(no subject)

[unbibium]

I'd like to beat my Libertarian friends to the punch with a link I leeched from Metafilter. This comes from Rule of Law and Confucianism, part 3 of Henry C.K. Liu's article entitled "The Abduction of Modernity", meant to illustrate the fallacies in the Western assumption that our civilization, and those that copy it, are the only truly civilized ones.

The Confucian Code of Rites (Liji) is expected to be the controlling document on civilized behavior, not law. In the Confucian world view, rule of law is applied only to those who have fallen beyond the bounds of civilized behavior. Civilized people are expected to observe proper rites. Only social outcasts are expected to have their actions controlled by law. Thus the rule of law is considered a state of barbaric primitiveness, prior to achieving the civilized state of voluntary observation of proper rites. What is legal is not necessarily moral or just.

I didn't have time to read the whole thing during my lunch break. But I'd already heard that the Chinese have different words for written and unwritten law, and that the idea of written law was resisted by those spiritual advisers who knew that written laws lead to litigious societies, much like ours.

I think whenever an American sues a fast food company for making fattening food, or a tobacco company for making unhealthy products, or another American for some perceived insensitivity, someone in Taiwan reads that story and is grateful they don't live here. One wonders if they even know about homeowner's associations.

On the other hand, I wonder whether a system such as theirs would prevent the kind of perfectly Western-legal behavior from corporations, that causes grief to so many of us in the United States. Here, Wal-Mart can muscle out a big fraction of the local business in a small town. They couldn't do it if their presence so offended the town that nobody shopped there. Could the RIAA and MPAA exist in a Confucian society?

I've got to remember to read this when I have more time.

Comments

[vyus.livejournal.com]

We use a system of written and unwritten laws. I don't know if an unwritten rule set would determine litigious - as long as some sort of tort ability is in law, it would used. I think of it more of as a culture thing, you know?

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

It may be more accurate to say that we don't have a code of behavior that covers what is and is not civilized, rules that determine what is decent and what is not -- or, at least, that code of behavior is more liquid and of a very low priority. We know certain things are rude, but nobody agrees on where the line is drawn. Have you ever had a complete stranger ask you for not just a cigarette, but a "fuckin'" cigarette?

[vyus.livejournal.com]

How does that fit into litigation?

Codes of politeness are extremely relative, yeah, but what offends people is extremely variable not only from culture to culture, but from individual to individual. The "fuckin cigarrette" example, for example, wouldn't offend me.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

It fits into litigation because litigation is the natural outgrowth of a society where any given behavior has two possible traits: allowed, or illegal. At first glance, there's a level of behavior between the two that serves as a buffer zone.

I should read the rest of the article before I argue further.

[vyus.livejournal.com]

I'm not really arguing... just said that our legal system is based on what is written as well as common, traditional law. Both have roots to our English heritage.

On litigation, it is just my opinion that what causes excessive litigation is our culture (a multi-facted thing) rather than stringent laws woven around specific acts. Maybe it's a chicken and egg thing, snake-eating-its-tail, one causes the other that causes the one.

It's late.

[i-am-not-a-tree.livejournal.com]

I think whenever an American sues a fast food company for making fattening food, or [...] someone in Taiwan reads that story and is grateful they don't live here.

That's not just Taiwan, that's pretty much anywhere, including your Western peers. I would never have thought to blame a lack of confucian ethic. I thought it was more about the attempts by immigrants to make a better life for themselves, doing so by making up lots of rules to protect them from the things they ran away from.


One wonders if they even know about homeowner's associations.

I don't. I'm googling now...

Destroyed!

[lots42.livejournal.com]

You haven't known about homeowner's associations? Oy. It's always sad seeing someone's innocence destroyed

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

While individual litigiousness does seem to be an American peculiarity (come to think of it, I would like to know whether this is quantitatively true or is just a self-generated media thing), big corporations give people the smackdown whenever they can all over the world. Probably the most draconian of the big entertainment companies is the one based in Japan, which is so uptight about piracy that it's hurting their own electronics business.

[i-am-not-a-tree.livejournal.com]

While individual litigiousness does seem to be an American peculiarity (come to think of it, I would like to know whether this is quantitatively true or is just a self-generated media thing),

I can't really speak in terms of real data because that's not available to me unless I get off my lazy arse.

Something that would help to limit the behaviour in New Zealand, though, is that certain claims that would be made against an employer in the US are made to the government instead. There's no chance of an out-of-court settlement, and so you can't menace companies with the threat of bad PR.



big corporations give people the smackdown whenever they can all over the world.

I think it's that "whenever they can" thing that's the problem.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

In this context, I'm referring to homeowner's associations' ability to fine and evict people who have bought(!) a house in their neighborhood if they do not follow their guidelines for home maintenance, and often even if they do.

[i-am-not-a-tree.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing something about some kind of Disney contrived community thingumy (the more I try to recall, the more unrealistic it seems and the less certain I feel), where the residents could agree to kick other residents out if they weren't nice enough. It seemed like one of those Survivor series things, but people had to be nice and unoffensive. At the time it was just another "crazy Americans" story to laugh about, but when you start getting more stories about things in that line it gets scary.