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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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For example, if there are 10x as many video games as there were before, do they create 10x the economic value. Of course not.

Bingo.

I am slightly hopeful that 3D printing (and I guess 3D printing + AI) will get us to some good places in the tangible meatspace. I also suspect that, if Space Economy becomes real, there might be a lot of possibilities for material improvement (some of which might be tied to white collar type jobs, like Martian Rock Rover Supervisor).

But it will also make it possible for that same human lawyer to produce a 100,000 page contract of dense legalese. Existing improvements in technology have seemingly only increased the demand for lawyers.

Yes, and this is a horrible thought. I would be quite happy with a law banning contracts that cannot be meaningfully understood in 5 minutes. That's not a law banning even per se 100,000 pages of dense legalese but I should be able to read a contract in one sitting with no surprises. Same with a law.

(Lawyers will love this once they realize it means litigating over whether the fine print was adequately represented by the topline!)

I would be quite happy with a law banning contracts that cannot be meaningfully understood in 5 minutes. That's not a law banning even per se 100,000 pages of dense legalese but I should be able to read a contract in one sitting with no surprises. Same with a law. (Lawyers will love this once they realize it means litigating over whether the fine print was adequately represented by the topline!)

This ties into an axiom of my political views. Give or take:

Once a person is affected by more words of law than it is possible for them to read and understand in their lifetime, corruption is effectively inevitable.

(Which then feeds forward into constitutions, hierarchical laws, kitchen-sink bills, etc, etc.)

Once a person is affected by more words of law than it is possible for them to read and understand in their lifetime, corruption is effectively inevitable.

Aha. I love this.