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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Almost all regulatory complexity is the result of closing loopholes lawyers found in earlier, simpler regulation. Congratulations to them, because all the legal specialists in each regulatory area will be poring over any new, ‘simplified’ regulation with the religious fervour of a leading Talmudic scholar to find out exactly what is implicitly allowed until enough bad news comes out that the current regime is restored.

I feel like we need something roughly equivalent to a doctrine of "oh come on". I realize I'm only gesturing vaguely towards a large area of idea-space, but it seems plain at this point that humans will game any system made of rules made of words until it's completely corrupted.

I'm not a believer in the ability to computerize law, so the only way forward seems to be to rely on the restraint of lawyers...

...ok, well that's obviously not going to work. We need to give them some sort of skin in the game. Something to lose when it goes wrong. As such, I propose, roughly, the following system:

Whenever an argument is deemed "clever", either by a judge or a panel that reviews cases, it goes in front of a jury of 10 randomly selected people from the voting public. If less than 50% of them respond with "oh come on", nothing happens. If more than 50% of them say "oh come on", the lawyer making this argument is shot. Less than 70%, they're shot in the foot. Less than 90%, they're shot in the chest. If it's unanimous, they're shot in the head.

I'd be down for that only if the jury can vote to recommend this law to be stricken down, then the govt is forced to put it into a proposition so the public gets to vote the law out. No amendment, no copy paste this article into that article. Removed.