A friend of mine here argues that it’s better to live in an overlawyered, hyper-litigious society (where someone else is liable when you spill coffee on yourself) rather than the alternative. For example – number of sprinklers I’ve noticed in China: 0. Not sure if I’ve seen many fire alarms either, for that matter. 

This is all fun and games until someone flies out of a building: four girls recently died in Shanghai after jumping from a fire in their dorm. Chinasmack provides translation of one of the posts, as well as links to news reports in English. This got me pondering – does provision of safety result only after sufficient societal wealth exists to provide for preventative measures? Put another way, do prematurely legislated safety requirements raise costs resulting in relatively more harmful unseen consequences? Unconvincing: a rope-ladder would have saved these girls’ lives, and surely a rope ladder costs less than the expected lifetime contributions of four university graduates. 

[Disclaimer: my own 4th floor apartment has window cages, making egress in a hurry impossible. These are apparently to prevent acrobatic break in? Being roasted alive in a window cage will make a unique cross cultural obituary.]

So I’m arguing with my friend, devil’s advocating for (surprise) capitalist-hackery: “mandated and effectively enforced safety measures in this case might have meant that fewer people in university (higher building costs = fewer buildings / services, like classes). Who are we as outsiders to compare what we observe, however tragic, against unrealized possibilities? Death is always senseless, but wouldn’t denied opportunity be terrible also? It’s very complex.”

Sure it is – but the reason that friend wins is that she argues in favor of a working litigation process - plaintiffs can always be ruled against. A working legal system should allow the competing costs and risks to be measured more accurately – paradoxically, a higher number of disputes provides more opportunities to find working solutions. This of course can lead to the absurd, but from a social perspective you want idiosyncrasy far more than absolutism, no matter how rational.

Laura recently pointed out the difficulty of formalizing de-facto rules, let alone figuring out what rule structure is appropriate for a given context. So how to help developing countries get there? No idea. If I knew; would be rich and probably have more important things to do than muse on a blog. 

Regardless, a first step might consider differences in historical and institutional circumstances. With regards to the U.S. / China comparison, these seem to boil mostly down to deterministic explanations like the maturity of the legal systems, and relative costs of pursuing legal action… and also some softy nonsense about cultural differences, which I will now relate:

• Stigma: becoming involved in the official legal system carries a much greater stigma than it does in the West, even if you are the victim (has to do with the fixation on saving face?) This particular aspect is improving, but still remains a deterrent (less significant than the expense of hiring a lawyer, but formidable regardless). 
• Social mores as coordinative mechanisms: something like 90% of all disputes in China are resolved by extra-legal mediation. Prior to the Communists, religion and social beliefs had a much tighter relationship with governance than they did in the West, where Church and court have for a long time (at least ostensibly) been separated. 
• Add to the China story the pre-1949 violence and subsequent Maoist “five year everybody dies” plans, and you have are left with hodgepodge of traditional values governing interaction alongside a top heavy bureaucracy that can only selectively enforce its mandates. Complexity ensues.

Generally I feel like it’s easy to blow cultural differences out of proportion when trying to solve problems, but they still matter. At the same time It’s important not to be easily swayed by arguments for tyranny masked by concern for cultural relativism – the way forward certainly does not involve discouraging the existing legal process (by, say, refusing to hear class action suits related to earthquakes or poisoned milk). But there are limits.

Ahh complexity!

So until someone figures all these things out (cc me), this site will be accepting donations for the People’s Rope Ladder Association of Central China, a non-profit distributor of Rope Ladders and assorted gear.