Fewer laws, in fact only 3 laws: The solution to societies ills?

[Grandad.Malky]

I can't see that it would break any of those laws....

 

So you wouldn’t be stealing from your neighbour to pay for your habit or having late parties to partake in your habit, that only leaves one rule unbroken doesn’t it?

[Grahame]

I've removed the last four items because, to me at least, the OP refers to criminal law and not other aspects of it.

 

All of these things can be interpreted as causing (potential, if not actual) harm to one's neighbours, provided we interpret "neighbours" to include businesses, and property, belonging to other people as well as the people themselves.

 

An insurance fraud is taking money away from, ultimately, other customers of the insurance company, who must charge higher premiums to cover losses due to fraud. A failure of hygiene is endangering the health of customers, which I'd certaiinly class as harm even if nobody actually does get ill. Driving without insurance, again, is endangering other people (you might cripple someone for life and there'll be no money to pay for their healthcare needs) whether or not the potential hazard actually occurs.

 

It's easy to see why you could not just have the three sentences Tony gives, and nothing else. Things need to be clarified, specified and explained (what level of hygiene is too low? How would anyone know if there were no rules laid down?) But, in principle, the number of criminal offences it's possible to commit should be small, even though it would be possible to commit them in lots of different ways.

 

How about combining Tony's three laws into one, something like this?

 

"Do nothing to your neighbour, their family or property, that would cause either physical, financial, or emotional harm".

 

[HeadingNorth]

Trouble is with that, you would then need exemptions - for example if you push someone over in order to jump in front of a car to save someone elses life, you have just physically harmed someone, but in order to save someone else from more harm.

 

That is the reason laws tend to be long and complex.

 

It's a reasonable starting point, though. It has been ever since Hammurabi first wrote it down, and it's been repeated in numerous cultural and religious injunctions - Grahame's probably thinking of the Commandments, or of Jesus saying "love thy neighbour as thyself."

[hard2miss]

The new government started a website on which you can post New Labour laws that should be repealed. The majority of posts to it have been requests for more laws, not less.

 

 

Everybody seems to agree that we should have less laws, but everybody actually asks for new ones to cover things they think other people should not be allowed to do.

Laws are like the economy, they only like it going one way, expanding.