Can law be protected by breaking it?

"A license to kill is also a license not to kill"- Quote by M (Ralph Fiennes) in Spectre.

Law-enforcement is not an easy job. Very often, enforcement personnel have to collect evidence against suspects. Since obtaining a search warrant is a time-consuming process often involving judicial red-tape, the police use surreptitious methods to do the task done. And in doing so, they commit the crime of breaking-and-entering.

A more serious matter is that of encounter killings. These are killings by the Police that are not sanctioned by the judiciary. This was very useful in eliminating underworld gangsters in Mumbai and the dacoits in Chambal. But as expected, the encounter cops became too powerful for their own good. To have a better record than rivals in the department, some encounter cops started staging fake-encounters i.e. killing innocent people after framing them for crimes they had not committed. Worse, some cops were even found to indulge in supari killings (contract killings). The near elimination of organized crime had left a vacancy in people willing to kill for money. And who better than morally-compromised trigger happy encounter cops to fill the place?

In the global space, the world powers are known to commit heinous acts in the name of counter-terrorism. The War on Terror has caused the countless loss of life in the Middle East and Africa. A similar situation happened in Mexico and Columbia in the War on Drugs. The intelligence personnel were known to favour certain incumbents in the criminal trade. These wars certainly eliminated some terrorists and drug-cartels respectively. But did it curb the root problem or only made it worse? It dehumanized by desensitizing the local population to violence and only created resentment against the global peacekeeping process.

Gangsters and terrorists cannot be allowed to go scot-free. But what is the appropriate action against them? It is ethical for nations to indulge in preventive killings within their borders and in international territories? Who should have a licence to kill, and when? And should that person be of the stature of James Bond, or even the local constabulary should have that privilege?

As you sow, so shall you reap?

Literature in Psychology is full of concepts about thoughts, beliefs, and actions. How thoughts are created, what are their influences, how thoughts become beliefs, and beliefs guide our decision process- these are the pet domains of both academic scholars and motivational speakers. A so-called New-Age concept made famous by Rhonda Byrne- The Secret aka The Law of Attraction (LoA)- technically isn’t new age. Even before the famous book/movie, people have talked about it in different forms. In brief, for the very few people who are hearing it for the first time, this concept requires us to think (or focus) only on what we want to achieve. Not contradictory thoughts that go against our desires. That is because thoughts have energy, and energy resonates with like objects. Having the right thoughts creates the right energy that eventually comes true as a physical manifestation.

One may or may not agree with the metaphysical part. But there is no doubt about the fact that thoughts influence behaviour. And having the right thoughts may result in the person taking the appropriate action to achieve the result. Psychologists have even talked about priming, where not natural but artificially induced thoughts have caused people to alter their behaviour. In controlled experiments, different cues eliciting different emotions made people behave differently. In an experiment, making people hear words associated with old age (grey, wrinkle, bald, etc) is shown to slow their walking speeds in a particular corridor!

There is no doubt about the power of thoughts? But the question remains- does the LoA work? Can thoughts become things and can we really reap what we are thinking about? The following analogy may help. If we sow nightshade, there is no question about a harvest of mango fruits. But does sowing a mango plant always result in mango fruits? No- it also depends on soil nutrients, weather conditions, and even random or unaccounted factors. Even after there is a mango tree, there is no control on the number of mangoes harvested per year or for that matter, the sweetness of the fruits. And when the mangoes get harvested, there is no control on the market price! That is why the law of attraction does work at some times. One cannot and should not think only of the fruits- the constraints are important as well. Using another analogy, focusing only on the rose presents an incomplete picture- there are thorns as well. Needless to say, the concept of  LoA has been heavily abused in many contexts- like in the propagation of pyramid schemes, by gambling addicts, and in the execution of risky projects.

No psychological concept- whether academically rigorous or metaphysical- comes without caveats. Blanket generalization of any concept, whether in the physical, biological, or social sciences leads to errors, at times disastrous in nature. There is always a context. In many cases, the contexts are understood, like in Newton’s laws of Mechanics. Those apply to uniformly accelerated macroscopic bodies with velocities much less than that of light. In other cases, like the Law of Attraction, the dynamics are still unknown.

Is There an Invisible Hand?

 

The first Microeconomics concept that students study is that of the demand curve and supply curve. When the two curves meet, the market is in equilibrium. Consumers (the buyers) know how much they want and the price they are ready to pay. Producers (the sellers) know how much the consumer wants and the price they can get for it. And hence everyone ends up happy!

And how exactly do the consumers know the optimum quantity needed and the associated price? That is where the magic of the invisible hand comes. According to the founding father of modern economics, Adam Smith, the market forces make sure that the equilibrium point is achieved, whether through a series of iterations or trials-and-errors. For example, if the producer prices something too high, people will stop consuming it in the same quantities. Then the price would automatically come down. The opposite is also true. Market forces can be exerted by both consumers and producers.

We all know this does not work well in practice. Microeconomic theory has different explanations like imperfect markets, externalities, etc. Let us talk about one of them- information asymmetry. One side has more information than the other. More often, it is the seller who knows what exactly the product is, while the buyer does not. George Akerlof, who won the Economics Nobel Prize in 2001, gave the concept of Adverse Selection in his famous paper called ‘The Market For Lemons’. He described how not properly communicating the product quality to the consumers will make them suspicious that the product being sold is inferior. This leads to a vicious circle when they are not ready to pay a premium price because they suspect the product is inferior. Hence, the producer would only be ready to supply an inferior product from the range that can be offered.

Akerlof suggested that the two ways to counter this are Signalling and Screening. The producer can signal (or communicate) that the product is of superior standard through procedures like quality certificates, product reviews, and more. The consumers can screen the product for quality and find out what it really is. The problem comes when buyers do not have the knowledge or skills for screening, and the sellers are adept at sending false signals- catchy advertisements, misleading claims, and the other tools in their paraphernalia.

That is why free markets are a disaster in many cases like financial markets. No invisible hand works to ensure that the buyers get the right loan or insurance product. A free market is like traffic without traffic police. A strong regulatory framework is absolutely necessary to ensure that order is maintained. And we need bodies with authoritative powers to enforce them. So who will watch the watchmen? The same regulatory bodies can be selectively biased, which sets up conditions for institutionalized corruption. The best solution is to make the bodies autonomous, without any political interference. The appointments and promotions in the regulatory bodies should be done after ‘screening’ the candidates for integrity.

Of course, nothing in the world is perfect. But something is better than nothing. The markets cannot be left open at the mercy of sellers with ulterior motives. It is not always about wisdom- the public often does have complete information.