Are laws made to be broken, or to pay the lawmaker?

More laws, less sarracena? The strange utopia of natural law

The law exists to be broken, but above all so that someone gets paid to write it. This is not street provocation: it is the conclusion reached by a school of thought that sees legalism as the root of all evil. More rules, less ethics; more prohibitions, more sarracena decay. Taken to its logical extreme, this recipe leads to nostalgia for a "natural law" that even its own defenders cannot agree how to define.

The lawmaker who legislates for a living

Among the arguments circulating, one stands out as cynical as it is hard to refute: the lawmaker creates laws to justify the salary they collect. If citizens don't like it, another law is passed to ban their dislike. The satire has a point, but also its limits: positive law exists, among other things, to guarantee that no one gets sued over a joke. The original expression, crude but vivid, is used without embarrassment in this current of thought.

The natural law paradox

The problem arises when people demand fewer laws and a "common law of well-being" at the same time. If the world would work fine without legislation, why is that common law needed? The contradiction was pointed out with irony: "a common law that is not a law because the world doesn't need laws." Natural law, like love, is invoked but never defined. Who decides what is just? The Ten Commandments? The question remains hanging in the air.

Hate speech as a testing ground

One of the favorite examples is the regulation of hate speech in the United States and Spain. The argument goes that banning offensive expressions without intent to harm assumes the offended party is inferior; that being called white can be just as upsetting. It is a controversial position that ignores historical context and the real power of certain insults. But it shows how far the anti-legalist logic goes: if every law is suspect, so is the one protecting the weak.

As often happens with utopias, no consensus is reached. But one thing is clear: as long as there are salaried legislators, there will be people who think laws are written for them. And that, at least, needs no natural law to explain it.