In re: 'Plutonomy' and the reign of the super-rich

In re: Kris Kotarski column, in the Times New Colonist: 'Plutonomy' and the reign of the super-rich

B: Most laws do not apply to most people. (Otherwise, every intended action would have to be checked against every law, which would be grindingly inefficient.) It is about as surprising that the rich have carved a set of laws for themselves as it is that the butter producers have created a set for themselves. Similarly with the Canadian content, cannabis, chiropractic, organised crime, labour, and every other lobby that seeks legitimacy and higher entry costs for competitors.

That those working hardest to find discrepancies between laws and enforcement appear to gain the most advantage is not at all unexpected. Nor is it a surprise that the magnitude and distribution of such profits [follow] a power law.

RKB ‎@B - while I think your point is one that is often missed - that realistically all groups will seek advantages within the system of laws that apply to them - are you making it under the suggestion that the level of circumvention of the law by the mega-rich is expected, and therefore acceptable?

That those working in the butter industry are as likely to take advantage of laws as mega-rich types is perhaps expected. But consider the abilities of each, and the consequences of each, in doing so. A butter firm "cheating" the butter industry has effects that don't reach far beyond the industry. A mega-financial firm does the same, and the nature of the operations means the effects are felt across a much wider radius.

What's more, would you not agree that the size of a company and the money it wields affects its ability to influence and shape rules of law, or find ways to skirt them when desired? Hence, given the ability of mega-rich entities to evade laws and the consequences to the surrounding people/industries when they do so, is that not reason enough to demand a more stringent enforcement of the laws that apply specifically to them?

B: ‎"Acceptable" depends on the value systems of individuals or societies. From my perspective, I note that most living organisms bound by emerged laws (available physical resources, competition, etc) make their livings accumulating from the environment, and that most social creatures exercise power over others through accumulation, and make social laws to govern themselves. Large sea mammals are prime examples of social jerks who conspire to develop and exploit their advantages over each other and their environments.

So my question would be: given the system of features of humanity that we assume differentiate humans from everything else, whether a particular law we contemplate would be consistent with that system.

A major difference between found and socially emerged laws of non-humans is that non-humans tend to only accumulate laws that remain advantageous in the long term for the whole of the community, whereas humans accumulate laws by default, whether or not they are desired by the community, or provide any advantage. Of consequence, human laws accumulate contradictions and thus any proposition can become "acceptable" to that system of logic.

(It is fair to compare the value system held by the global West to its system of laws because its citizens and societies have tended to appeal to law makers, law interpreters, and law enforcers as last-resort arbiters of competing ideals and interpretations of right. More broadly, most of the West's citizens conduct their daily lives based on laws encoded in computer systems that determine how much money they may spend, how we may spend it, and with whom they may spend it.)

Enforcement of laws within particular industries as a specialisation can only be effective if the enforcers have an understanding of the industry. Violations of laws about acceptable of margarine colour are far easier to detect than violations of laws about more abstract concerns such as electrical infrastructure design, or long-term child mental health. Laws concerning finance, which operations are almost all purely abstract math and logic, could be understandably more difficult to enforce than laws about tangibles. Our formal legislation tends to concern tangibles, but it's usually trivial to express any particular exploitative financial operation in terms of different unregulated tangibles while retaining the same mathematical relationships as the original. As I've written elsewhere, the cost to try a new way to evade current legislation is far less than the cost to prevent that evasion.

On scale, a key part of the democratic assumption is that representatives are individually and collectively capable of making informed and effective decisions about entire societies. I am, as yet, unconvinced that we have discovered any mechanism to reliably identify individuals having such required cognitive abilities.

(Butter producers, like most other industries and interests, have created laws to exploit gaps and contradictions in the system of laws, affecting most Canadians. Their common motive is to externalise to the public the costs of defending against competitors. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/07/09/f-margarine.html)