Thee are people who claim that a society would not work without statutory laws, that they are necessary for peace and order. Are they?
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Statutory laws. Are they necessary?
Thee are people who claim that a society would not work without statutory laws, that they are necessary for peace and order. Are they?
Maybe only a certain type of people can live without statutory laws.
“The free market is a product of the working of natural law in the area of human relationships, specifically economic relationships. Because man’s survival and well-being are not given to him, but must be achieved, men act to maximize their welfare (if they didn’t they couldn’t keep on living). To maximize their welfare, they trade with other men, and when they trade, each man tries to get the best possible “deal.” Buyers bid against each other and push prices up. Sellers bid against each other and push prices down. At the point where the two forces meet, the market price is set, and everyone who wants to trade at that price can do so without creating surpluses
or shortages. Thus, the law of supply and demand, and all other market laws, are really natural laws, directly derived from the nature and needs of that specific entity, man. The fact that market laws are natural laws explains why the free market works so well without any outside regulation. Natural law is always practical—it always “works.”
Government is an artificial construct which, because of what it is, is in opposition to natural law. There is nothing in the nature of man which demands that he be governed by other men (if there were, then we would have to find someone to govern the governors, for they, too, would be men with a need to be governed). In fact, the nature of man is such that, in order to survive and be happy, he must be able to make his own decisions and control his own life … a right which is unavoidably violated by governments. The ruinous consequences of government’s inescapable opposition to natural law are written in blood and human degradation across the pages of all man’s history.
The operations of natural law in human relationships are much less apparent in a governmental society than in a laissez-faire society, because government, in an effort to get something for nothing, tries to dissolve or ignore the laws of cause and effect and so obscures the consequences of many actions (particularly bad ones). Politicians want power which they have no right to and plaudits which they have not earned, so they promise money which isn’t theirs and favors they have no business granting. For instance, they promise to raise the wages of labor (a thing which only an increase in production can do, since the money for wages can’t come out of nothing). When they pass a minimum wage statute, they seem to have bypassed natural-economic law, but actually they’ve only obscured it. Employers are forced to compensate for the wage increases to some of their employees by laying off others, which creates a class of jobless, hopeless poor. Wage rates go up for some at the expense of falling to zero for others. Natural law can’t be legislated out of existence, no matter how hard the politicians try, because it is inherent in the nature of things. Natural law is just as operative in a governmental society as it would be in a laissez-faire one; it is simply harder to trace because of the complicated meddlings of the bureaucrats, The tacit assumption that natural law does not apply to human relationships has led men to the belief that society must have a system of statutory laws to “fill the gap” and maintain social order. At the very least, it is believed that statutory law is necessary to codify natural law so that it will be objective, of universal application, and easily understood by all.
Statutory law is a code of rules established and enforced by governmental authority. Any particular statutory law may be based on an objective principle, or it may be based on a principle which is contrary to the nature of reality. It may even be a range-of-the-moment measure with no basis in any sort of principle at all (such laws are characteristic of governments when they feel themselves to be in crisis situations). There is nothing which can be built into the nature of a government which will guarantee that all, or even a majority, of the laws it passes will be based on objective principles—in fact, history shows that the reverse is usually the case; most laws are based on the subjective whim of some politician.
Statutory laws which are not based on objective principles are immoral and inescapably harmful; anything which is in opposition to reality—to things as they really are—can’t work. Laws which are based on objective principles are merely a legal restatement of natural law, and are thus unnecessary. A man can identify a natural law, and he can even write it down in a textbook for other men to understand, but he cannot “pass” it because it already exists—inescapably. Once the natural law has been identified and understood, nothing more can be added by restating it in legal form and “making it compulsory.” It already is compulsory, by its very nature.”
Escerpt from: “The Market for Liberty” – Chapter 12: Legislation and Objective Law.
