The Gravity of the Law

Science does not enjoy or encourage error; nor does it despise or reject it. Science does learn from error, as error directs its thinking. That is not true for politics. Error in politics is a disaster and the focus of vilification and ridicule. White-coated scientists on the dais with politicians is an oxymoron.



                                     The Gravity of the Law

This is from Munger.

I told the story of a federal government scientist who entered a DC Metro station eating a candy bar. A DC Transit cop noticed this (they were passing on escalator, down vs. up) and admonished the scientist. Scientist nodded, ate the last bite of the candy bar, and headed toward the subway platform.

The cop hurried back down the escalator, and aggressively confronted the scientist. (Both cop and scientist were African-American women, if it matters). The cop roughed up the scientist, and then aggressively searched her, going so far as to put her hand up and feel around inside her bra.

Some people at the time thought the cop had just gone crazy. That view makes the mistake of “falling out only with the abuse.” This was not an abuse of the system; it is the system. To paraphrase Chris Rock, “That cop didn’t go crazy. That cop went cop!”

What I mean is that violence and literal enforcement of the law is not a distortion or perversion of state power, but is rather the essence of state power. The law said “no eating.” The person was eating. That person must be aggressively prevented from flouting the law. I’m not sure exactly what the scientist should have done, since she couldn’t spit out the candy bar. But when she ate the rest of the candy bar, after being told that eating was illegal, the state had to come down hard.

In the past few weeks, we have seen videos of police violence targeted at civilians. I started to say “innocent civilians,” but that’s not true. In an environment where a police order to “get off the streets, move away” has been issued, the failure to move away is very much like popping the rest of the candy bar in your mouth. The state, in the form of police violence, is asserting its power to control the population. Once you begin to see like a state, you recognize that failing to use violence to exert control would deny the nature, and in fact the very self-justification, of the enforcement power.

A government does other things also, of course, but the ability to survive and to use violence to force citizens to obey, is the core function of the state.