The Rule of Law — Letter #7
Dear Francisco,
Hope to find you well and in good shape!
I’m glad my last letter got you even more confused. Confusion is good in the sense that it forces you to think. And in this case — as I’m also very confused with this theme — , we’ll eventually reach some sane conclusion…
You’ve pointed out this sentence, which I think is the key to what we’ve been saying in our letters:
I guess it’s difficult for us to escape thousands of years of civilization on the making!
In fact, that was the whole point of this “Rule of Law” theme: we’re trapped inside it for ages!
I’m not saying it is bad (although we’ve agreed that it presents problems), but we — Humans — haven’t tried anything different from a society based on some sort of scripture.
Ages ago, when we were all living in tribes, the scriptures weren’t written, although there was already some sort of “Rule of Law”… That term presented some evolution, but we’ve been living for milleniums this way. Significant shifts have happened both in society, tech and power, although we still live in that same cage.
Basically, you can sum up the “Rule of Law” as “Don’t do this, because x will happen to you.”. The whole point of this reflexions is: despite the fact that this generally works, can’t we get out of the box and think of something better/more efficient/fairer?
As for the examples of new “Rules of”, I’m not sure how they would fuction, but you gave some good suggestions on how to think about them.
The cases of the “Rule of Math”, the “Rule of Engineering” and the “Rule of Markets” are very curious: they already exist. Although, they are subject to the “Rule of Law”. These methods also proved themselves as very useful: Math, Engineering, Finance, Science and others have been leading us far and wide. Essentially, these areas of society far outpaced the evolution of how we organize ourselves on our societies. And we already know how to call the area responsible for organizing ourselves: “The Rule of Law”.
So, we’re now reaching a point in which all these things can (and probably will) collide. The pace of evolution in these other “Rules” does not cope with the almost-static “Rule of Law”.
What do you think will happen?
Focusing now on your last point, I understand that improving the existing “Rule of Law” will eventually happen and algorithms will help improving efficiency. But will that be enough?
All the best,
Ricardo
