crafted to address this deficiency. And yet it is still a statutory system.
This is why secession is the path of the future. As we disaggregate political unions, we free up people in different geographic regions to live according to the laws they prefer.
Amen.
For anyone who was following this , it’s been continued in the “How does a free-market territory prevent…” Thread.