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It's like a law against harrassment...it requires human judgment. Some harassment is obvious. Some depend on perspective. Enforcing harassment laws can still

It's like a law against harrassment...it requires human judgment. Some harassment is obvious. Some depend on perspective. Enforcing harassment laws can still be justice even though it is arbitrary and vague. Hell, if laws weren't arbitrary and vague depending on circumstance, we wouldn't need lawyers and courts!

deleted 8y ago
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posterboy 8y ago
That's just saying it's the decisions that are arbitrary, not the rules. OP implies that judgement should be not just within the limits of the law, but dictated by it. Truly, the cut off where a law's guidance ends and judgement begins is rather arbitrary. Exegesis of law is difficult. OP takes the principled stance that law exists to conserve the power of governance (totalitarian). You take the stance that judges are arbiters (arbitrariness). That's no contradiction. In a perfect world, every body could excert their will arbitrarily. Practically though, individual wishes are mutually exclusive. Thus, totality is impossible, and harrasment prossecution e.g. only a retarded (too slow) meassure. Even totalitarianism has to make ammends (assuming e.g. it would want to abolish perversely incentivized harrasment for good) and it's therefore a misnomer. That the law has or tries to have in effect a monopoly on power (I'm translating loosely from German Gewaltmonopol, where Gewalt is power, violence, force ...) as the dominating institution in the market might be just a liberal thing. If the invisible hand of the market works, that's not a bad thing. If dismantling monopolies were a bad thing, OP's shallowly underhanded call for opposition to this monopoly woud be just too ironic. It's downright paradox, although I might be missing a few presupposed assumptions.
- clavalle 8y ago
  Your analysis assumes that all monopolies are created equal -- that a monopoly on violence is the same as a monopoly on a commodity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  - posterboy 8y ago
    Not if power is derived from goods. Goods of limited accessibility are by definition no commodity, though, so you would be right in that sense.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

posterboy 8y ago

That's just saying it's the decisions that are arbitrary, not the rules. OP implies that judgement should be not just within the limits of the law, but dictated by it. Truly, the cut off where a law's guidance ends and judgement begins is rather arbitrary. Exegesis of law is difficult. OP takes the principled stance that law exists to conserve the power of governance (totalitarian). You take the stance that judges are arbiters (arbitrariness). That's no contradiction. In a perfect world, every body could excert their will arbitrarily. Practically though, individual wishes are mutually exclusive. Thus, totality is impossible, and harrasment prossecution e.g. only a retarded (too slow) meassure. Even totalitarianism has to make ammends (assuming e.g. it would want to abolish perversely incentivized harrasment for good) and it's therefore a misnomer. That the law has or tries to have in effect a monopoly on power (I'm translating loosely from German Gewaltmonopol, where Gewalt is power, violence, force ...) as the dominating institution in the market might be just a liberal thing. If the invisible hand of the market works, that's not a bad thing. If dismantling monopolies were a bad thing, OP's shallowly underhanded call for opposition to this monopoly woud be just too ironic. It's downright paradox, although I might be missing a few presupposed assumptions.

clavalle 8y ago
Your analysis assumes that all monopolies are created equal -- that a monopoly on violence is the same as a monopoly on a commodity. Nothing could be further from the truth.
- posterboy 8y ago
  Not if power is derived from goods. Goods of limited accessibility are by definition no commodity, though, so you would be right in that sense.