If I Could Write a Law..I wouldn’t.

I mean, what’s the point? Laws are supposed to be checks and balances on citizens and those who govern us alike. They shape our wild society, tell us what’s ‘acceptable’, and occasionally try to keep people from being completely unhinged. But writing a well-crafted law takes… well, it takes knowledge.

Do I have that? No. Not the kind I would need to govern masses in the slightest.

How Laws Are Supposed To Work

In theory, laws exist to protect people, uphold justice, and provide a fair system where everyone—rich, poor, powerful, and powerless—plays by the same rules. In practice? That’s a different conversation entirely and I’m not ready to deal this trauma.

The process of making a law is supposed to be a rigorous one: debate, amendments, public input, ethical consideration, expert analysis, and, ideally, a final version that benefits society as a whole. That’s in a perfect world. We do not live in a perfect world.

Boy do I wish we did.

How Laws Actually Work (Or Don’t)

History is filled with laws that make no sense. Some are outdated (like laws that ban riding camels on highways), some were designed to oppress, and some exist just to remind us that lawmakers are, in fact, people capable of truly unhinged ideas.

But laws are only as good as those who enforce them. A perfectly written law is useless if it’s selectively applied or if loopholes exist that make it functionally meaningless.

And then there’s the issue of crime and punishment. Steal a loaf of bread while poor? You might end up with a record that haunts you forever. Steal billions through shady business deals? You might end up on a yacht in the Mediterranean. There’s a reason white-collar crime has a whole different set of consequences—or sometimes, none at all.

My Time In Government Classes (plural to my dismay

Florida has a requirement that to graduate you now need to take 2 government classes. This came on top of my preexisting rigorous school structure that went over the ins outs and inbetweens of what makes a governed people.

I also learned what makes it go so, so very wrong.

Sitting in these government classes, I learned the structures. The branches of government. The process of a bill becoming a law. The Supreme Court rulings that shaped history. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized that the law isn’t about fairness—it’s about power. And power doesn’t always care about fairness.

So if I Had To Write A Law

I’d write one that actually works. One that can’t be bent in favor of the wealthy or rewritten to exclude the people it was meant to protect.

But I don’t have that power. And if I did, there would probably be 47 loopholes by lunchtime.

So instead, I’ll just say this: laws should serve the people, not the powerful. And until they do, the best law I could write would probably be one about mandatory nap breaks provided. Because at least that would benefit everyone. Or maybe that, too, would be exploited for someone else’s gain.