Frederic’s paper says a lot of rather extreme things that I would take exception with and a few that I don’t. The first is that the law will be corrupted by greed in order to benefit one group at the expense of another. I agree with this and fully believe that parts of the law are created to protect or enrich one group while disadvantaged another. For example one thing is civil forfeiture which allows police to take cash or items that they Believe will be used in a crime. This policy targets lower income people more as they can not afford to hire a lawyer for amounts under $10,000 without losing almost all of it to lawyers fees. Those on the more wealthy end of society however can afford to throw teams of lawyers at a police department to ensure their own safety. This is just one example of a law that will affect people differently based on wealth. He goes on to state that governments are just collections of people working together to protect their own property and liberties.
However this is where he thinks the boundaries of the law should stop. He believes that the laws should only allow and protect man's property and liberties and shouldn’t go to do anything more as that would force the government to steal from somebody else. I think that this is a great idea on paper but is horrible in practice. The reason I say this is because it is very difficult to define what is someone's property and what counts as being tricked or having it stolen from you. We see these conversations happening today with AI image apps that use pictures on the internet as training images and the questions it raises if that is stealing or not. As the world develops unforeseen technologies emerge and whether they are owned or not is constantly questioned which means that the government needs to be able to research and study new things in order to accurately determine these things. On to the part about plunder meaning to trick someone out of their wealth. What determines what is a trick? If fine print in a contract against the law? The government would be forced to create agencies to enforce the rules it creates to ensure its laws are followed and to establish guidelines.
Frederic talks about how the group of people or government can’t gain any powers that the people did not originally have. I disagree with this statement as when things are added together they can gain new abilities based upon what they need to do. For example if a group is created to protect something and one slacks off they can be punished by the group for not upholding their agreement. He goes on to insinuate that socialist leaders seek to plunder from the rich to give to the poor through increased taxes and such. I would argue that this is not unfair stealing but rather extra fees for increased security. Those that are higher class have more property and assets which require the government to protect and thus require more taxes to be paid. Those on the upper end of the wealth spectrum can also move money and do more things with money which require the government to spend more to make sure that they are not infringing on anyone else.
Connected to his ideas of separating government from anything other than law is his stance that government should stay out of education, religion, and morality. I believe this is a mistake as the biggest institutions could just force out competition before pushing whatever narrative they want. I have a saying that is passed around the internet a good amount around elections that I believe is fitting and I apologize for the vulgarity. You may not fuck with politics, but politics will fuck with you. I believe that big groups, corporations, religions, or even single powerful people will always manipulate the economy and government in their favor no matter what anyone else does. The only way to really protect against these kinds of people and groups is to have a collective effort to protect against these people even if it may infringe on their personal liberty. Frederic explains that when socialist lawmakers see disparity, they try to fix it by taking away from the more wealthy and giving it to the poor. I think this ignores the background of this situation. A great example was protections for workers that strike. While this may seem like it only helped the workers, it also protected the factory and company owners because the only way for the workers to get change was to physically attack and beat the owner. Whether we like it or not, when a large group of people get angry enough to attack someone either they need to be dealt with through force or compromises need to be made to ensure no violence occurs.
The next point I won’t touch on as much as it is mostly Frederic’s personal feeling rather than a policy idea. He believes that politicians try to make the world believe that they were sent by god and that they can do no wrong while humans are just innately self destructive and need guidance. I am perfectly able to debate many of his policy points earlier in the paper, but I am unable to argue that legislators don’t see themselves like this except by giving a few examples from either side of the aisle with Liz Cheney and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
I believe that Frederic might have had a few good ideas or points that should be considered and modified to fit in with society. However most of his views were extremist and while some where realist in that greed will always exist; others were not in their thinking that no government intervention might work out better.
