THE major difference between nations is their concept and practice of "justice". Capitalism is a side-effect. Feudalism seems to be every society's first pass at justice, and then capitalism arises by erasing hard class distinctions and deregulating economic exchange. This becomes clear when you ask yourself the question, "If my nation was invaded and occupied, how would things change?"

Justice in America is badly broken, and most, if not all of our ills (including distrust in the legitimacy of institutions) is a direct result. It should be easy, cheap, and fast to sue an individual or institution for harm and to get a fair result. It should be easy, cheap, and fast to get arrested for something criminal and be found either guilty or innocent in a fair trial, judged by a jury of peers. Instead, all but the 1% are priced out of the justice system, and the justice system itself is slow, expensive, and fundamentally unjust. The complexity of law and its practice shelters entire ecosystems of "professionals" who's job is to game the system to obtain the desired result. The price of justice, in both time and money, is itself used as leverage. And leverage is Power. Any society that lets its justice system go, lets it rot under layers and layers of complexity, makes it inaccessible to the average person, has undermined its Purpose. Only momentum, particularly the ignorance of the masses who imagine the system to be "mostly functional", keeps it legitimate. But that ignorant goodwill is finite, and decays as more and more smart, self-interested actors take advantage of the moribund system.

What I find most astonishing is the profound lack of attention given to the justice system itself. Not just its performance in high-profile cases, but its performance in every day cases. This goes part-and-parcel with police brutality and abuse, the "Marshal Law Bubble" that surrounds every LEO in America, because the justice system has their back in an almost unbelievably complete way. The same holds true for state attorney generals and prosecutors: for every story of a person wrongfully convicted, spending 20+ years in prison, how many times have you ever heard of a prosecutor being prosecuted for their malfeasance? How many horror stories of lawsuits getting bogged down in years of pre-trial motions before the poorer of the two litigants has to give up? How many fathers have been separated from their young children for months or years at the whim of an uncaring family court?

In practice, we almost all rely on the fact that its rare to go to court. Everyone knows that to be arrested is to have your life changed, whether or not you're convicted. Everyone knows that to be sued is to lose 10's or 100's of thousands, even if you win. Is this justice? No. It's statistics. It's most people not knowing and not caring because they see the justice system as being only for those who "deserve it". But that's not what justice is supposed to be about. You should be able to sue Roku for changing their terms of service and preventing you from using your TV until you agree. It should be cheap and easy and quick. You should be able to sue Harvard for publishing false data that misled you into doing the wrong thing for your patients, or leading you to wrong conclusions in your own papers. You should be able to sue a LEO for false arrest, violation of your rights, and assault. The fact that you cannot (and in the current system, should not) do any of these things means that bad actors get away with it, constantly, and with no real prospect of correction.

Now, whether this problem is isomorphic to ants following in a circle, I don't know. Maybe. It certainly seems like no-one is thinking about it or talking about it. I know that state law boards are a very powerful (perhaps THE most powerful) lobby in America, and serious justice system reforms would undermine their business model. But the simple fact is that our justice system has already failed. The core function of government has failed. And the public is barely aware of it.