For the people

Abraham Lincoln said it beautifully in the last sentence of his Gettysburg Address: the government, to be legitimate, has to be elected by the people and has to serve the interests of the people. In a sense, the need for the government is understood as a lesser evil that allows the organization of the country as a whole rather than each one fending for themselves. That is precisely why the claim of the Federal Government over the Western part of the US was tenuous for the biggest part of the 19th century: law and order were reasonably guaranteed in the biggest cities, but there were many small settlements where justice was applied only in a very loose way, from summary executions without any judicial guarantees to many crimes which went unpunished by sheer lack of enforcement resources.

Every justice system is initially rooted in a small set of "natural laws", such as not killing one another (and the definition of "another" varies a lot from place to place and across time), but the number of punishable crimes and felonies usually increases in time: when a citizen feels aggravated by someone else's actions they can go to court to determine what is ultimately the social acceptability of the action in dispute. If an unacceptable behavior becomes frequent enough, the usual path is to "publicly denounce" it by passing a law that makes the action illegal. And the creation of these laws is one of the protective tasks assigned to the government.

Photo: Faruk Ateş

However it is clear that, by the time a law is passed to prevent such an action, someone has already been harmed and had to sue the counterpart. This kind of judiciary-based code of laws is quite common in the US, but it can result in a patchy collection where only the cases that have already seen a court ruling end up covered by the law. On the other side, it seems a good way of preventing the government from overreaching and issuing laws on matters where nobody has asked for their opinion.

In Europe, where centralized nation-states have been a historical reality for more than 500 years and a powerful government is taken for granted, the approach is slightly different: while some laws are still passed as a result of court rulings, the norm is that the parliament tries to establish rules and regulations before they become a problem. this does not mean in any way that they succeed in their intent, but it is true in general that the body of law tends to be more coherent.

In my view there are two reasons to prefer the a priori legislative process. The first one is that it prevents the suffering of the initial group of victims by ensuring that most citizens never become one in the first place. The second one is that the access to justice is heavily conditioned by the material wealth of the plaintiffs, so there is a big fraction of the society who just cannot afford to sue. The legislature, on the other hand, can count on ample financial resources, prompt access to experts and even the "collaboration" of the relevant industry.

One example where the task of the government is particularly important is customer protection. There are many products and services that we use and buy without having more than a very superficial knowledge about their workings and this implies that we approach them with a number of assumptions that may be true or not. For instance, it is a common assumption that radioactive elements are not easily available in the stores, so there is no need to check for radiation in the devices that we buy. However, there is a certain type of smoke detectors that work with a minuscule (but measurable) amount of radioactive americium. The government, by means of its technical staff, has established what can be considered a safe amount of radiation and takes good care that these detectors are compliant with the regulation, but that does not mean that the radiation is not there, only that it is present at an acceptable level.

The problem, as usual, is the tension between the industry, which tries to make as much money as possible, and the public, who does not want to be cheated or made sick by the products they buy. If the industry were able to reduce the amount of radioactive material alongside the cost of the smoke detector that would happen automatically without the need for an intervention: the consumers would be happier with the reduced radiation and the industry would make more money. But a smaller radioactive element would require the rest of the detector be more sensitive and therefore more expensive, so the natural tendency of the industry would be the opposite: to increase the radiation and reduce the cost. But a lot of people would be angry if, after 10 years of exposure, they start to develop thyroid cancer.

The same applies to the infamous EULAs (End-User License Agreements) that we are all "asked" to sign for the benefit of using a phone or a website. The provider has a huge legal advantage because they can establish absolutely abusive clauses which the user is very unlikely to identify and, even if they do, they will probably go along and accept the abuse because otherwise they are left without the product or service. As a side bar, a big component of the problem is the current "tournament model" of the digital economy where the winner takes all, so if you do not like the policy of an app like Instagram you can try to find an alternative, but you are unlikely to succeed in that endeavor and even if you find it your friends and family would still be in the abusive mainstream one, so the situation is a de-facto monopoly and the loss is all yours.

So next time you find yourself wondering why the government is trying to regulate this or that activity, think that it probably has a significant potential for harming people, probably even without their knowledge, and only the law can defend us against the predatory practices of some industries. And if you are educated or have experience with the product or device you might be able to see the traps you are running into, but not everyone can. You might know enough physics not to iron your clothes while wearing them, but that is not true for everyone. And until the education system provides everyone with sufficient knowledge to avoid these incident, the regulations are there to protect precisely the most vulnerable. By the people and for the people. Have a nice evening.