Short Wording (and Long Exceptions)

Someone sent along this little item, which captures a certain idea about government and the idea that if you give a bureaucrat a pencil and some paper you are in danger of him or her writing well into the night.

Pythagorean Theorem: 24 words
Lord's Prayer:  66 words
Archimedes' Principle:  67 words
Ten Commandments:  179 words
Gettysburg Address:  286 words
US Declaration of Independence:  1,300 words
US Constitution with all 27 Amendments:  7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage:  26,911 words

—  Europe's problems in a nutshell

But, the idea misses something, as my Brother John has been pointing out to me in missives for the last several days.  For example:

Consider just the 179 words of the Ten Commandments.  The implementing manual (i.e., The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version) is 1891 pages long.  And, apparently, so subject to misinterpretation that God had to come to earth himself to straighten things out.  Based on what I can see (e.g., Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Islamic Fundamentalists) he didn't get the word out.♠

And another example:

And, had the drafters of that short Constitution given us more than these 10 words, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes . . ." we might not now have the 14,872 pages of the tax code.  If they had just added six words and a number, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect flat rate income Taxes at 15 per centum . . ." we could have saved an incredible amount of hassle.  But, nooooo . . .

Actually, we could have also fixed it by using more that 30 words in the Sixteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, again making the point about a flat tax.

And then, for those of you who have always thought that the US Army's contract with the Wright Brothers for the first airplane represented simplicity in Government action, we have this fisking by Mr Vernon J Edwards.  Complete with quotations and footnotes—76 footnotes.  But, it is a good read.

I think it is the people wanting the exceptions to the rule that are the cause of the problem.  For Pythagoras of Samos and Archimedes of Syracuse there are not exceptions to their rules and thus the rules are pretty straight forward, although, as I recall from school, some author made some money off of writing about the Pythagorean Theorem and then inventing problems on which students could practice until they got their understanding in line with that of Pythagoras himself, or at least in line with their contemporary teacher.

There is a whole class of people who make a living trying to get exceptions to the rules.  We call them lobbyists, but in fact, they include, to some degree, most of us.  We write letters and be join groups (like AARP), looking to get an exception to the rule.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Our other Brother then noted:  "And then he had to also come talk to Joseph Smith to further straighten things out."  Said Brother might have also added that then the enlightened people of the Northeast ran Mr Smith clean out of the region.