Laws

Agent 008 · #1 2008-07-01, 18:22

Laws are made so that they are followed. So "ideally", in a society that we live in (and pretty much any existing society that I know of), everyone who breaks the law gets punished, and eventually, as an absolute ideal, nobody even breaks any laws.

Now, let's say that every human had a device built into them at birth. A device that knows every time you break a law, and punishes you with, say, a powerful electric shock. Every person committing a crime then gets punished, which is presumably a good thing. That will then allow to make more laws that the society would benefit from, that haven't been made so far purely because they can't be enforced (e.g. switch your lights off when you leave your home, regulate the streams of pedestrians, make it criminal to drop litter, and what not).

Now as the society is moving to it's "ideal", the punishing device learns to read your thoughts, and punishes you when you're going to commit a crime. That means that homicides, thefts, and other crimes do not happen at all. Eventually, every member of said society is conditioned to not even consider breaking the laws. The laws, however, are made to govern every area of human life, to make it "perfect" for everyone. Eventually, every member of said society is good to each other and is happy. Except everyone behaves like a robot, because there's a law for everything. There's no free will, and no free thought in this society anymore.

Now, I'd hate to live in a society like that. And I bet everyone else would hate that to happen.

That means that we make and approve of laws, that we don't want to be properly enforced. If a law is not enforced, it becomes kind of pointless. And we also know that having a different "ideal", which is not having any laws, would be a complete mess and not much good would come out of it.

So in that case, what are we aiming for? What do we want to see? What is the ideal?

I think with the technological advancements that we're getting now, getting an idea of what we want to see from our society is very important. Otherwise we could very easily go down the road I described above, with us being convinced the right decision is being made at every step (I mean, it's hard to convince anyone that leaving criminals unpunished is a good thing, right?)

Deoz · #2 2008-07-02, 03:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent 008

Now as the society is moving to it's "ideal", the punishing device learns to read your thoughts, and punishes you when you're going to commit a crime. That means that homicides, thefts, and other crimes do not happen at all. Eventually, every member of said society is conditioned to not even consider breaking the laws. The laws, however, are made to govern every area of human life, to make it "perfect" for everyone. Eventually, every member of said society is good to each other and is happy. Except everyone behaves like a robot, because there's a law for everything. There's no free will, and no free thought in this society anymore.

Now, I'd hate to live in a society like that. And I bet everyone else would hate that to happen.

You could not hate living in a society like that because it is a perfect society and you would be happy.

MR.Kitty55 · #3 2008-07-02, 04:18

How about people have different opinions of what should and should not be a law. I don't want to follow tons of laws but unfortunately if I don't and get caught I'm punished.

Everyone has different ideals. What are WE aiming at? Completely different views. I on the other hand am quite sure what I want.

firekitty751 · #4 2008-07-02, 18:38

"We" want to feel safe. If you know that it's illegal for somebody to shoot you, you'll probably feel safer going into a public place because you assume that people who might shoot you are likely not to because they are scared of getting caught.

I was just thinking about the concept of law yesterday. On one hand, it really bothers me that there are people who can make me do things. They can't directly make me go the speed limit, but they can threaten me with a ticket, and if I don't pay it, they can make me pay it. If you commit a crime, they can make you spend your life in jail. If its bad enough, they can make you die in some places. It's quite a sick concept, when you really go into it.

It's all in the name of safety and order. I can understand the need to keep things in order, as there are almost 7 billion people and chaos would be terrible. But as Mr. Ben Franklin said, "he who gives his liberty for a little bit of security deserves neither."