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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Italian proverbs: chi crea legge crea inganno

So, our proverb today is one every Italian knows: chi crea legge, crea inganno. He who creates (a) law, creates deceit.

In other words, positing a law, regulation, prohibition, statute, and so on, inevitably brings about efforts to get around these. I agree with this. The so-called rule of law sets off a contest to game the system, and the system is in fact seen as something the individual should profit from while adopting a latently adversarial attitude towards it. But the effects, in the end, tend to be rather similar.