From: Miriam English (miriam@werple.net.au)
Date: Sat Oct 27 2001 - 18:02:24 MDT
At 10:25 AM 28/10/2001, Alex F. Bokov wrote:
>Maybe have sunset clauses (expiration dates, like on milk) be the norm, and
>any law the legislature presumes to elevate to timeless relevance would have
>to have some kind of supermajority in order to pass.
That is a very neat idea Alex. Many in the legal profession might oppose it
on the grounds that going over the innumerable laws again and again would
be like walking into quicksand. But I wonder if this might not *finally* be
a way to prune back unnecessarily complex laws and get them redrafted into
common language. People becoming weary of all these densely worded archaic
laws might become impatient with them and force modernisation.
There is, on the other hand, a danger that people would relinquish the task
of reviewing the laws, preferring that "the experts" do it for them.
Corporate bullies and bureaucrats could then be expected to use this
opportunity to the detriment of the ordinary folk... except where powerful
people with good conscience worked for honest justice. The trouble with
relying upon powerful people is that many of them have that power because
they are motivated to gain power for its own sake rather than because they
want to use power for common good.
On the subject of the mistake of giving corporations individual rights, I
was reading about some of what Abraham Lincoln said. He was quite upset
about corporations becoming defacto humans. What he said made great sense.
Cheers,
- Miriam
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To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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