From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 15:44:33 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Burch <gregburch@gregburch.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2002 4:23 PM
Subject: Law, Lawyers and Liberty (Was: College major advice)
> Well, this'll teach me to keep my mouth shut and just lurk when I don't
> have time to get involved in a discussion. But I felt honor-bound to
> make a couple of comments on Forrest's message.
Whups, didn't see this reply before, sorry.
We had a brief exchange on this topic in December, 2000 re: my UN "State of the Future" response in which I made several economic
and psychohistorical predictions, e.g. "Civil unrest and martial law in the US, a large war(s) abroad within three years". Remember?
> > From: Forrest Bishop
> > Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2002 2:04 PM
>
> > Most, but by no means all, lawyers are involved in zero or
> > negative-sum games; helping some at the expense of others.
Please note the modifier *but by no means all*. There is zero intent to impinge your honor, sir.
> > Stephen Magee (University of Texas), among others, has
> > compiled some regression analyses by county. The higher per
> > capita lawyer count, the lower the economic growth. It
> > shouldn't be too hard to see why this is so.
>
> I was unfamiliar with Magee, although a bit of googling indicates that
> he wrote an article -- apparently unavailable on the Web -- that was
> quoted by advocates of "tort reform" (and some much less savory folks:
> http://christianparty.net/lawyers.htm).
and http://christianparty.net/lawyersindex.htm
Hadn't seen this particular site before, it's a little over the top. My reference to Magee is secondhand, from:
Phillips, Kevin
*Arrogant Capital (Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics0*
Little, Brown and Company, 1994
excerpt from Chapter 2, "Imperial Washington...":
"Economists Donald Laband, Robert Tollison, Gordon Tullock, and Stephen Magee are four pioneers in studies of the cost of
transfer seeking in general- transferring rather than creating wealth is clearly on of Washington's leading pursuits- and of
lawyering, a particular staple of the nation's capital.(3) Academic attempts to calculate the annual cost to the overall U.S.
economy of transfer seeking generally put it in the 5 percent to 12 percent range, which comes to roughly 4300 billion to $700
billion [1993 stats and $-FB]. ... " [pp 46]
"...Jonathan Rauch is a young writer who, at least as much as anyone else, has made the discoveries of the transfer measurers and
lawyer watchers come alive in publications like *National Journal*. Rauch's credits include such phrases like "*parasitemia
economicus*" (the parasite economy), "*demosclerosis*" as a capsule of Mancur Olsons's interest-group thesis, a pithy description of
lawyers as "a good proxy for the size of the nation's noncriminal parasite class," and a straight-faced discourse on the
correlations between capital-city status and an unusually high ratios of golf courses and sit-down restaurants..." [pp 47]
[note] 3. 'The essense of "transfer seeking", as pursued by lawyers, lobbyists, brokers and professional organizations, is to gain
by transferring wealth rather than creating it, sometimes retaining the amount transferred but more often gaining a fee or
commision.
The data about the rise in the number of professional organizations [i.e. guilds, cartels- FB], as well as the percentage
choosing to locate in Washington, comes from Jonathan Rauch's article "The Parasite Economy" in the April 25, 1992, *National
Journal*...." [pp216]
Mr. Phillips goes on to propose moving the capital from Blight-Upon-Mankind, D.C. to someplace like North Dakota.
> I can't see his data, but I
> wonder how it would compare, say, Vietnam's or Madagascar's number of
> lawyers with the economic growth of those countries. People always
> point to places like Japan or Northern European countries when they want
> to make this point. But I always ask in return: 1) how culturally and
> ethnically diverse are those countries compared to the United States,
> and 2) how free are individuals in those countries -- both culturally
> and legally -- to experiment and fail? When you get a very free and
> very diverse population, there's no substitute for the rule of law, and
> the rule of law in such societies necessitates a high number of lawyers.
> A couple of final points. First, when someone breaches a contract with
> you, who you gonna call?
This would depend on the nature of the contract and the economic (praxological) calculation. So far in my life the sundry private
con-artists that have ripped me off have kept the amounts just small enough that the lawsuit would be more expensive than the
write-off.
The public (government employees) con-artists are quite another matter. Dealing with organized-crime syndicates entails a risk of
of death and dismemberment not generally found in the private venue. My current traffic court issue illustrates the problem:
A city cop pulls me over (on private property out of her jusrisdiction) after running my plate for no reason. The car title was
not transferred with sufficient rapidity (and fees paid) for Her Majesty's pleasure. I receive a summons for this heinous Criminal
Offense (penalty $1000, 90 days in the clink). I plead not guilty. For defense, I could point out the jurisdiction issue, and risk
having the cop lie in court. Or, I could go into the fundamental violations of the US Constitution, such as Amendnment 4, Amendment
14, and, most especially, Article 1, Sections 8 and 10. Or, I could argue from common-law right of free passage, but of course this
is not a common-law court anymore, is it?. If I do hire an attorney, he will be considered an officer of the court, and will
probably not be willing to entertain these kinds of defenses, nor suggest to the jury that they nullify this law. Alternatively, I
could file a UCC-1 security interest, a writ of habeus corpus, and so on.
However, all of these strategies run into a really visceral problem: the risk of robbery, torture, death threats and murder at the
hands of the police. Being very familiar with these kinds of "law enforcement" activites directed against various friends,
acquaintances and family members over the years, as well as reviewing other people's stories, I do not think this is a viable
alternative. So no, I'm not going to call a lawyer, it's a waste of my time and money.
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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