The Choice

I hear people griping about things like "regulators," and "lawyers & politicians," and outrageous lawsuits and a general feeling that taxes and fees are wasted and inflated, giving the citizen too little for his tax dollar, and unnecessary things that are being done with funds the individual must fork over to either lawyers, accountants, regulators, or tax revenue collectors. It's probably even true.

I came up with a solution to end the complications of all arbitration. According to your own preference, choose one of the following:

1. Everything will be made legal. There will be zero law enforcement whatsoever; no laws; and anyone can do anything at all that they can get away with, including all theft, personal violations, savage murderous retributions at any time, economic frauds, consumer frauds (let the buyer beware), pollution, immigration, even slavery if you can handle it on your own, etc.

2. Everything will be made illegal. No more need for politicians and lawyers. Every possible human act will be considered illegal; even sitting and doing nothing. Prosecutions will be selective. Every complaint gets sent to court directly, and the judge and jury will hear each and every complaint of anyone anywhere, decide each case; not by law, but by opinion, and tax the population directly. The courts' massive growth will be offset by the shrinkage in all other mediative government and private bodies and professions.

Now this simplified example of a bi-polar populist political continuum models reality, although only very basically. Thus we can develop a simplified profile of the third decision often actually seen:

3. Purport to believe in Theory #1 to some people, and purport to believe in Theory #2 to other people, using discretionary case-by-case judgment. Cover your ass, in other words. On first glance, those who choose the third option appear to be cowardly, indecisive finaglers. until you realize, as I have, that options #1 and #2 are, in the end, exactly the same choice.

(from the archives - August 2001. Written by me, Jumper, under the byline Paavo Dekker and appearing in QZ magazine)