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0 pointsphillmv13y ago0 comments

Our society is also, easily, 100x more complex than ancient Babylon. Not least of which because it also has, what, 1000x times more people?

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rayiner13y ago· 2 in thread

I think social complexity scales non-linearly with size and population density (like code complexity), and also scales with things like the number of people possibly affected by one person's activity. Our society is easily millions of times more complex than ancient Babylon.

Retric13y ago

That's more or less irrelevant to to the legal code. Consider what laws could we remove with 150 million people or how dealing with 600 million people force a lot of new legal complexity.

What really leads to complexity in the legal code is the level of institutionalized corruption. AKA only companies owned by someone living within 50 miles of X and 30 miles of Y may do XYZ. Coupled with the age of the legal system which adds cruft over time.

rayiner13y ago

> That's more or less irrelevant to to the legal code.

Complexity in the society the legal code is designed to govern is irrelevant to the complexity of that legal code?

> What really leads to complexity in the legal code is the level of institutionalized corruption. AKA only companies owned by someone living within 50 miles of X and 30 miles of Y may do XYZ.

Do you think that's what laws actually look like?

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