Well, parenthetically, Professor Volt’s first sentence is skewed. People don’t cooperate with law enforcement and the legal system generally not so much because they’re afraid of being justly punished, but because the system is so screwed-up and capricious that they’re afraid of being unjustly punished. We are close to that thing for which Captain Picard groupies long, the rule of law, not men. At least, we’re closer than any society before us, with our unprecedentedly enormous volume of law, and our amazing faith that all social issues can be solved by another law, regulation, or ruling from a man in a high chair wearing a crown, robe, natty power tie, et cetera.
And not surprisingly — if you’ve ever written and debugged a computer program — the resulting system can easily in the remorseless and rigid execution of its blind algorithms do appallingly stupid things.
The rule of law, not men is supposed to mean that any given law is applied impartially and uniformly, without capricious judgements handed out unevenly by a judicial class. It is supposed to mean that person A cannot get away with murder while person B is lands life in prison and gets his property confiscated because the mayor doesn’t like him.
In the limit where you have infinite laws though, more than you could ever reasonably understand or apply, it again falls to the judicial class to capriciously pick and choose which ones to apply and who they apply to.
Here’s the rule, (or what it should be)
“Get OUT, leave the people alone, leave 95% of the money you’ve been stealing for “X” years, OR the Spec Ops guys will give you a serious case of lead poisoning between your murdering ears!”
Plain enough.
…is that note for D.C., Schtumpy?
Yes, ams. And the maxim “the good of the many outweighs the good of the one” is supposed to mean one does not act like a selfish thug and slaughter thousands for minor points of personal pride, et cetera. But of course the collectivist systems founded on that philosophy don’t end up with those results at all, do they?
It’s weird how so many things that are supposed to mean X actually end up meaning a much more unfortunate Y. It’s almost as if the proposers of such noble philosophies are bullshit artistswho seek to convince men to trust an artificial System — party, philosophy, laws, government, movement, blah blah — more than their own good conscience and that of others.
A dictator has more to worry about than being brought up on charges before a world court. He has to be afraid what will happen to him if his people get their hands on him like what happened to Mussolini and Ceaușescu. It’s a pity that such outcomes are relatively rare.
Well, parenthetically, Professor Volt’s first sentence is skewed. People don’t cooperate with law enforcement and the legal system generally not so much because they’re afraid of being justly punished, but because the system is so screwed-up and capricious that they’re afraid of being unjustly punished. We are close to that thing for which Captain Picard groupies long, the rule of law, not men. At least, we’re closer than any society before us, with our unprecedentedly enormous volume of law, and our amazing faith that all social issues can be solved by another law, regulation, or ruling from a man in a high chair wearing a crown, robe, natty power tie, et cetera.
And not surprisingly — if you’ve ever written and debugged a computer program — the resulting system can easily in the remorseless and rigid execution of its blind algorithms do appallingly stupid things.
The rule of law, not men is supposed to mean that any given law is applied impartially and uniformly, without capricious judgements handed out unevenly by a judicial class. It is supposed to mean that person A cannot get away with murder while person B is lands life in prison and gets his property confiscated because the mayor doesn’t like him.
In the limit where you have infinite laws though, more than you could ever reasonably understand or apply, it again falls to the judicial class to capriciously pick and choose which ones to apply and who they apply to.
Here’s the rule, (or what it should be)
“Get OUT, leave the people alone, leave 95% of the money you’ve been stealing for “X” years, OR the Spec Ops guys will give you a serious case of lead poisoning between your murdering ears!”
Plain enough.
…is that note for D.C., Schtumpy?
Yes, ams. And the maxim “the good of the many outweighs the good of the one” is supposed to mean one does not act like a selfish thug and slaughter thousands for minor points of personal pride, et cetera. But of course the collectivist systems founded on that philosophy don’t end up with those results at all, do they?
It’s weird how so many things that are supposed to mean X actually end up meaning a much more unfortunate Y. It’s almost as if the proposers of such noble philosophies are bullshit artistswho seek to convince men to trust an artificial System — party, philosophy, laws, government, movement, blah blah — more than their own good conscience and that of others.
A dictator has more to worry about than being brought up on charges before a world court. He has to be afraid what will happen to him if his people get their hands on him like what happened to Mussolini and Ceaușescu. It’s a pity that such outcomes are relatively rare.