[lmilcin]

I am pretty shocked by other responses. It is definition of "rule of law" that we do not rip off each other because we feel wrong but instead are governed (ruled) by law.

In a democratic country the law is supposed to be made by democratic process.

If you feel wronged, pillaging shops is not the way to solve it. The way to solve it is to get informed about what democracy is and cast your votes to get represented by people who will defend and strengthen democratic process.

Instead, what happens is people do not put enough or any due dilligence when casting their vote and the country gets represented by people who don't care about democratic process and only care about their partisan interests.

Get some good laws to make sure the best way to be profitable is to do good to your customers. Let's not be naive that trying to rip off the insurance company is an attempt to alleviate any of current problems (except for personal budget problems).

[caoilte]

That's not the definition of "rule of law" or it would be punishable to break the spirit of the law instead of the "letter" of the law.

This is a lot like the difference between tax evasion (breaking letter of the law) and tax avoidance (breaking the spirit of the law).

It's also arguable that hedge funds exist to arbitrage the difference between the spirit of contractual arrangements (thou shalt not use pension funds to take out massive loans) and the letter of contractual arrangements (god only knows what you can and can't do with the company pension fund, but you can probably bribe the prosecutor to agree with you).

So, it's normal business practice for businesses and the wealthy to rip others off. The difference between them and us is they have better lawyers and are able to bribe prosecutors who have a different interpretation of the letter of the law.

Better laws are not going to level this playing field because the problem is largely how we practice law and all major parties support the status quo.

[lmilcin]

The definition of "rule of law" is contrast to rule by a person (typically a dictator, king, etc.). "Rule of law" means that instead of a person or a group of people giving arbitrary directions, we observe body of law as answer to what is and what is not allowed.

[cle]

The reason this line of thinking isn't very compelling to many people is because it isn't very actionable. There are clear "positive" outcomes to "ripping someone off"...the outcome of voting is far removed, negligible, and possibly even has no effect at all (depending on where you live and what social group you're in).

So while I agree with you in principle, this approach is insufficient.

> If you feel wronged, pillaging shops is not the way to solve it.

Sometimes, it is. For groups of people with little to no political power, protesting, rioting, and causing a bunch of social upheaval is definitely a productive way to force other people to consider and address their grievances. There are a lot of negative tradeoffs, of course, but there's no denying that it's an effective way to raise awareness.

Otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

[flir]

There comes a point where you feel your democratic process has been thoroughly captured, and you find it hard to drum up much sympathy for the orgs that did the capturing.