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Comment by personlurking | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure Marx in Das Kapital talked about having three trading blocs. This isn't a new idea. Get everyone under one system and then, with any law on the books, you can expand that law incrementally (the Fabian way, after Fabius Maximus) in order to slowly wear down your opponent, via attrition.

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Ahh consider the Chinese method, pass so many laws that someone is always guilty of something, selectively enforce those laws when and if some individual does something to piss you off and they need to be put in their place.

"Chinese method"? I'm sorry to break it like this to you, but you have just described the West.

Exactly. This describes what's happening right here in the U.S.

See, for example these articles:

Revisiting the Explosive Growth of Federal Crimes

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/06/revisiting-...

The Expanding Federal Police Power

http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-17.html

And the U.S. has a much higher percentage of its population in prison than China does:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pri...

Have you any source for that? I have no reason to suspect that China has more laws than other countries. The legal system of China is mostly based on various European civil law systems. And since their legal system is more recent it should logically have fewer laws.

According to lawinfochina.com there seem to be 307 active laws (484 if we include decisions on the relevant legal issues). No idea though if that is much compared to other countries but it does not sound that much to me.

http://www.lawinfochina.com/search/SearchLaw.aspx

EDIT: After thinking some more on it 307 sounds like incredibly few laws. About the number you would want in a lean government.

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