Hello fellow Firestonians. This is going to be a short little thesis I’ve been thinking about for a bit regarding our legal community. For context, “A Sickness Unto Death” was a book by philosopher Søren Kierkegaard which equates despair to a mortal sin: a sickness unto death. For my purposes, I’m defining despair as the inevitable failure of our state’s legal system. Now, I will be upfront, this is gonna be a longwinded, academic shitpost essentially. But I’d like everyone to at least skip to the end where I shall pose a question that needs answered by as many people as possible.
Introduction
Firestone’s legal system is the backbone to the state despite the game being designed as a Cops & Robbers style experience. The legal system handles expungements (the primary method to remove records by which one can then get into different parts of the larger community), civil litigation off all kinds (civil law is law that regulates the non-criminal interactions of people, without it you could be fired for any reason, jailed for any reason, etc.), punishing extreme criminals (the most controversial function. Ideally only the most annoying or habitually extreme criminals should enter this part of the system, but that doesn’t always happen), and handling the balance of power (if a democratic government exists, a judiciary must exist in it to curb the extent of the discretion the executive and legislative branches have). Without these functions, the actual larger arch of our game doesn’t function. Employers would be tyrants, the other two branches could do whatever they wanted, once you got a record you were screwed, and terrorists and corruptors would be rampant. Few would disagree with the statement that the judiciary is necessary. Yet, it is the most under-appreciated branch, and the smallest. Furthermore, it is dying.
How and Why Did We Get Here?
To begin with how and why we got here, we need to understand the legal community at large. The Firestone Census continually puts the average FS member at around 15 years old. Why is this? The answer is simply game design. The 12-16 age group, at large, loves the advanced cops and robbers style gameplay FS provides by design. However, this age group generally is not conducive to oratory, paperwork-ridden, “boring” legal work. While I can’t be absolutely sure, I would posit that the average lawyer/member of the legal community in FS is 17 or so. And, generally, already interested in law from the start. Furthermore, most of these individuals plan to pursue post-secondary education, some even into graduate or professional degrees (J.D.s, M.D.s, etc.). I myself fall into the latter category, and I know many of the large names in our legal system plan similarly (superchris plans to pursue medicine I believe, and I also believe Skye has something similar goin on, hell Ogax is in law school). This leads to a low return rate in that most members stay for a long time, but have to leave to handle school. Furthermore, they have less of an opportunity to be extremely active due to a harder course load in HS, college, academic extracurriculars, etc. So, by default, the legal community is already smaller, and has less of a chance of retain consistent membership overtime. This is multiplied several times in relation to the judiciary, which comprises the most experienced, veteran lawyers. Every current member of the judiciary has been in the legal community for at least 2 years. FS is only 5 years old. Kerbal and I have been in the legal community since it practically started existing. Lastly, there’s no real incentive to be a lawyer, and certainly not a judge. In regard to the both, it’s really only a status thing. The latter gets paid more in game, but only a civ team, and there’s no real incentive to stay on civ team day in and out. Courts don’t even have a team in v2 (and, frankly, they don’t get anything or have a building, so why bother?).
Prediction
At the current rate we are going, we will soon reach the point where no one who can be a judge wants to, and we’ll have a very, very small pool of lawyers. This will result in the collapse of passable governance in FS. We cannot sustain at our current rate.
Conclusion and Query
It seems, then, that we must soon endeavor to fix this issue lest it be our demise. Personally, my recommendation would be to give the judiciary some basic in game benefits. A gas RP company gets cars and a building, but an important branch of government gets nothing aside from some pay that ultimately isn’t that helpful (not to disparage Capitol Gas, of course). But beyond that, I have no real solution. So the question I pose, dear readers, is what are we to do?
