Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory
From: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Subject: Too many lawyers? (Was Re: "Full Employment Act" for lawyers?)
Reply-To: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 23:20:30 GMT
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wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) writes:
>
>Consider that in most of those TV ads, the lawyer usually goes on to
>say something like "You may have rights which you're not aware of,
>rights which you may lose if you don't take certain actions in time."
>Is it a bad thing that people are being informed of this fact, and
>that if they do go to a lawyer they learn exactly what these rights
>are and what they have to do to enforce them?  (And please note that
>this is a separate question entirely from "Should anyone get rich from
>informing people of their rights and helping to enforce them?")

The real problems is that OUR RULES OF BEHAVIOR ARE TOO COMPLEX AND ARBITRARY.
That's why people don't even know what their rights are, and why there
exists a fundamental contradiction of our system that assumes people
know the exact rules when they make decisions but which makes this
knowledge impossible in many situations.

The whole idea of "rights" you're talking about here is too often an
arbitrary set of rules about what responsibility belongs to whom under this and
that circumstance.  They are arbitrary in the sense that if we massively
simplify or change them AND everybody understands and behaves according to
the new rules, no one will be better or worse off.

We must simplify these rules to reduce the overhead of working through this
mass of information.  We used to be able to afford this overhead but it has
grown to a point that threatens our future economic growth.

I don't blame the lawyers because SOMEONE has to provide that kind of services,
given our system.  However the fact remains that we have to change this

>> It has been suggested that one reason we have so much litigation is
>> that the US does not have a social safety net.  If you are injured
>> so that you cannot work, or work at your trained occupation, then
>> you are destitute.  The courts are the only way to seek the means to
>> live.  Other societies will provide you with the means to live, or
>> pay for retraining for some new skill.
>
>There's a lot of truth in that analysis.  The point I'm trying to make
>is that while the current system may benefit lawyers, it -- contrary
>to some popular beliefs -- isn't the lawyers' fault.  Whether or not
>the services that they provide _should_ be needed in a "good" society,
>they do seem to be needed in the society we've got.
>
>(And _please_, don't anyone bring up the old idea that it is too the
>lawyers' fault because so many elected officials are lawyers who have
>a vested interest in keeping the system the way it is... even if all
>that is true, in a representative democracy the responsibility for
>choosing the representatives must lie with the electorate, not the
>elected.)
>
>-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal