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The legal system exists to prevent people from using violence to solve their own problems. A very powerful third party arbitrating helps keep things relatively

by Verdex 3y ago

The legal system exists to prevent people from using violence to solve their own problems. A very powerful third party arbitrating helps keep things relatively civil. If you did find a bug, then society needs to patch it. And that's to desirable outcome. The undesirable outcome is that someone sends a ninja into your house at 3am to manually patch the bug.

rzl1235 3y ago
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SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
What's much more common than either of those is that the bug isn't fixed and it's no big deal. For example, there's a widely known bug in the definition of "legal tender". It doesn't vary based on the size of payment to be tendered, so in a sense, you're entitled to pay a $10,000 bill in the form of 250,000 quarters unless you've specifically agreed otherwise. Every once in a while someone tries to exploit this (recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-colorado.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-...), but judges can and do simply declare the exploit to be in bad faith and make them knock it off. (As any third party arbitrator would do.)
- waste_monk 3y ago
  Surprised you don't have something like this[1], at the federal level: " ...coins are legal tender for payment of amounts which are limited as follows: not exceeding 20c if 1c and/or 2c coins are offered (these coins have been withdrawn from circulation, but are still legal tender); not exceeding $5 if any combination of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered; and not exceeding 10 times the face value of the coin if $1 or $2 coins are offered. " It's clean, simple, and effective. And an entity can choose to accept the coins anyway if they wanted to, it just doesn't oblige them to accept them. [1] https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/ https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/

by Verdex 3y ago

rzl1235 3y ago

[dead]

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago

What's much more common than either of those is that the bug isn't fixed and it's no big deal. For example, there's a widely known bug in the definition of "legal tender". It doesn't vary based on the size of payment to be tendered, so in a sense, you're entitled to pay a $10,000 bill in the form of 250,000 quarters unless you've specifically agreed otherwise. Every once in a while someone tries to exploit this (recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-colorado.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/us/coins-lawsuit-payment-...), but judges can and do simply declare the exploit to be in bad faith and make them knock it off. (As any third party arbitrator would do.)

waste_monk 3y ago
Surprised you don't have something like this[1], at the federal level: " ...coins are legal tender for payment of amounts which are limited as follows: not exceeding 20c if 1c and/or 2c coins are offered (these coins have been withdrawn from circulation, but are still legal tender); not exceeding $5 if any combination of 5c, 10c, 20c and 50c coins are offered; and not exceeding 10 times the face value of the coin if $1 or $2 coins are offered. " It's clean, simple, and effective. And an entity can choose to accept the coins anyway if they wanted to, it just doesn't oblige them to accept them. [1] https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/ https://banknotes.rba.gov.au/legal/legal-tender/