Equality Before the Law and Material Equality

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be Inequality in their actual position,^, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality. Our argument will be that, though where the state must use coercion for other reasons, it should treat all people alike, the desire of making people more alike in their condition cannot be accepted in a free society as a justification for further and discriminatory coercion.

— Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

The full text can be found here.

Compare to Omri Ben-Shahar on personalized law here.

What Companies Are For

That is what companies are for. They are designed to multiply capital; what they make is irrelevant. Torpedoes, food, clothes, furniture. It is all the same. To that end they will do anything to survive and prosper. Can they make more money employing slave labour? If so, they must do so. Can they increase profits by selling things that kill others? They must do so again. What if they lay waste the landscape, ruin forests, uproot communities and poison the rivers? They are obliged to do all these things, if they can increase their profits.

A company is a moral imbecile. It has no sense of right or wrong. Any restraints have to come from the outside, from laws and customs which forbid it from doing certain things of which we disapprove. But it is a restraint which reduces profits. Which is why all companies will strain forever to break the bounds of the law, to act unfettered in their pursuit of advantage. That is the only way they can survive because the more powerful will devour the weak. And because it is in the nature of capital, which is wild, longs to be free and chafes at each and every restriction imposed on it.

— Iain Pears, Stone’s Fall: A Novel

Utopian Economics

From: Thomas More, Utopia, translated by H.V.S. Ogden

So, when I weigh in my mind all the other states which flourish today, so help me God, I can discover nothing but a conspiracy of the rich, who pursue their own aggrandizement under the name and title of the Commonwealth. They devise ways and means to keep safely what they have unjustly acquired, and to buy up the toil and labor of the poor as cheaply as possible and oppress them. When these schemes of the rich become established by the government, which is meant to protect the poor as well as the rich, then they are law. With insatiable greed these wicked men divide among themselves the goods which would have been enough for all.

More put this speech in the mouth of Raphael Hythloday, More’s supposed informant on the customs of the island country called Utopia. Hythloday is contrasting the ideal life found in Utopia to the inferior situations found in all other countries. He goes on to say:

And yet they are far short of the happiness of the Utopians, who have abolished the use of money, and with it greed. What evils they avoid! What a multitude of crimes they prevent! Everyone knows that frauds, thefts, quarrels, contentions, uprisings, murders, betrayals, and poisonings (evils which are commonly punished rather than checked by the severities of the law) would wither away if money were eradicated! Fear, anxiety, worry, care, toil, and sleepless nights would disappear at the same time as money! Even poverty, which seems to need money more than anything else for its relief, would vanish if money were gone.