[wmeredith]

This is an overly cynical view. The vast majority of laws are used positively. The are the foundation of this country. When they are abused it makes headlines (sometimes). When everyone gets to work and back safely and can afford to pay the mortgage and buy a big screen, it's just business as usual.

[codecamper]

I'm asking that based on what I've heard from a friend who runs a VC backed company. He said he needed VC largely because an incumbent in his category decided to sue him rather than compete. The lawsuit was rather frivolous, but when you get a bunch of people with a dim view of computer programming involved, then you need lawyers. And lawyers are EXPENSIVE. They are much much much more expensive than computer programmers. And then it becomes not so fun to run a company. It was about writing great software. Now it's about defending yourself in court. Total nightmare.

[wmeredith]

That's a pretty nightmarish scenario, and I sympathize with your friend. However, it does nothing to convince me that most laws are used for evil.

[fapjacks]

I firmly believe that laws provide psychological boundaries for most people (in that I believe most people are neutral good, lawful good or neutral evil), and provide tools for some to abuse others (the lawful evil). Given a perfect distribution, or even a bell curve, I think yes, most uses of law are not used for evil purposes. But there is a significant segment of the spectrum that does. Of course, in my purely anecdotal system based on Dungeons and Dragons. :P

[notdanariely]

Dan Ariely's recent book titled "Dishonesty" presents a lot of research that supports this. His thesis (in part) is that people tend to cheat / lie right up until the point they can no longer internally think of themselves as decent people.

In this interpretation, the legal system is a reasonably objective proxy to inform people how far they are across the line. This suggests that even unenforced laws can help establish an acceptable norm, so people have an external comparison.

[JoshTriplett]

In my opinion, far too many people are lawful neutral, and far too few are neutral good.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The vast majority of laws are used positively.

I find that a sensible way to look at it is that laws that are used are bad laws. Because almost everyone follows sensible laws so they only need to be litigated in rare outlier cases. By contrast, bad laws end up in the courts continuously because they're susceptible to abuse by dishonest parties.

So the vast majority of laws are used negatively, because good laws don't have to be used.