Note that written codes (including both law and moral theorizing) are, per Godel, incomplete and/or contradictory. It’s no surprise that common laws and armchair theories of “justice” focus on punishment for disruption rather than reward for cooperation, as they are _ALL_ based on an unstated theory that inaction is impossible or unrewarding, and the normal state is for people to do good things and be rewarded naturally for them. Interventional justice (codified and administered by humans) is mostly concerned with deviation from norm.
The first proto-law is “don’t be weird”, which includes both positive and negative weirdness. Only after some thought, scale, and evolution of systems does it become “don’t do these things”, a purely negative injunction.
Note that written codes (including both law and moral theorizing) are, per Godel, incomplete and/or contradictory. It’s no surprise that common laws and armchair theories of “justice” focus on punishment for disruption rather than reward for cooperation, as they are _ALL_ based on an unstated theory that inaction is impossible or unrewarding, and the normal state is for people to do good things and be rewarded naturally for them. Interventional justice (codified and administered by humans) is mostly concerned with deviation from norm.
The first proto-law is “don’t be weird”, which includes both positive and negative weirdness. Only after some thought, scale, and evolution of systems does it become “don’t do these things”, a purely negative injunction.