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Comment by jgmmo | Hacker News Reader

"don't want to live in a world where people feel comfortable doing whatever they want as long as it's legal."

Lol why not? Sounds like freedom.

I don't think so, I think it sounds like people abdicating their ethical power to the government. I'd rather live in a world where people are willing to break unjust laws sometimes, and uphold morals that don't exist in law. The government should not dictate our morals and culture.

For example, we have a culture that (rightly) discourages lying, but making lying illegal would be a disaster.

When lies cause harm to others they are usually a type of fraud. Those are crimes.

Edit: I'm talking 'real' harm. The kind you could sue someone for, with real actual damages. Not simply emotional distress or inconvenience.

If I promise to pick my friend up at the airport and don't go, have I harmed them? Is it a crime?

If I run for president and lie about my positions to get elected, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?

If I create a second identity and maintain two relationships in different states, have I harmed anyone? Is it a crime?

In response to your edit, yes, that's exactly the point. Not all harm can be sued for. Not all wrongs are illegal. Some wrongs cannot be illegal.

If I promise to be faithful to my wife and then cheat on her, do you believe I've done anything wrong? If so, do you think it should be illegal?

Or let's take emotion out of it and focus on "real actual damages". Say I verbally promise my friend a job at my company in New York and encourage them to move here, with no intention of actually hiring them. Have I harmed them if they trusted me enough to sign an expensive lease in New York? If so, should it be illegal to break a verbal promise? Should everyone act like robots and refuse to trust each other without written contracts?

The last question with the job is basically textbook promissory estoppel: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/promissory_estoppel.asp.

Because it used to be legal to own people.

So because laws are not perfect, and have at times in the past illustrated issues in our society, because they are the result of a long-term evolution, they can not be trusted? Ever?

Do you not think that in the long-run that our law will make all that is universally agreed to be unethical and harmful to others also illegal?

What I'm saying is law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society. You seem to throw that out the window and think of law as some unrelated and untrustable thing.

"law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society"

Right, we're all in agreement here. Law should conform to society, society need not conform to law. When the law is wrong, we can resist it, and when the law is absent, we can replace it.

Why should the law evolve to be more just? If anything, wouldn't the laws that were most fair be the ones that due to their age in spite of history's blows indicates preferential selection, and that age of the law may correlate to the relatively simplicity of its authoring government and hence maybe fewer externalities. We now live in a period of perennial voter disenfranchisement, and it seems that the civil rights movement will not have the lasting stopping power it was perceived to wield to cement incremental progress in our society. I think that recent legislation, although almost never as surely heinous as chattel slavery or slaughter of Native Americans or racial quotas etc., that there is a difference between the 'what we think is worth keeping' and the 'what we can expect to be exasperatingly legislated in the near future'

In particular, if you want to think of the law in evolutionary terms, it has two different pressures on it: pressure to become more just, and pressure to become a better tool to protect the powerful. It is not obvious that pressure to become more just is stronger.

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