Jose wrote:
I remember as a young man coming up through the educational ladder
when lawyers were respected members of the community. Lawyers were
sought after for opinion and their opinion was considered by almost
everyone 9I knew anyway) as delivered through a foundation of honesty
and integrity.

Would that it were true for politicians.

Seems to me that this is a natural consequence of a capitalistic system;
although it might be "honorable" to forgo money in exchange for
integrity in business, it is an inherently unstable situation. Nobody
wants to be the poor schmo that gets stepped all over while everyone
else gets the goodies.

These instabilities are evident in other contexts too - how many
monopolies do you know of that voluntarily keep their prices and profits
low, for the greater good?

Jose, it's not any one thing that's wrong with the legal system.

True enough. It comes down to human nature. But the system is supposed
to be a defense against human nature. Alas, it is run by... er... humans.

It's the entire thing that's wrong.

Got a proposed fix? (No, I'm not interested in becoming benevolent
dictator

Jose
I think you have summerized it up nicely. It seems our capitalist legal
system has some serious built in flaws and if these flaws are used for
unethical purposes, the result can easily become what we are seeing today.

I honestly have no idea what the fix might be. What absolutely
freightens me to death is that there might not be a fix, and even if
there were, human nature will be too much a factor to allow it's
implementation.

In the meantime, I watch the stock market go up and down with my money
with some kind of unexplainable hope in my heart, and do the very best I
can in life to avoid any and all contact with the legal system :-))

--
Dudley Henriques