Lawmaking is not programming. In case you haven't noticed, Congress can pass vague, incomplete, and self-contradictory legislation, and it won't generate a compiler error or crash the system. Steve Yegge underestimates four things:
1. How vague, illogical, and incomplete most of our laws are.
2. The capacity of lobbyists and congressional aides to generate thousands of pages of detailed (though absurd, incomplete, and self-contradictory) legislation.
3. The capacity of lobbyists and regulators to generate thousands of pages of regulations specifying how legislation should be interpreted in concrete situations.
4. How well this apparent clusterfuck actually works in practice.
Is it a problem of "vast, unimaginable complexity?" Sure. Can we commit to an underspecified version of it and let the chips fall where they may? YES. It's the only way we get anything done in the US, and probably the only way to get anything done in any democracy.
Actually, by law, no California law can unintentionally contradict another California law. (You can repeal laws or parts of them, however.) They have an entire state agency whose job it is to make sure that this never happens. I have no idea how successful they are.
1. How vague, illogical, and incomplete most of our laws are.
2. The capacity of lobbyists and congressional aides to generate thousands of pages of detailed (though absurd, incomplete, and self-contradictory) legislation.
3. The capacity of lobbyists and regulators to generate thousands of pages of regulations specifying how legislation should be interpreted in concrete situations.
4. How well this apparent clusterfuck actually works in practice.
Is it a problem of "vast, unimaginable complexity?" Sure. Can we commit to an underspecified version of it and let the chips fall where they may? YES. It's the only way we get anything done in the US, and probably the only way to get anything done in any democracy.