The Nonsense Factory

Law provides the safety to build, but how much more can it do, and to what ends?

Ref. FD96-A

Law’s most obvious value is its ability to restrain violence (a function Marx grudgingly accepted might persist in his otherwise unregulated utopia).

Ref. 870C-B

Law grants legitimate institutions a monopoly on violence, which ends vigilantism and creates order, a point Hobbes famously made when he declared that in the lawless state of nature, there could only be a war of all against all, in which life was “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Ref. 3AB0-C

Law’s methods for coordinating society are sometimes easy to see (consider the stop sign), but the huge efficiencies achieved can be hard to intuit, especially because a chief efficiency is being freed from thinking about the mundane. When a lotion bottle promises 15 SPF, no one has to reach for the chemistry set, because law assures us of that quantum of protection. Law’s price is to make Coppertone and the FDA responsible for checking SPF, but those entities can do so more efficiently than consumers, reducing net costs; a few pennies per bottle is convenience had cheaply. Most (though not all) regulations on product safety, accuracy-in-advertising, professional competency, and so on, partake of this morally neutral, economically efficient dynamic.

Ref. 6FB4-D

Most transactions are now anonymous and would be impracticable if law did not provide a substitute for the personal trust that formerly lubricated commerce. The more we trust the legal system, the more easily we can transact.

Ref. C985-E

Law should produce justice, but for all the talk, it’s hard to quantify justice, or agree on its meaning.

Ref. 96B6-F