The paradox I am involved. Committees can apportion funds for their own use and the cost to force them to account is too expensive. I was just talking to a woman and the same thing happened to her mother's estate. The committee drained the estate. So I am not an outlier. The most insideous of this behavior is most beneficiaries do not even know they were fleeced.
From an essay off the internet.
When Justice Becomes a Business Calculation: A second system of law
There is an
uncomfortable question that the legal profession needs to confront.
Lawyers did not merely
enter a justice system created by somebody else. Lawyers have played a central
role in drafting legislation, designing court procedures, interpreting those
procedures, and determining how the system operates.
Yet the same
profession largely delivers access to that system through a private business
model.
That creates a
conflict.
A law firm must
consider cost, time, profitability, staffing, and risk. Those are
understandable concerns for any business. But justice is not an ordinary
product.
When the cost-benefit
calculation of providing legal services determines whether a legal right can
realistically be enforced, the economics of the legal profession begin to shape
the meaning of the law itself.
A fiduciary duty may
exist on paper. A beneficiary may have the right to demand an accounting. A
vulnerable person's property may supposedly be protected.
But what happens when
enforcing those rights costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The law has not
technically disappeared.
It has simply been
priced beyond the reach of the person it was supposed to protect.
That is the paradox.
The legal profession
speaks of access to justice while operating a system in which access is
frequently sold by the hour.
There is nothing
improper about lawyers earning a living. The problem begins when the business
model becomes so dominant that economically inconvenient legal problems are
effectively abandoned.
Then cost-benefit
accounting quietly becomes a second system of law.
The written law asks:
What are this person's rights?
The economic system
asks: Is it worth enough money to enforce them?
When the second
question consistently defeats the first, the rule of law begins to lose its
meaning for the ordinary person.
When Justice Becomes a
Business Calculation
There is an
uncomfortable question that the legal profession needs to confront.
Lawyers did not merely
enter a justice system created by somebody else. Lawyers have played a central
role in drafting legislation, designing court procedures, interpreting those
procedures, and determining how the system operates.
Yet the same
profession largely delivers access to that system through a private business
model.
That creates a
conflict.
A law firm must
consider cost, time, profitability, staffing, and risk. Those are
understandable concerns for any business. But justice is not an ordinary
product.
When the cost-benefit
calculation of providing legal services determines whether a legal right can
realistically be enforced, the economics of the legal profession begin to shape
the meaning of the law itself.
A fiduciary duty may
exist on paper. A beneficiary may have the right to demand an accounting. A
vulnerable person's property may supposedly be protected.
But what happens when
enforcing those rights costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The law has not
technically disappeared.
It has simply been
priced beyond the reach of the person it was supposed to protect.
That is the paradox.
The legal profession
speaks of access to justice while operating a system in which access is
frequently sold by the hour.
There is nothing
improper about lawyers earning a living. The problem begins when the business
model becomes so dominant that economically inconvenient legal problems are
effectively abandoned.
Then cost-benefit
accounting quietly becomes a second system of law.
The written law asks:
What are this person's rights?
The economic system
asks: Is it worth enough money to enforce them?
When the second
question consistently defeats the first, the rule of law begins to lose its
meaning for the ordinary person.
Losing its meaning for the ordincary person, is losing respect for the law, losing respect for the law means stealth anarchy.
I love the word "stealth." It means corruption under the radar. Corruption does not have to mean criminal, it also means civil corruption: doing something you should not do.
