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Memories of the 28th Century

Rule of Law

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If you want a world of savagery where the law of the jungle is paramount, then is for you, but if you have an interest in living in a civil society with complicated interactions with other humans, then more laws are required.

There are some people who doubt the validity of Hobbes' Theory of Social Contract. They think that they want no government at all. There are places in the world where there is no effective government, no government other than criminal gangs; those are dangerous and extremely poor areas. I have a problem with that, but i also have a problem with the people who think that government should regulate all aspects of human activity. There a large space between those views, and the founders of the4 United States of America and i believe that government belongs in that middle region, where there are limits as to how people can deal with other people and how people can do business and to build and control things that are too big for individuals or that are too important for the people to take a chance of someone controlling in a way that is disadvantageous to the people at large. Criminal laws, most civil laws, and public ownership of roads and similar things are covered in that idea of how broad government should be, but there is a limit when government starts banning private behavior that some people do not like and materials that have the potential for being dangerous. People have the inherit right to endanger them. But when government assists some people to the detriment of other4s, there is a major problem, and taxes that are not applied u8niformly for everyone are big problems.

I started writing this, because of the excessively partisan actions that the U.S. government has been making since Trump was elected, and some of those partisan decisions can be pinned directly to Trump, including his tariffs and his work on a border wall. Those actions also make it clear that he has not been paying attention. Tariffs in trade war style have never done anyone any good, except maybe bankruptcy lawyers, and if he had been awake, then he would have notice that work on a border wall started under W, and it has been progressing since then; the progress has been slow, because no one with any intelligence wants it, and the property owners are fighting tooth and nail to save their land.

It should be clear to any, except for partisans of Trump, that the current effort to throw him out is because of his attempts to rule as dictator, rather than going through the mechanisms in the Constitution.

But in a wider sense, business requires a legal framework in which it can operate. If contracts cannot be enforced, then there would be no contracts, and that works for all parties to a contract. Contractors can't give away their services to contracts who will later refuse to pay. Lessors can't lease to lessees who will not pay. An it isn't just in local business that the rule of law is necessary. China couldn't undercut U.S. manufacturers, if they Chinese were confident that they would receive the prices they had agreed to.

There is nothing new about the rule of law in business. Some of the first documents produced were about commodities deals in the Middle East: sales, futures, etc. for grain and other products.

But even with all these thousands of years of precedent, Donald Trump decided that the People of the United States weren't serious about the Constitution and about the oath of office. There are no excuses for him failing to uphold his oath of office and the Constitution, and just as he has initiated legal actions against those who have not done what he wanted, the United States is calling him to account for his actions.

If Trump hadn't agreed to obey and enforce the rule of law, then we might be able to let him slide on his criminal actions, but he took an oath that he would "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States", then let's hold his feet to the fire.

And after we get rid of him, we should look for people who would actually uphold the rule of law, instead of electing more people who would back their own pals and no one else.

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