THE LEGISLATOR WHEN MAKING LAWS SHOULD HAVE IN VIEW ALL VIRTUE AND DEVISE CLASSES OF LAWS ANSWERING TO THE DIFFERING KINDS OF VIRTUE SO THAT THEY FULFILL THE PRINCIPAL OBJECT OF LAWS WHICH IS TO MAKE THOSE WHO USE THEM HAPPY, AND THAT THEY CONFER EVERY SORT OF GOOD.
In forming a conclusion about our laws and institutions, there is a proper way to tell how good and bad are to be estimated. All those who are ready at a moment’s notice to praise or censure any practice under discussion, proceed in a wrong way.
For example, suppose a person to be praising wheat as a good kind of food, whereupon another person instantly blames wheat, without ever enquiring into its effect or use, or in what way, or to whom, or with what, or in what state and how, wheat is to be given.
This is just what we do in our public discussions. At the very mention of a certain word or topic, one side is ready with their praises and the other with their censure; which is absurd. For either side cites their witnesses and approvers as evidence, and some of us think that we speak with authority because we have many witnesses.
Plato’s Athenian Stranger tells us that the object of laws is to make those who use them happy. Are the people around the world today happy with their money?
Like the early Americans who used their economic and political power to enforce their preference for a new system of government, users of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are expressing their preference for a new form of money.
What unfolds in the years ahead may be similar to the founding of a new nation.
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