JC's Life: A Journey in the Incentives of the Law - Part 2

Note: This is the continuation of a longer story. Click below to read:

• Part 1

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So, last time we had John Cautious (JC for short) having bought a car for his deliveries of pizzas. The creation of the court of law directly benefited him and Mr. Customer, and, over time, it also brought additional benefits to his business; namely, an increased customer base. What happened is that Country had become well known for its Court and people started moving into what was known as "those fabulous lands in which promises had value."

Needless to say that owning the car had become absolutely necessary to attend the increased number of orders of pizzas. Driving fast became necessary as well. One problem was that pedestrians were walking on the streets of Country and this could potentially delay his deliveries, having an adverse effect on his business. But his business was not affected at all. Why? Because JC chose not to care about pedestrians and eventually hit one or two of them with his car -'that will teach them not to interrupt my way', he thought.

And yes, pedestrians sometimes played the role of his customers, but JC didn't care. With such a large population, hitting an eventual pedestrian would not affect his customer base. Come on, who would care about pedestrians whenever hitting them brought no consequences? It might actually become a fun thing to do.

Well, it surely wasn't any fun for pedestrians. One of the injured ones went to the famous court of law and requested that JC be shot, or at least that he pay a compensation for the damage that was caused. JC won the legal battle. The court concluded that there was no contract in which JC had promised not to hit pedestrians.

This legal sentence only brought chaos to Country. This was the case not only because JC simply kept on hitting pedestrians, but also because other inhabitants of Country knew that the Court would only act whenever there was a specific promise to act (or not to act) in a certain way. Over time the streets of Country became full of criminals as there were no explicit agreements not to steal or damage other people's belongings.

Now Country was in a really bad situation again. Everything would have been better if such legal sentence had never been written. It seems no one had realized that this sentence was not only going to have an effect on JC and the pedestrian, but also on all the other inhabitants of Country.

As a result, JC had to shut his business down and thought about joining the great migrating wave. Was this the end of the fabulous lands of Country? Of course not. Check part 3 (forthcoming) to know what happened.