VOLUME V, CHAPTER 5
The Lawmaker, Vested Interests, and the Roads Left to the Weak
The chapter before this set out the first positions an ordinary person runs into when the law moves. This chapter walks three steps into deeper and heavier ground. It asks first where the lawmaker himself comes from, then who the law's true largest customer really is, and last it arrives at the heaviest line of all, once the weak have been taken from, what is left for them to do. Strung together, these three sections are the least handsome and most honest stretch in the whole running of the law.
The first section asks where the lawmaker comes from, by inheritance, appointment, election, or self-appointment. Whatever road he arrives by, taking the seat means facing one and the same question, how to answer to the people. And the answer runs on the people's voice and force, two things spread unevenly from birth. Those with more than enough have the loud voice and the strong hand. Those with less have the faint voice and the weak one. This is the fourteenth layer.
The second section is vested interests, the law's largest customer. The people who reside permanently in the room where law is made carry the loudest voice and the strongest hand, so the law tilts toward them on its own. This is not anyone's plot. It is a structure with no mastermind. This is the fifteenth layer.
The third section asks what the weak are to do. To flee, to band together, to abandon the law, to strike back with force, or to cultivate the self, five roads each with its own cost. And these acts of self-rescue sometimes, without the person ever knowing, do the current order's work for it. This is the sixteenth layer.
These three sections build from the fourteenth layer to the sixteenth, and finish the heaviest stretch in the running of the law. This chapter may leave a reader's heart sinking, but only seeing this structural tilt clearly makes it possible not to be fooled by fairness on paper, and not to be led out through an exit that was arranged in advance. The stance has not shifted. It lays out the positions and draws no conclusion, and leaves the judgment to you.
Contents
Section One. Where the Lawmaker Comes From. Election, Appointment, Inheritance, Self-Appointment.
Section Two. Vested Interests, the Law's Largest Customer.
Section Three. What the Weak Are to Do. The Several Ways Ordinary People Rescue Themselves.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.