The System
It may be arbitrary. It may not be what you like. It may not be ideal, or what you voted for. It may not be something you understand, pay attention to, or want to deal with. However, there it is, chasing after whatever you earn or own and giving no quarter, no rest to the busy, the weary or the confused. “It” is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omnivorous Legal and Financial System.
The Legal System
For nearly every activity, the law is there with a sensitive trigger waiting just in case “justice” must be measured out and dispensed. You take the law for granted as you pursue and proceed about your life’s business. And why not? Why should you have to contemplate the infinitude of laws behind simple, otherwise everyday, activities or transactions?
For each seemingly simple decision, each everyday activity, each common transaction, there are laws vigorously at work or hovering to be engaged. Until something goes wrong, you give no thought to the laws surrounding and permeating the preparation or consumption of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; shopping for milk, salad, or apples; renting, leasing or buying a car, an apartment, condominium, or home; taking clothes to the dry cleaners; charging gasoline, food, clothing, or other purchases on a credit card; writing a check out for a child’s swimming, baseball, skating, soccer, tennis or other sports league activities or lessons; donating funds to a school, community, religious, or other cause; taking a vacation to Disneyworld, Jackson Hole, or the beach; visiting a sick relative in the hospital, or going to the doctor for a routine checkup; going out to dinner at a restaurant with friends, business colleagues, or romantic partners; getting the hair done or going to the barber; or any other one of literally tens of thousands of mundane decisions, activities, or transactions you make in just one day. Each involves the system of laws.
Planning Within The Legal System
In short, planning within the legal system is … not easy to think about. As you live, work, relax or sleep, there the dynamic legal system is: Federal Laws; State Laws; County Laws; Municipal Laws; food laws; toy laws; apparel laws; business laws; health care laws; intellectual property laws; license and permit laws; employment laws; zoning and building laws; gift laws; environmental laws; hunting and fishing laws; mining laws; admiralty laws; gun laws; tax laws; inheritance laws; real property laws; personal property laws; marriage laws; manufacturing laws; traffic laws; securities laws; tort laws; criminal laws; insurance laws; commercial paper laws; insurance laws; employment laws; manufacturing laws; patent and copyright (intellectual property) laws; bankruptcy laws; contract laws; tax laws; banking laws; and on and on.
Each of these laws affects your wealth and well being in cumulative silence or at some tragic big-bang point. And nearly always, what you consider justice in respect to your wealth and well being will come up short of your expectations.
Laws and Wealth and Well Being
As they concern planning, laws do not make anyone equally wealthy, equally happy, or equally secure. More accurately, it is your freedom to learn, your power to choose, your opportunity to execute or implement by action or inaction determine the measure of your wealth and well being.
