Fiat Law.
Aka Positive Law.
When you disconnect from overarching narratives and actually start reading the words that the legislators, executors, interpreters and enforcers of a 'positivistic' law are abiding by, you start realising something:
Behind every leglislation, ordinance and government order is a group of intellectuals, usually residing in the jursisdiction's capital city or somehow close to the power elite, who has never run a business or worked a job writing laws and pretending that he is helping people, when he really isn't.
'Policymaking' in a positive law system is a slippery slope towards becoming out of touch with market realities, moving ever closer into the inviting and enticing arms of power and tyranny. Once they get a taste of that power trip that comes with being able to bludgeon others and subjecting them to their will, there's little chance of going back.
Because words are used as legitimizing tools for power and violence, they start to take on different meanings, falling prey to twisting, manipulation and misuse to serve the interests of the power elite.
This isn't about capitalism or socialism, democracy or monarchy, liberalism vs conservatism, which I am starting to understand as battles that distract humanity from the more crucial question:
Whether laws are made by fiat or discovered by reason, i.e., positive law vs natural law.
Revolutions and uprisings with the goal of bringing about a natural law-based order will merely replace the existing power structures with a new one, often pursuing means that contradict the ends.
Education and awareness can't fix this because pursuing the universality of it as a 'positive' goal will leave it open to corruption by the power elite, also often pursuing means that contradict the ends.
Checks and balances cannot fix this because those doing the checks and balances are often the ones with the reigns, leading to them removing the checks and balances.
The nature of power is to corrupt.
And there is no power more corrupting than a territorial monopoly on violence.
No man is capable of wielding it because it isn't in his nature to wield it wisely.
A man who is capable of wielding it wisely will be one who does not seek it but rather abolish it.
