…I get my receipt and check the numbers. There is fine print at the bottom stating something legal. It is referencing some other texts and is suppose to enlighten me about liability, indemnification etc…I believe its evidence…
So why is the law so complicated?
Guardians of Legalcomplex
Unlike the other ‘things’ that (will) run our lives, the law has been romanticized in science, literature and film as something righteous yet secretive. A language only a few have mastered yet is revered and adhered. Its practitioners are modern-days saints which guard us from mayhem and malice. But there is a dark side to this benevolence. Legal work intent is to provide clarity but to the contrary: it is cleverly disguised complexity. One that is perpetuated by its guardians, who are the ones bestowed with the power to decrypt. I call this LegaLCompleX.
Now many strive to unravel and democratize this mesh of rules from the inside out and outside in. Yet there might be another force which is inadvertently cracking this barrier of complexity: Money. Simply said:
most legal rules exist to regulate the flow of money.
The law (especially tax law) was initially conceived to distribute wealth in an orderly fashion. Now that money as currency has fundamentally change from paper to digital, so does its governance. As this wonderful article more eloquently explains: the event of crypto currency such as Bitcoin is forcing us to fundamentally rethink our legal contracts required to regulate the flow of money.
Vanishing Legal
So while preachers of law have consistently pressed this complexity, they are also engineering its inexplicable evanesce.
The more complex the law and its language has become, the more intolerable we will be to its use and visibility in either small or fine print.
We are entering a perfectly designed world of convenience which will not tolerate complexity. In any industry this is a fact:
if your product is too complicated to comprehend, it will fail.
The law as a product to regulate us will fail unless it gets more sophisticated in its applicability and ease of use.
Moreover, if its too complex, none will comply. Either the complexity is fully automated and made invisible or it will be designed out of existence. The law will vanish in code that will be computed not argued. Better to let logical If – Then – Else statements negotiate human interactions where trust is required.
Ultimately, it is trust we try to enforce with rules so if we delegate this trust to software it might free humanity.
Engineering Bondrew
Smart contracts are legal contracts running on computer logic rather than human language and the inevitable emotions it conveys. These contracts will be used by robots of law in resolving legal issues. No judge, jury or jurist just run and debug. I do not believe making the law simpler is easily achievable, I do believe its complexity can be hidden in software. Just click: “I agree” and trust that your Robo-lawyer has acted in your best interest.
Bondrew: transform rules into code and puts code into robots. Robots support humans. #Bondrew = Rise.
Originally posted on Medium