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The Philadelphia BAR Association was established in ~1800. I doubt the profession of law is going to disappear anytime soon, and lawyers have done a good job bu

The Philadelphia BAR Association was established in ~1800. I doubt the profession of law is going to disappear anytime soon, and lawyers have done a good job building their profession all things considered. Imagine if the only way you could legally sell software was through partnerships with other developers? Do you think such a thing would have helped or hurt our industry? I honestly think help.

clickety_clack 1y ago
What I mean is that the bar was set up for the lawyers themselves at that time. They didn’t create a 250 year plan for a Philadelphia bar that has played out in all that time and gotten us to today. It’s stayed in existence because it happened to stay useful for the lawyers that followed after them. Law itself is a collection of decisions made by judges and juries in trials, not decisions that are calibrated to have an impact over hundreds of years. Institutions are more like organisms that evolve, trying to adapt to the environment they find themselves in. The ones that work are able to stick around, and the ones that don’t die off.
- azemetre 1y ago
  You don't see an institution that established useful norms persisting for lifetimes as one worth preserving and emulating? I do. Medieval guilds are another equivalent but they could not deal with the industrial revolution or colonialism, so they don't seem like something worth studying (outside of their failures) if it can't deal with societal change.
  - clickety_clack 1y ago
    You’re missing what I’m saying. I’m not commenting at all on their usefulness. I’m saying that the motivating factors that build and grow institutions are short term. Institutions last because people happen to find them useful over successive short time horizons, or they’re able to change them to suit the needs of the time. There’s no super long term planning in it, some happened to have the right combination of elements and some didn’t.

clickety_clack 1y ago

What I mean is that the bar was set up for the lawyers themselves at that time. They didn’t create a 250 year plan for a Philadelphia bar that has played out in all that time and gotten us to today. It’s stayed in existence because it happened to stay useful for the lawyers that followed after them. Law itself is a collection of decisions made by judges and juries in trials, not decisions that are calibrated to have an impact over hundreds of years. Institutions are more like organisms that evolve, trying to adapt to the environment they find themselves in. The ones that work are able to stick around, and the ones that don’t die off.

azemetre 1y ago
You don't see an institution that established useful norms persisting for lifetimes as one worth preserving and emulating? I do. Medieval guilds are another equivalent but they could not deal with the industrial revolution or colonialism, so they don't seem like something worth studying (outside of their failures) if it can't deal with societal change.
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  You’re missing what I’m saying. I’m not commenting at all on their usefulness. I’m saying that the motivating factors that build and grow institutions are short term. Institutions last because people happen to find them useful over successive short time horizons, or they’re able to change them to suit the needs of the time. There’s no super long term planning in it, some happened to have the right combination of elements and some didn’t.