Exponential growth of the number of laws since 2500 years

My apologies for not really adding anything to the discussion - law is often a very confusing topic for me, often because language can be so vague, and yet to avoid creating a law that uses vague language, the result is often wording so dense that one needs to hire a lawyer just to know if one might be breaking it without knowing. Law is generally intended as a system created to impose order on the chaos of society - some would argue (Watts probably) that it merely creates the illusion of order. I wonder how many laws ant colonies would have, they really don't seem to need them as they generally tend to work together for the cause of the whole.

You could say that bettering human society as a whole is part of the function of law, however this is obviously not the case when one considers America's Jim Crow statutes, or its anti-homosexuality laws, to say nothing of other countries. I believe laws are neither inherently good or bad, but are nothing more than a tool - just as a knife can be used to kill, or to whittle a flute out of a tree branch - they have the potential for both help and harm. Oftentimes they help and harm different people simultaneously.

Also, like many other tools, there are those who seem obsessed with collecting them for vanity purposes - congressmen and women who write or push legislation just to feed their egos (I believe it's referred to as pork belly politics?) - usually having to do with building a bridge to nowhere, or officially recognizing the name of a highway that has had that name for decades because it looks good on an upcoming anniversary of whatever great thing the person the highway was named after did. Far too many of our laws are either of this type, or are unfortunately very necessary laws or legal rulings overturning mentioned oppressive legislation.

Combine this with the fact that each town, city, county, and state has its own laws in addition to Federal laws (at least here in "stars and stripes"land), and that many of these laws either duplicate or even contradict each other, and the whole thing ends up feeling like one huge tangled mess that the average Joe or Jane on the street like myself can never truly be certain if one is a law abiding citizen or not, no matter how hard one tries to be one.

Then there is the fact that laws are really only helpful as tools as those who ensure their enforcement - take international law for instance, sticking strictly to the Geneva convention, how many war crimes have been committed by the U.S. alone in the past decade and a half? How many times have those violations been punished through fair enforcement of international laws and treaties? Zero.

Most laws are essentially nothing more than (in a democratic society at least) publicly agreed-upon contracts of conduct and behavior, but like nation-states, and fiat currencies, their value is largely a by-product of smoke and mirrors, they only persist in being useful for as long as it is agreed upon that the people have faith and trust in them. Once a people stops believing the illusion of the puffed up value of scraps of linen (or in more modern cases, plastic), entire national economies can crumble virtually overnight. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your view), law is a very similar social construct - a (usually) beneficial mass hallucination, but a hallucination nonetheless.

TL;DR version: We're attempting to answer a question that was flawed to begin with. We have yet to determine what a "law" even is.

I think the entire premise of exponential growth of the number of laws relating to quality of life for humanity is a non sequitur. Without defining the "exponential growth of the number of laws", or "laws" for that matter, it is impossible to determine the impact those "laws" have had on the quality of human life.

First, The number of laws increasing exponentially can be compared to any other intellectual product of human beings increasing exponentially. As the population grows, so grows the intellectual product. The number of jokes has grown exponentially. The number of songs has grown exponentially. The number of paintings has grown exponentially. The amount of garbage has grown exponentially as well. Everything people produce has become more numerous as the number of people have become more numerous. We have 1,000 times more forks than we once did. Does that correlate with a higher quality of life? That depends on if you use chop sticks.

Second, we have not taken into account how many of the laws have become obsolete and are no longer necessary or even enforced. You would have to subtract the laws no longer enforced to get a real idea of how many are actually in play today. The mathematical function would no longer be a constant rise in total number. I think you would find that there were times in history when the number of laws actually decreased in parts of the world, say, following the black plague and into the Dark Ages in Europe. Some people once called it illegal to eat meat on a Friday. Others once held that it was legal to own other human beings. Surely we are not expected to include those in the body of law we are expected to follow today.

Third, you cannot consider the totality of laws written in all of human history without having a standard definition for what a "law" is. The average Kenyan will define a "law" differently than the average American will. Each society has developed a system that works for them. And does it have to be written down to be a "law"?

One could also argue that the Maori system only works because the entire tribe can get together for a council and tell the life's story of each individual involved in the situation being investigated. This would never work in a country of 275 million people. Instead, we put a bunch of laws into books and put them on shelves so that others can read them and apply them without all of us needing to be present.

I can go on, but I think I have made my point. Although I will admit somewhat clumsily and without any hard facts to back it up. It is a generalization.

We talk about Hammurabi's code of laws not because it's older than your 10 commandments, but because that's what those 10 commandments are clearly based on. Those laws are actually set in stone (relics remain -- unlike your 10 commandments which come in many different versions -- with no remaining original copy), and can easily be compared to a modern-day constitution (with bill of rights or similar declaration of human right/citizen). In this respect, nothing has changed. We have more people, more things, more problems, an more solutions, therefore we have more rules and regulations.

The format has not changed: there are central inalienable values, and some sort of system that carries out justice and sets precedents is to what is allowed and what is not allowed, all of it run by people with certain duties and responsibilities. In fact I'd say the current legal system is a fork of Hammurabi's code of laws, and I think its size is comparatively the same as it was 3000 years ago when adjusted for human growth. I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

ren wrote: I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment, including the death penalty.

The Ancient Egyptians had all sorts of laws and they were written down.

Written law did not start with the Ten Commandments. You can't really compare the laws we have now to then because I bet even the Exodus Gaggle were operating more or less under the laws they were previously. They may have gotten more complex over time as all systems like that do, but as old laws are set aside, new laws come in. I wouldn't doubt there's a few more but I don't think we have an astounding amount beyond it.

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote: I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment, including the death penalty.

I don't think that's cruel at all. When someone falsely accuses someone else and essentially uses the collective to bully that person, and they get away with it, they're not just abusing this person, they're making me and everyone else willingly abuse that person. Any kind of penalty is better (less cruel) than this.

ren wrote:

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote: I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment, including the death penalty.

I don't think that's cruel at all. When someone falsely accuses someone else and essentially uses the collective to bully that person, and they get away with it, they're not just abusing this person, they're making me and everyone else willingly abuse that person. Any kind of penalty is better (less cruel) than this.

Both are cruel by my estimation.

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote:

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote: I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment, including the death penalty.

I don't think that's cruel at all. When someone falsely accuses someone else and essentially uses the collective to bully that person, and they get away with it, they're not just abusing this person, they're making me and everyone else willingly abuse that person. Any kind of penalty is better (less cruel) than this.

Both are cruel by my estimation.

I guess you're no supporter of euthanasia.

ren wrote:

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote:

CryojenX wrote:

ren wrote: I like how it starts with punishing false accusations and imprisonments by death. I wish they'd replace feminist laws with that.

Seems a bit extreme to me, but then I am against cruel and unusual punishment, including the death penalty.

I don't think that's cruel at all. When someone falsely accuses someone else and essentially uses the collective to bully that person, and they get away with it, they're not just abusing this person, they're making me and everyone else willingly abuse that person. Any kind of penalty is better (less cruel) than this.

Both are cruel by my estimation.

I guess you're no supporter of euthanasia.

You would do well not to make assumptions about others on such matters. There is a vast world of difference between euthanasia performed as an act of mercy and ending a life for punitive reasons, to serve as an example to others, or simply out of revenge. The death penalty falls under one of the latter three every time. I see what you're trying to do though - it takes much more than that to ruffle my feathers.

CryojenX wrote: ending a life for punitive reasons, to serve as an example to others, or simply out of revenge. The death penalty falls under one of the latter three every time. I see what you're trying to do though - it takes much more than that to ruffle my feathers.

False. Not every time. What about for the protection of others?