The Law and it's benifactors
 

So myself, SMB and Geminex were having an argument on the Ajax chat platform about who the law benefits and how it's inhereintly biased towards the rich.

Geminex was arguing from a perspective of neutrality where in law (in general) wasn't created to inherently favor one group whilst my self and Smarty argued the law favored the rich both during it's creation and now in its ongoing state.


I'll add my arguments for why I think that in a moment. (A moment being up to 24 hours later)


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Okay, here we go.

Basically, the question on chat has come up: What is the purpose behind law? To regulate social interaction and conflict, by defining and limiting citizens' rights? To promote social stagnation and preserve the status quo, to the benefit of the priveleged? Something entirely different?

The question started as referring to german law in particular, but given that that's pretty specific, we can totally expand it.

We've gone over a few points already, and, if nothing else, I think we kinda established a couple of important areas to look at:
- The question of author. Who influenced the creation of the law, was there bias present, was this significant enough to change the law's stated purpose?
- Does the content of the law support the its stated purpose?
- Who's writing and interpreting laws today? How are they proceeding? Wherein lies their bias?

The last point is less a question of purpose at creation, and more one of current application and institution, but it's certainly still interesting and relevant.

I will say that a major bias towards the wealthy (or otherwise priveleged) lies in the fact that lawyers are often effectively voices for hire. The fact that their skill influences the outcome of legal battles, coupled with the fact that hiring skilled lawyers costs money, which the rich possess per definition, does skew the balance. I totally aknowlege that. But I think that's more of a problem in the institution, and not one with the law itself. That is to say, it is a problem, but not one that's inherent in the law, and not one that you can expect the law in its entirety to fix. Mind you, I'd be interested in hearing some proposed fixes to this one, cause I can't think of any.

Other points we've already adressed is that loopholes in the law, particularly financial and environmental law, exist and are open for abuse. But that kinda links to the previous point, in that it's impossible to write law that covers every eventuality. There will always be loopholes, and the people with the resources to exploit them will benefit from that.

Ultimately, I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with our society, far from it. Not saying that the law can't be abused, or that some parts of the law don't reflect financial interests, see copyright law. Not even saying that there isn't any bias towards the rich fucks on the German equivalent of Wall Street, I don't even know where that would be. Frankfurt, maybe? Regardless.

Just that, in the case of Germany (not speaking for other countries), I don't think that bias is overwhelming. And that, I don't believe that the law, and the legislative body of germany exist solely to further the interests of the priveleged. (Which I believe was the orignal argument)

In fact, if you guys were right, I'd have a constitutional duty to tear some shit up, and that would really interfere with my weekend plans.

Also, in b4 "What a cunt"

Edit:
To start this debate off on a high note, the title you're looking for is "The law and its benefactors" http://i947.photobucket.com/albums/a...minex/smug.gif

Inherently bias? Not unless you view the rich and the government as the same thing. Laws exist both to keep those in power, in power, but also for the safety and well being of the citizens, which are mostly the poor. Its more about keeping the population as a whole safe and happy, when this fails we get revolts and changes in policy.

Now as for law in practice, its less that laws are more lenient to the rich, more that the law is to the benefit of the educated. The rich can simply afford the aid of people that best know how to turn the system to their advantage. A poor person with any competent lawyer would easily take a CEO dumb enough to not have any legal counsel.

If you mean the intent of the laws in strictly a civil sense, they actually help the poor more then the rich. Health and safety regulations, company liability, worker compensation, limitations on polluting, anti-trust laws, SEC in general, these things limit and restrict companies. Just look at the turn of last century if you want to see what it was like for workers before government started putting laws and restrictions on companies. Are their exceptions, of course but over all the poor and middle class have benefited more.

You mean the law and it is benefactors isn't a valid string!? I derped admittedly. Still writing shit up and looking up more information

I guess it would depend on what you consider to be the basis of modern day law. If you look at the Romans, it was mostly to protect rich people from being ruled by another rich person with military power. If you look at the signing of the Magna Carta, it's basically the same thing, rich nobles wanted to remove some of the power out of the hands of the king and have a say in it. But in general laws seem to serve the purpose of making power less centralized, which is to the advantage of the non-rich tangentially, even if the power is still centralized in the hands of a tiny amount of rich people. An oligarchy is slightly better than a monarchy, all things considered. Over time, power has been concentrated less and less and the oligarchy has gotten much, much broader, so I think that laws will ultimately benefit the non-rich just because of their nature, which generally over time has been to decentralize power.

But over time I think it has slowly become more about protecting the weaker members of society as opposed to the strongest. Probably the only really valid example of this is a Constitution (not always the American Constitution, though that's the one I'm most familiar with), which isn't exactly "laws" per se, but inalienable rights (supposedly inalienable rights, I mean). The rich make as many laws as possible to make life as constrictive as possible but ultimately (in theory) they can't conflict with these basic "laws" set up to maintain a basic level of non-slavedom.

So if you consider the rights in a constitution to be "laws", then by their nature they would have to benefit everyone, not just the rich. But they aren't laws per se, since laws are things that are added on by voting (and the power of voting mainly lies in the hands of the rich), whereas rights are kind of where you start at (voted on originally but lasting into perpetuity).

EDIT: Oh, and that is not to say that amendments could not be used to make life more constrictive. The 18th amendment, for example, removed a freedom from people, in making alcohol illegal. Pretty much any amendment to a constitution that attempts to eliminate freedoms would be the opposite of benefiting the weak.

Does the pope shit in the woods?
 

Laws are written and/or influenced by rich people, therefore they have inherent bias towards the rich even if there is no conscious effort towards bias, news at 11.

The question at hand is not whether concessions are made to people who aren't rich, but whether the law is biased towards rich people, which the ability to peruse the news for more than five seconds will show is the case.

Well the questions posed in Geminex's post included why the law was created, not necessarily just how it is applied in reality.

I know next to nothing about German law, so I'm going to speak informed primarily by American tendencies because I'm from America and why should I care about any of you crazy foreigners and your kings and your mead halls and what have you.

Putting aside the fact that much of the time the rich and the government are indeed the same thing, the former still has an undue amount of influence upon the latter, which effectively produces the same results.

Or you get a change in rhetoric and presentation, which might inhibit the public narrative's ability to reach "the legal system in place enables the rich's tendency to fuck us over" and force it to settle instead on "the rich fuck us over because they're better than us, and I'm a dirty little whore and I deserve it uunnfff yeeesss." Or the public assumes that even if the effects of a given law are shitty, they must surely be better off than they would be without it, again, usually helped along by some reactionary and emotionally appealing rhetoric. I think you oversimplify and are accordingly too optimistic about the effects of and motivation implicit in bad lawmaking.

For example: In America, the War on Drugs has been ongoing for thirty years. That's a literal and tremendously destructive act of class warfare against the poorest members of our nation, it was created entirely by our legal system, it has not achieved its intended results, yet attacking it remains a very bad and potentially suicidal political move since it means you're being soft on drugs. For more examples: American criminal justice in general.

You're right in that there are so many laws protecting and servicing the working class that it becomes difficult to argue that the whole system outright favors the wealthy over the poor (other than that it enables the existence of an upper class to begin with). But by definition the poor are not in a position equivalent to that of the wealthy to begin with, therefor the oppression they face from the legal system is far less easily circumvented, and the benefits they receive from the legal system are inadequate rather than excessive.

I think that the law is entirely capable of favoring the wealthy over the poor, and facing minimal repercussions. And I think that when it chooses to favor the poor, it is still likely to oppress them in some respects, and any instance of the law oppressing the underprivileged is an instance of the law failing.

Rather then quote like five people I'll just address it directly

Yes the rich run the government, but that doesn't mean the government and the wealthy outside of political fields have the same agenda.

You see these rich have political power in addition to economic power, and frankly for most of history it was better to have political power. You dont need to extend how your business can make money when you can siphon it from people directly. Government will limit corporate abilities if it means they can maintain their political control. They maintain political control by keeping the population content. Be it actual benefit or the illusion of it.

Plus believe it or not, politicians are not evil. Doesn't mean they put much thought into their actions, but alot of them do in fact believe their policies are good. The rich don't have minimal dickishness quotas or kick the poor because they can. Not saying they will screw themselves over to help others, but honestly how many of us do. Often the laws dont screw them over, not many of these politicians have direct invested interest in many industries and would benefit alot more if the economy over all did better, meaning more popularity and more political power for them.

Remember government wants to keep governmental power, they dont want corporations to get so strong they become their own political entity because it means their positions will become weaker. Nor do they want the poor to live in a hellhole. Cause when that happens it often ends very badly for the people that happen to be in charge at the time.

To get political power, you need the support of corporations and/or lobbyists, because of the sheer amount of money it requires to launch any sort of meaningful campaign for office. You can say all you want about voters voting according to your actions, but I don't think anyone would disagree with the fact that we don't have a well-educated voting populace. At least, not nearly as well-educated as to the issues as would be ideal. Because of this, it's rather easy to mislead a lot of these people. Part of that is the news media, part of that are the campaigns themselves, and part of it is, yes, their actions.

It's a balance of the three, but you absolutely should no minimize the role corporations and the corporate run news media play in who gets elected, because what they bring to the forefront of public awareness and how these things are framed ultimately affects what many voters believe about the people they're voting for, as well as the effects of various policies.

Fair and clear enough?