NSmolenskiFan on Nostr: Obviously engaging policymakers is important. I wouldn’t be at the #Bitcoin Policy ...

Obviously engaging policymakers is important. I wouldn’t be at the #Bitcoin    Policy Summit if I didn’t think so. But “policy”—that is “law”—is something that needs to be kept on a tight leash. Law is not fundamental. It is way downstream from the primary social relationships that constitute the society for which law can be meaningful.

The problem with a “policy” framing of discussions about #Bitcoin   , or technology in general, is that the assumption is often that there is a “lack of policy” or “missing policy”—i.e. a “lack of law” or “missing law.”

What if the problem is that we have *too much* law?

What if “making laws” is not the criterion of success for elected officials, but *protecting and preserving the Constitution?*

What if that usually means *doing less,* or often *doing nothing?*

We have a political culture that has been dominated for generations by the legal profession. They hold the hammer of law, so they tend to see every social phenomenon as a new nail. This creates a vicious cycle of runaway statute that by now has fully overgrown the framework—the Constitution—that was put in place precisely to constrain the power of lawmakers to make law.

We need to remember that power comes not from the law but from the people. The people, who exercise our power through the act of suffrage, need to stop expecting our elected officials to pass more laws and instead ask them how they have been pruning back the thicket of laws so that we can once again see the face of our founding framework—the Constitution.