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Rule of law

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Mon, 2011-03-28 14:55

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Rule of law

Might be worth breaking out the tangent discussion from the fork thread: To what degree do hypercorps and other institutions follow laws? Here is my view: It is given in the setting that there is a great deal of secret nastiness going on, from arranging "accidents" for competitors to doing highly illegal experiments in remote habitats. But this is all *secret* criminality - it would be bad for the hypercorps if instances were brought to light. The main activities of hypercorps (after all, they have to make money by *doing* something marketable and not just spend money on being evil in the R&D labs!) are legal. Maybe sometimes morally questionable, but not flaunting the laws of the local polities or the Planetary Consortium. Even hypercorps suffer from bad press (Cognite after the Lost), have to abide by legal settlements (Oaxaca-Maartens had to stop the forced forking/merging of indentures), and have to deal with Oversight if they get out of line. Hypercorps certainly have power over the politics and lawmaking of the PC, but they do not have arbitrary power - as described in Sunward the PC is a democracy where occasionally politics doesn't go the way major interests want it to, the other hypercorps on the council will not allow one corp to gain an unfair advantage, and (IMHO most importantly) corporations require a sufficiently stable rule of law to function. If property and contract rights are not secure then they cannot function as companies. The whole hypercorp idea on using very flexible employment and management structures requires that you have a real job market. The fact that enough rule of law survived the Fall to maintain hypercorps is actually quite impressive (and feeds into the theory that the PC had a bit of inside information ahead of time that let them survive - the majority of pre-Fall companies did not survive as legal entities). I think many people make the mistake of thinking that since the hypercorps are powerful and self-serving they will just ignore laws. But that assumes that the benefit of ignoring a law is larger than the problem of having others ignore laws that are to your benefit. If you start forknapping people, your competitors will forknap some of your key people. If you default on your loans, then nobody will lend you any money and you might find that people ignore your debt claims too. There are a lot of studies showing how societies with high levels of trust and law-abidingness tend to do well - as well as the deleterious effects of the opposite. Trying to run things without the rule of law generally produces very low economic productivity, which is why hypercorps do maintain functioning legal systems even when they are not in their short-term interests. The real trick is of course to do the criminal things in such a way that it doesn't undermine the standing of the hypercorp. Just like with states and companies in the real world this is a dynamical balance. A certain amount of dirty dealing is acceptable without being declared a rogue nation or criminal enterprise, and if you can suck up to the right other players you can get away with much more. But there are limits, and these limits can sometimes shift with surprising speed (just consider how Ghaddaffi managed to move from acceptable bombing target to crazy ally and back to bombing target). Incidentally, the rule of law also benefits criminals. Criminal groups make money because they supply things and services that are banned and hence are artificially scarce. Yes, it might be a *good* thing WMDs, contract killings and slaves are scarce, but the law of supply and demand still holds: they become more valuable when demand is higher than supply and the criminals get bigger profit margins if the price goes up. Heavy enforcement just makes the price go *way* up. Also, having a functioning legal system makes things predictable - you can plan your criminal activities better, and invest the gains in a secure fashion. One of the main economic problems for most organised crime is that within the criminal world there is little rule of law, and hence there are massive overheads for ensuring that people stick to contracts, deterring defection and building trust. I suspect Nine Lives puts more investments into Extropia than Legba.

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Mon, 2011-03-28 15:07

Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture

Re: Rule of law

I still think there's an important distinction between internal law and external law. Externally, powers have to follow the rules. Internally, this is less certain, and other powers are less likely to care/be able to intervene. In addition, those internal rules could be very 'bad' rules; following them, then, wouldn't exactly be laudable. -- It's true that organized criminals don't make their money on drugs, weapons, etc., but instead on their willingness to break laws. If those drugs and weapons became legal, the criminals would simply sell their same service (breaking laws) in another application. It's an interesting suggestion that organized criminals might actually encourage the maintenance/growth of things considered illegal, out of self interest. Organized crime is just 'cheating' at business, after all; they want the rules to stay the same so they can continue to abuse them. I think I read both of these points relatively recently, in economist blogs discussing the Wall Street bailouts, and marijuana legalization. Good times. :D

Mon, 2011-03-28 18:03

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Rule of law

Yerameyahu wrote:
I still think there's an important distinction between internal law and external law. Externally, powers have to follow the rules. Internally, this is less certain, and other powers are less likely to care/be able to intervene. In addition, those internal rules could be very 'bad' rules; following them, then, wouldn't exactly be laudable.

Yes, this can be seen in the Enron emails and similar situations where internal cultures have been exposed. However, the 'laws' inside organisations are also somewhat consistent. Employees might happily be hiding wrongdoings from the police, but they are not supposed to hide breaches of internal trust from the organisation. Organisations that allow members to advance by killing off their boss tend to be *much* less effective than organisations where people make a career by being useful, and hence be out-competed. Of course, one neat solution to all of this is not to have anybody inside the organisation at all. The Zbrny Group might have gone for this.

Quote:
It's true that organized criminals don't make their money on drugs, weapons, etc., but instead on their willingness to break laws. If those drugs and weapons became legal, the criminals would simply sell their same service (breaking laws) in another application. It's an interesting suggestion that organized criminals might actually encourage the maintenance/growth of things considered illegal, out of self interest. Organized crime is just 'cheating' at business, after all; they want the rules to stay the same so they can continue to abuse them.

Exactly. How much organized crime tries to maintain profitable laws depends; many crime groups are pretty appalling as lobbyists (but then again, many current major corporations are also surprisingly bad at strategic lobbying). The truly nasty situations happen when you get both law enforcement and criminals that support laws. Crime on Extropia is an interesting case: since everything is based on contract law, criminal activities mainly involve cheating on contracts. This includes outright cons as well as doing things that you are not allowed by your law provider contract (read the fine print: if you subscribe to Medusan Shield you are not covered for owning WMDs or doing contract killing!) So the cost of getting a contract killer on Extropia includes the cost of the killer of having to abstain from legal protection or to hide his job from his law provider. Since so much that would be illegal elsewhere is pretty legal on Extropia (but might carry corresponding insurance and law fees) I suspect that most criminal syndicates have offices there mostly for doing their finance (money laundering, according to those statists in the PC). So if you want to have a safe meeting with a triad, Extropia might actually be a good place. But look out for the local con-beings, they are ruthless and very, very convincing.

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Mon, 2011-03-28 20:56

The Green Slime The Green Slime's picture

Re: Rule of law

Very good points. It's easy to conflate (especially for us cyberpunk veterans) a corporation with any rag-tag criminal gang, and while they may occasionally act as such if and when circumstances present (such as the outer system), by and large a corporation is a creature born of and sustained by rigorous order. I think the PC chapter in Sunward did a good job of illuminating the ups and downs of living in a hypercorp state - freedom, within limits; prosperity, up to a certain level; stability always. It's a clean, safe, protected place for a workaday drone to live and die and maybe live again. And it'll be kept that way for the foreseeable future because it's run by operators smart enough to know not to shit where they eat.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/iso_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/aliens_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]Time will perfect matter.[/i]

Mon, 2011-03-28 21:55

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Rule of law

I'm going to argue that there Are laws based on my observation that government = Law and there are currently 6 governments in the solar system; PC, LLA, Titanian Common wealth, Jovian Republic, Morninstar Constellation. (It could be argued that there are actually 7 if you count the Extropians.) I'm also going to argue that there is very little (real) law that governs civil code or upholds something equivalent to the bill of rights of the individual. I think we can do away with things like Miranda law, presumption of innocence, search and seizure, freedom of speech, speedy trials, right to organize and assemble... all of the stuff that was written when the people of power were trying to figure out how to control what they knew was going to become a massive and unruly populous in north america without having to bother with establishing a monarchy. In EP individual rights and liberty is only given token nod in the codification of ordinances in any of the existing governments. Hypercorps began to develop as independent, space-based entities aprox. 30 years Pre-Fall (p. 37 "BF40-20" item 3,4,5), This drive to create corporate presence in space was motivated in large part to get out from under terestrial laws and restrictions; to escape the excessive application Keynesian model and operate in a way unconcerned with Good/Evil morality crap. (I say crap because these laws are only on the books to give people something to distract them from the really important Laws (ecconomics) and give me an excuse to not shoot at politicians.) What you're left with is the other 90% of the law that is entirely unconcerned with individual rights and morality. What EP has are [u]Utility/organize-a-framework-for-cooperation[/u] types of laws. Governments of Utility and cooperation are absolutely necessary and desireable to Hypercorps. The first government in space was the L-LA. While it's not expressly written in the books, I'm going to suggest that the LLA was originally formed around the need for an unified, earth-independent organization of space traffic in earth-lunar orbit. (p. 37, BF 60-40 item 2,3,4) The first space beurocracy was Lunar-Lagrange Alliance Space Traffic Control. (which has the amusing acronym L-LASTC :D ) It then followed that the L-LA was expanded to organize and control access to vitally important Lunar water, (hydrogen propellant), reserves. When fusion power was developed it would have been expanded once again to register and create a claim system for surface mining of Helium 3. (p. 37 BF 40-20 item 7) These regulatory bodies are what created a situation amenable to the rise of Lunar Banking concerns, still the most powerful banks in the Solar system. The second oldest government would be the Titanian Common wealth. Founded by an academic consortium it was influenced by Scand. Socialists but still not primarily concerned with individual rights and liberties. Because it was founded by eggheads, I'm sure there was much pie-in-the-sky discussion of the socialist model but the TC really developed because socialism provides obvious solutions to issues of monetizing and cooperative production in a situations where your population is so thin that currency is irrelevant and even counterproductive. The Titanian Commonwealth evolved around an economic model not issues of civil law. The 3 post-Fall Governments evolved in an atmosphere of exploding population density. Thus they had to give at least a nod to civil law in their construction but like the evolution of american law that portion of the code is only concerned with keeping the populous from trying to rule itself and create restrictions that may run counter to the philosopy and activities of the *real* powers. The Planetary Consortium is nothing but the new version of the WTO and World Bank. (the original version the OC controlled the space elevators on Earth and Mars.) The PC is actually two bodies of government the powerful [u]Hypercorp Council[/u] . And they have tacked on the [u]Planetary Congress[/u] which has no economic power at all. It's interesting to note that; [u]Oversight[/u], the enforcment arm of the PC, while "first formed under the initial charter that established the Planetary Congress" [SW p.150] actually only answers to the Hypercorp Council; "Oversight’s purview falls under theHypercorp Council’s executive powers,meaning that the agency acts with theCouncil’s authority." [SW p. 151] The Jovian Republic is the only political body in which individual rights and liberties are of primary concern, and it's primarily concerned with curtailing the rights and liberties of the individual.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Tue, 2011-03-29 05:56

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Rule of law

It is always worth pointing out to you Americans and Brits that laws do not have to be based on a moral framework such as rights - that is to some degree a quirk of the Anglo-Saxon common law system, while the continental civil law system just assumes laws are based on what the lawmakers decide (their goodness is determined by how well they work, not the reason they were invented). Rights in themselves are not just optional legally, but philosophers debate whether they actually "exist" (in whatever sense such things exist). Rights might still be rule utilitarian attractors: systems that protect certain things will always work better than those that leave everything up for grabs.

OneTrikPony wrote:
What you're left with is the other 90% of the law that is entirely unconcerned with individual rights and morality. What EP has are [u]Utility/organize-a-framework-for-cooperation[/u] types of laws. Governments of Utility and cooperation are absolutely necessary and desireable to Hypercorps.

I agree with this. While I think there were many reasons for them to go into space (resources, a great new frontier) getting out from the thumb of ossified old institutions - everything from governments to megacorps to public opinion - was likely part of it. The hypercorps may have been like Spotify vs the recording industry.

Quote:
The first government in space was the L-LA. While it's not expressly written in the books, I'm going to suggest that the LLA was originally formed around the need for an unified, earth-independent organization of space traffic in earth-lunar orbit. (p. 37, BF 60-40 item 2,3,4) The first space beurocracy was Lunar-Lagrange Alliance Space Traffic Control. (which has the amusing acronym L-LASTC :D ) It then followed that the L-LA was expanded to organize and control access to vitally important Lunar water, (hydrogen propellant), reserves. When fusion power was developed it would have been expanded once again to register and create a claim system for surface mining of Helium 3. (p. 37 BF 40-20 item 7) These regulatory bodies are what created a situation amenable to the rise of Lunar Banking concerns, still the most powerful banks in the Solar system.

That is exactly how I view them. In my "Death of the Dragons" campaign setting something very similar emerged, the Orbital Transfer Alliance. They were intended to regulate the commercial use of space, in particular the use of high energy lasers powering spaceships (but of course also providing excellent megaweapons). Once you have institutions that can provide a measure of stability and predictability, real economic growth becomes possible. Before that it is a messy wild west where at most the players can learn about the environment and what it requires, but not build anything lasting.

Quote:
The second oldest government would be the Titanian Common wealth. Founded by an academic consortium it was influenced by Scand. Socialists but still not primarily concerned with individual rights and liberties. Because it was founded by eggheads, I'm sure there was much pie-in-the-sky discussion of the socialist model but the TC really developed because socialism provides obvious solutions to issues of monetizing and cooperative production in a situations where your population is so thin that currency is irrelevant and even counterproductive. The Titanian Commonwealth evolved around an economic model not issues of civil law.

Maybe. Eggheads love civil law too. And Scandinavians simply love organizing things and setting up sensible rules! :-) I get the impression that the TC had the advantage of a fairly well functioning civil society early on, with an educated public who were fairly active in the decisionmaking. Most voters are rationally ignorant: they do not care what the politicians do as long as it is not bad or against their own interests. But a smart system can channel the few people who care, and an even smarter system can get more people involved on the small sectors they care about - you need less strict laws if you have a community where people generally support the system because it obviously works, and support the rules that are there because they feel they are "their rules".

Quote:
The 3 post-Fall Governments evolved in an atmosphere of exploding population density.

This is an important point. They also formed in an atmosphere of total crisis. This means that incumbents could set up rules for the late-comers, and the crisis allowed very extensive powers. The exception is the MC, which formed from dissatisfaction with the PC - it also has far less bias towards a particular ruling group and less extreme government powers.

Quote:
The Jovian Republic is the only political body in which individual rights and liberties are of primary concern, and it's primarily concerned with curtailing the rights and liberties of the individual.

Well said! It is a bit like the rule "Any country that has 'democratic' in the name isn't a democracy."

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Tue, 2011-03-29 09:22

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Rule of law

Going out on a limb here (or maybe stating the obvious!), but perhaps the PC, LLA et al. focus on centralizing power in the government. Laws mostly are constricting the behavior of people and presenting a nice face to corporations. As much as possible, laws shift power from individuals to central authorities. This makes a great place to set up businesses and for the safe use of that megawatt super-cannon (as long as you trust the government, and of course, the government is motivated by profit). Hypercorps are given laws to follow which contribute to that economic stability, so no mass murder or mass memetic attacks. Those laws are rigorously enforced, because if someone starts mucking about like that, it threatens profit. Hypercorps who are well behaved, or keep a nice face on things, are left alone. Anarchist habitats focus on centralizing power in the community. Laws are primarily about the interactions and impacts on people. There would be social contracts (a law by any other name...) and they would be rigorously enforced. In many communities, if they're striving for maximal social cohesion and stability (required for economic growth), these laws may strictly inhibit both the inhabitants, and also any organization which strives to be a 'centralized authority'. 'Anarchist' is a broad brush though, so it'll range from the red markets of scum barges (laws are made by the guy with the biggest gun/most girlfriends) to the very controlled environments just short of technosocialism. In either case though, by definition, those hypercorps are kept in check, either by social mandate and seizure of assets, or by guys with bricks and crowbars. The Junta is focused on power. They may need hypercorps to provide products and to feed the war machine, but they won't trust a foreign-held corporation. I imagine their laws on foreign corps are quite restrictive, and those hypercorps face a lot of suspicion and hostility. Domestically-held corps are of course friends of the government, so are given a LOT more leeway, since the owners of the corps are likely also members of the politburo.

Tue, 2011-03-29 11:43

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Rule of law

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Going out on a limb here (or maybe stating the obvious!), but perhaps the PC, LLA et al. focus on centralizing power in the government. Laws mostly are constricting the behavior of people and presenting a nice face to corporations. As much as possible, laws shift power from individuals to central authorities.

In fact, there is a sizeable school in political and legal philosophy that thinks good laws give power to individuals. Laws shift social controls from the informal personal or community level to the formal level - "A government of laws, not of men", making things less arbitrary and hence more just. Of course, that is no guarantee that the PC, LLA and others have good laws. There is a real risk that the incentives are more strongly about improving things for incumbent hypercorps (how does a brash upstart get onto the hypercorp council these days?) than for the people.

Quote:
The Junta is focused on power. They may need hypercorps to provide products and to feed the war machine, but they won't trust a foreign-held corporation. I imagine their laws on foreign corps are quite restrictive, and those hypercorps face a lot of suspicion and hostility. Domestically-held corps are of course friends of the government, so are given a LOT more leeway, since the owners of the corps are likely also members of the politburo.

They strike me as fairly corporativist. It is not implausible that the founding groups of the Junta were both military and a few big corporations in Jovian space that have now merged in a lovely corporatist group-hug. Jupiter Antimatter gets a monopoly on antimatter and gets a great customer in the space fleet, while ex-admirals end up on the board. The military-industrial-intelligence complex runs the show.

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