Coffee shops for all
03-30-2024 • Ryan Prendergast
The law is extremely complicated, requiring years of schooling and hard tests to enter the field. "I hand you coffee you hand me money" is a simple enough concept, but there are many laws dictating the proper conduct of how to lay out a coffee shop according to code, how to serve food, how to lend something to somebody, how to know who is liable when something goes wrong, etc.
The complexity of the system reflects the complicated nature of reality. There really ARE that many edge cases. Complex rules are too complex to apply to normal interactions, meaning there is a de facto line in the sand at which you jump from no legal process to a ton of legal process. A party with your friends doesn't comply to any kind of code, because that would overcomplicate a simple thing beyond the capabilities of a normal person. But if you are having strangers attend a conference at a venue, you must account for all legal considerations.
The limitation is intelligence. The vast majority of the time we simply don't have enough brain power to spend the attention and focus required for a court case. We don't have enough brain power to apply the law thoroughly in, well, the law. Ninety-four percent of state and 97% of federal cases are resolved by a plea deal, NOT in court.
The complexity barrier kicks in right at the point where legal considerations become necessary. It kicks in where you can't just do it-- you need to pay for event space rental, you need insurance, you need waivers, you need to put limits on people's behaviors. it becomes very expensive very quickly, because of course you are just a normal person, not a lawyer. The jump from "just doing whatever with your friends" to "legal-compliance levels of organization" is massive, so it acts as a de-facto limit on the capacity of most people. Most people never organize a public event, or open a coffee shop or a store, because the barrier to entry is 300 years of legal compliance intuition they probably don't have.
Over time the threshold for legal intervention has dropped. I'm sure you've heard a story from your grandparents or some elder, how they used to be able to buy guns without paperwork, walk into airports without security, how randomly one day they started a restaurant or a retail store or other business without much thought, and other tidbits of life before the legal considerations ratcheted downward.
This ratchet has made life worse. The set of possible actions has declined for the median person without lawyer-grade domain knowledge, or the money to purchase it.
What is the limit of this? What would it look like if the threshold for legal intervention declined to zero? Micro-lawyers in your pockets.
Imagine a world with way more lawsuits and way more arbitration. When your friend drops your mug accidentally, your lawyer in your phone automatically sues his lawyer in his phone. They enter a binding arbitration, simulate the bickering and argument you might have in real life, and in the end his lawyer sends $10 for a new mug.
This might sound like hell. I imagine quite the contrary-- it will free us. By lowering the complexity threshold, you increase exposure to the legal system, and there becomes no difference between organizing a party with your friends and opening a coffee shop. THAT is powerful. It is complexity bankruptcy, and like bankruptcy in real life it's the only way to stop an insolvency problem. It's the difference between doing research in a university library in 1975, and Googling the answer.
In my ideal future, every household has a store, has a business, and it's as easy and intuitive as hosting a couple friends for dinner. Coffee shops for all.