Enforcing Foresightedness
January 16, 2002


Many laws exist to enforce foresightedness. I'm not quite sure how to talk about this, but it seems to provide a good schematic for deciding the quality of some kinds of law. The federal government is definitely arranged so that it can neither be replaced all at once nor create drastic legal change quickly (and I would be wary of people sidestepping the natural Constitutional processes to ram legislation through the system). I would wager that much of economic law revolves around preventing people from acting in ways that allow them to cash in quick but disturb the rest of the economy in the long-term. The laws Enron has probably broken might fit in here. Like insider trading: insider trading creates distrust between shareholders, a distrust which could lead to less investing in stock and a weaker economy. You might even be able to squeeze drug law into this enforced foresightedness, but I think you'd have a harder time. This probably ain't radically new as far as ideas go, but it's new to me. So.