Over The Counter Culture

I came across the ‘Unix philosophy’ recently and read the following summary of principles when writing code and designing software, and I wondered: would these help a lawfirm change the way it thinks about drafting contracts? After all, it’s possible to perceive a contract as software: a program that ‘runs’ and defines a relationship. The parties to the contract are the hardware; the program tells them what to do, and when it’s done running, the output is, well, the set of contractual objectives – or alternatively, like any good program, in the event that the hardware malfunctions, the program handles the error; a contract handles the dispute resolution process. A bad program throws a Blue Screen of Death; a bad contract results in a very costly lawsuit.

It would be interesting to know what more the world of software development could teach the law profession. Without further ado, I re-post the following summary of the principles of Unix Programming:

• Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.

• Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.

• Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.

• Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.

• Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.

• Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.

• Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.

• Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.

• Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.

• Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.

• Rule of Silence: When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.

• Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.

• Rule of Economy: Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time.

• Rule of Generation: Avoid hand-hacking; write programs to write programs when you can.

• Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.

• Rule of Diversity: Distrust all claims for “one true way”.

• Rule of Extensibility: Design for the future, because it will be here sooner than you think.

You get some weird stuff offered for free on Freecycle. But when I saw two tiny sachets of sugar advertised, well – I had to inquire. Here’s what went down:

Times are hard, down Lewisham way. Good to see the giving spirit is still strong.

A compilation of pretty good answers to the question when posed on HNews (here):

Many focus on the immediate:

"Wealth is a measure of your ability to do what you would like to do, when you would like to do it – a measure of your breadth of immediately available choice."

You obviously get the standard sepia-tinted stuff:

“Health.”

“Carving pumpkins with my daughter.”

“Wealth is waking up this morning to a beautiful woman bringing me a cup of tea made "just so".”

Some classic related questions:

“How would you differentiate between the terms wealth, freedom, and happiness (or do you consider them interchangeable)?”

The Chief Financial Officer’s answer:

“Wealth = how long you could sustain your current lifestyle (same expenses) if your income stopped, today.”

Oddly, this comes pretty close to Chris Rock’s sketch, where he defines wealth as:

“Wealthy is the point where your grandkids will never need to work a day in their life. Wealthy is getting foundations and libraries named after you. etc…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWERzwbobOk”

There’s the referenced answer:

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions or the control of such assets.”

But here’s one I found that, for me, nails the wealth taxonomy, albeit offering analysis that then goes down a different line to what I consider to be the crux

“Wealth (what people want) can be divided into two subclasses: transferable (money, property, …) and non-transferable (health, comfort, experiences, memories, fame, power, knowledge, ….) People generally use transferable wealth to gain the non-transferable.

People can be classified based on their patience in turning transferable wealth into non-transferable wealth. Wealth accumulators tend to be more patient in trading on transferable wealth than wealth dissipators who tend to immediately convert wealth into non-transferable form.”

It’s when people start glancing to the future, that I think people are getting warm (relative to my POV):

“The best economic definition of wealth that I have seen is George Gilder’s from his 1980 book, Wealth and Poverty. He contrasted it to resources in general, and to riches, as: Wealth is resources dedicated to future production.

A car used as a status symbol or personal transport is riches, one used in business to generate more income is wealth; similarly with education for enjoyment versus education for future production, and so on.

He also pointed out that since spending on the military and police is not productive, that though necessary to protect wealth, it is not itself wealth and should be used as thriftily as possible.”

Here was my take:

“For me, wealth is potential for future freedom from constraints on life choices. Money is one format, relationships, friendships and favours owed are another; education also counts, as do health, fitness and certain key possessions (but not so many that dealing with them constrains you; thus actually, very few, and mostly of a tool-like nature). Some of these things are not distinct, exclusive goods, but can be shared or copied amongst large groups. Focusing on doing so without being distracted on needlessly stocking (maximising) the un-shareable (distinct) parts of wealth, is a productive way forward for humanity.”

Of course, some people go a little further than I would with this:

“Wealth is the ability of an entity to create change.

Skills you know, your business network, your emotional support network, assets you can exchange.

People with great wealth can affect the world in profoundly positive or negative ways. In other words, wealth is closely tied to the notion of power.

A member of congress who has relatively low net worth could have as much financial influence as Bill Gates. While this power is not as liquid or easy to exchange as cash, it is still exchangeable and a store of value.”

But only one user really nails it:

“Wealth is an abundance of freedoms.”

(Which makes the paradox of choice all the more puzzling)