Re: law & economics & everything else...

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

[I made the mistake of sending the following only to Ian rather than to
pen-l as a whole.]

I posted the following (which comes from today's L.A. TIMES book review
section):
Cornering the Market in Chutzpah

PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS: A Study of Decline, By Richard A. Posner,
Harvard
University Press: 408 pp., $29.95

[reviewed] By RUSSELL JACOBY

January 27 2002

Ian writes:>And we wonder why so many young people are embracing
anarchism and the autonomist wing of Marxism, with their call for the
dismantling - in word and deed- of the dyad of legal/illegal..........<

these folks may have their emotions on their side, but getting rid of
the "dyad" of legal/illegal (i.e., the state) is silly. Without a state
-- and the concept of legal vs. illegal -- we can't have democracy.
Without democracy, we can't have socialism. (We might get it if the
working class and other counter-establishmentarian movements had
significant power and could replace the state with something else, but
this isn't something that's likely to happen in the near future.)

I'm sure Ken Lay would love the idea of getting rid of (il)legality.
That means that his lust for endless accumulation would face no limits
at all. Getting rid of the state would mean that even more than usual,
might would make right. -- Jim Devine