Almost every country in the world has an expensive national body of elected public representatives. Whether it is called the Congress, Dail, parliament, Bundestag, or Riksdag, the process is the same: people elect the public representatives for their region, they get together in a big building somewhere and they get busy talking and legislating.
This system of public representation has several well known weaknesses, such as the potential for over representation by wealthy private interests via lobbying, funding, and corruption. I heard arguments before that this is the price of democracy, but I will not discuss this contentious point here.
One 'point of failure' that I haven't seen discussed before is the unsuitability of these politicians to decide laws that will be exploited by professional lawyers and accountants (how many politicians do you know who have a law or financial background?). People tend to vote for the politician that secured funding for the local school, showed up at their uncle's funeral, or just for affinity. Characteristics that certainly do not qualify someone as a lawmaker.
To complicate matters, there is a noticeable trend for over-regulation The Economist has a very good article on this subject). Governments and politicians seem to be convinced that they create laws to cover every single eventuality. But this brings complexity, and complexity is guaranteed to bring loopholes open for exploitation by anyone backed by good lawyers and accountants, thus defeating the purpose.
Exploitation and vulnerabilities are two common words in the world of IT. New ones are found regularly, resulting in frequent security patches being necessary. Google recently decided to adapt a positive approach to the issue. Instead of burying its head in the sand hoping that the problem will go away, it actually created a competition offering cash prizes for anyone who found vulnerabilities in Google Chrome, their web browser. This allowed them to identify issues earlier and address them before they were exploited by criminals and hackers.
Assuming that a reversal of the law system to a simpler and more sensible approach is just not going to happen, here is my idea: why don't governments follow Google's model and create competitions for lawyers and accountants to find loopholes in our law before the loopholes are exploited by shady individuals in court? This would save a lot of time and money. It would also reduce chances that people will continue to abuse the system.
This system of public representation has several well known weaknesses, such as the potential for over representation by wealthy private interests via lobbying, funding, and corruption. I heard arguments before that this is the price of democracy, but I will not discuss this contentious point here.
One 'point of failure' that I haven't seen discussed before is the unsuitability of these politicians to decide laws that will be exploited by professional lawyers and accountants (how many politicians do you know who have a law or financial background?). People tend to vote for the politician that secured funding for the local school, showed up at their uncle's funeral, or just for affinity. Characteristics that certainly do not qualify someone as a lawmaker.
To complicate matters, there is a noticeable trend for over-regulation The Economist has a very good article on this subject). Governments and politicians seem to be convinced that they create laws to cover every single eventuality. But this brings complexity, and complexity is guaranteed to bring loopholes open for exploitation by anyone backed by good lawyers and accountants, thus defeating the purpose.
Exploitation and vulnerabilities are two common words in the world of IT. New ones are found regularly, resulting in frequent security patches being necessary. Google recently decided to adapt a positive approach to the issue. Instead of burying its head in the sand hoping that the problem will go away, it actually created a competition offering cash prizes for anyone who found vulnerabilities in Google Chrome, their web browser. This allowed them to identify issues earlier and address them before they were exploited by criminals and hackers.
Assuming that a reversal of the law system to a simpler and more sensible approach is just not going to happen, here is my idea: why don't governments follow Google's model and create competitions for lawyers and accountants to find loopholes in our law before the loopholes are exploited by shady individuals in court? This would save a lot of time and money. It would also reduce chances that people will continue to abuse the system.
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