Comment by sfdlkj3jk342a
13 hours ago
In the end, we are at the mercy of those with power. Laws are just a way to make their decisions appear fair and appease the masses. If you piss off enough the wrong person with power, it doesn't matter what the laws say, you'll get screwed.
It’s not the ideal of the system. We shouldn’t have two tiered justice, the top should be being held accountable.
Adams and Jefferson wrestled with another question. J said generations shouldn’t be tied to the decisions of their ancestors. Adams said but surely laws are necessary to maintain stability and order and preserve their fragile democracy for future generations.
Ideal and reality are rarely in alignment, and reality is what we need to be concerned with.
Reality is short term thinking.
Idealism is long term thinking.
If you disregard reality, you will never understand the world around you to make change.
If you disregard idealism, you will only ever be able to react. You will end up dragged around by the nose, and pulled towards someone elses ideal that might not be so good for you.
Thinking that power is inviolable is an idealism that benefits existing power. They don’t want you to think of the countless times power has been overthrown, and a more just society has been built on the ruins of one with benefits for only those with power.
Not quite that simple. Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power.
There are other means to gaining power, of course.
> If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power.
I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage.
A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censorship and surveillance are all totally unintentional and not really even happening. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Whereas, declare that you're shamelessly exploiting a loophole? Orange jumpsuit.
I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
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FWIW, laws aren't merely abstract tools of oppression, they're what binds groups larger than ~100 people into societies. And the true fabric laws are made of, is one of mutually-recursive belief, everyone's expectation that everyone else expects they're subject to them. Threaten that belief, the system stops working. The system stops working, everyone starves, or worse.
> Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power.
Not quite that simple.
If enough people stop believing in the law, the society breaks apart, and you have people shooting each other in the streets trying to loot supermarkets and extend their lives for a week or two, before inevitably dying of starvation.
This is serious stuff. Society and civilization are purely abstract, intersubjective constructs. They exist only as long as enough people believe in them -- but then, it's still not that simple. Actually, they exist if enough people believe that enough other people believe in them.
Money, laws, employment, contracts, corporations, even marriages - are mutually recursive beliefs achieving stability as independent abstractions. But they're not independent - they're vulnerable to breaking if large group of people suddenly start to doubt in them.