06-04-24 Interview - Our Futurist Thomas Frey - What Should the Future of Laws Look Like

WHAT SHOULD THE FUTURE OF LAWS LOOK LIKE? Our futurist Thomas Frey thinks about a lot of stuff and now he's thought about what the future of laws should look like. He's outlined it in this column called Four Laws for Managing Laws and I think he's on to something here. He joins me at 1 to discuss. Find Thomas to speak to your organization by clicking here!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
If you want to have him comespeak to your organization or about your industry,
you can find him at futurist speakerdot com. I linked on the
blog to find him. But now, Thomas, I would kind of want
to talk about what you were talkingabout in South Korea. I think this
is a fascinating topic. Now weare going to talk about the future of
laws because I'd never thought about itlike that. But what do we need

(00:22):
to do to improve our legal system? But you just got back from South
Korea and you were talking in oneof your talks about the failing birth rate
in South Korea, and I don'tthink people realize how dangerous it is for
a society to fall below the replacementrate. So can you talk a little

(00:42):
bit about why that matters. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of factors that
come into play. When the birthrate gets below the replacement rate, it
changes the supply and demand equation.And first of all, like Japan,
then you start having a lots ofempty houses. In Japan right now has

(01:03):
over nine million empty houses, andthese are all in rural communities, and
nobody wants to pay to fix upthese houses and acost of housing in these
rural communities is going down rapidly,and they don't have enough people to maintain
the local governments anymore, so thatwe're having local government collapse at the same

(01:26):
time over there. And so thisis just some of the early stage stuff
and then the later stage stuff.In twenty forty Korea, every working person
has to support three retired people.So when they have an aging society like
that, everything gets out of whack. And you said, Korea has the

(01:46):
South Korea has the lowest birth ratein the world. Yeah, it's currently
at zero point six y five.You need two point one kids for family
in order to maintain an even population. They're way way below replacement rate right
now. I asked you why thatwas, and you said, look,
when people start making a certain amountof money, they stop having kids.

(02:08):
And I think that this is whatwe're seeing in the United States because we
are if we're not right at thereplacement rate we have to be. Are
we just below it in the US? Do you know that on the top
of your head at one point sevenone point six or one point seven somewhere
around there. But the entire worldis below replacement rate except the continent of

(02:32):
Africa. In the country of Pakistan. Okay, go Pakistan to Africa.
I mean, but this is goingto be in our system of government right
now. You were just talking aboutin Japan, one worker is going to
be supporting three retirees. We aregoing to face a similar situation here.

(02:52):
That's correct. Yes, it maytake a little bit longer because we're not
quite that low in the replacement rate, but that's coming. Yeah. People
that think that they're just dropping offthe cliff and having far fewer kids is
going to be just fine. Itwon't be. It's going to create all

(03:14):
kinds of problems for governments. Itwill create lots of problems for all the
systems that we have in all ofour family structures as well. So this
is one of those situations where howdo you fix it? Right? So?
What what kind of things that they'vebeen throwing against the wall in Korea
and Japan to see if they wouldstick. What have they done? Well?

(03:38):
They've tried everything from well trying tocreate family friendly communities. They try
to make it make it so thatpeople that have families have bigger places to
live, they have some government support, they get they get tax breaks and

(03:59):
things like that. They've tried anumber of things, but the only thing
that's actually proven to move the needleat all is what they're doing over in
Hungry, And it has to dowith somebody that says that they're going to
have three kids and they get amuch larger apartment and they get a lower
interest rates and decent sized loan.And it's a complicated system they have in

(04:26):
Hungry, and it's not easily duplicatablearound the world. So it's not too
much of a glimmering light in thedarkness here. Is this something we're trying
to address in the United States aswell? I don't think anybody in the
US cares about this. The wayour government is structured, knowing how the

(04:49):
Social Security medicare, all those programsare essentially a Ponzi scheme. I mean
they're there. They would never beallowed to be set up that way in
the private sector, but this iswhat we have. And if we don't
have enough people to pay into SocialSecurity, then social Security Medicure, all
those programs collapse. I mean,this seems like this should be we should
be sounding the alarm on this.Well, yeah, so that's why they're

(05:14):
raising the age for Social Security theage of retirement, and they're going to
keep raising it until they balance itout. So people are going to be
working till they're in their seventies andeighties here pretty soon. Stop it,
Stop it right now, and onthat we're doing a complete pivot because I
don't want to hear that kind ofhate speech on the radio. Thomas fry

(05:36):
Uh Thomas has a new call.Well, it came out in February.
It is called four Laws for Managingthe Laws. Why are we revisiting this
now? This anybody that's watching newsright now realizes that this topic of justice

(05:57):
reform is going to come up.Our organization tries to stay politically neutral on
all of these topics, but thisis going to be a hot topic.
And this is kind of a politicallyneutral way of addressing judicial reform. And
in my mind, this is somethingthat should have been addressed a long time
ago. But the first step isnobody knows how many laws we have in

(06:21):
the United States, and so somewherealong the way, we need to get
our minds wrapped around how many lawsare out there, and if we have
all the laws posted in one certainplace, all of the laws in the
states, and the federal government andthe cities all get posted on a central
website that everybody can access around thecountry. Then we will at least start

(06:46):
understanding how many laws we're dealing with. And I think that's an interesting way
to put it, because then yousay, if they're not posted on the
website, they will be deemed unenforceable, which I think is super interesting.
Why that last caveat, Yeah,because I don't know. I don't think
we should just have sneaky laws thatwe can use on people at any given

(07:11):
moment. I just don't think that'sreasonable. Whip them out of the back
pocket, like here's the law youbroke, and now you're going to pay
for it. Number two. Ilove number two because number two would go
a long way to thinning the herdin number one. Right, if the
laws is posted there that hasn't beenin Forrester, hasn't come into play for

(07:33):
the last twenty years, in automaticallysunsets, it goes away. We don't
need all of these old laws fromthe eighteen hundreds hanging around for somebody to
dig up and try to enforce onehundred and fifty years later. I have
a person to make any said Okay. You know what though, this is
what I fear. This is thisis what I fear because I always think,

(07:54):
Okay, what's the least or orwhat's the least desirable reaction to this?
Then I just have this feeling thatevery nineteen and a half years,
somebody's going to get charged for ridingtheir horse down Main Street on Sunday,
just to make sure that loss dayson the books, you know what I
mean? And I'm using that exampleis a cheeky example, but like financial

(08:15):
crimes or some of those things,I can see prosecutors going, oh boy,
we're not going to let that falloff. So we got to find
a sucker to hang that on.And I know it sounds crazy, but
I've seen enough crazy stuff to thinkthat could happen. Possibly, But we're
dealing with a massive number of lawsand it's hard for them to keep track

(08:37):
of all of them that are goingto be going away. Number three is
one that needs to happen like rightnow and today. Any new law written
should be written using this standard,and that is you want them simplified.
Yeah, what I'm simplified. Thatshould be written at an eighth grade level,
or maybe even lower than that there'sno reason to a law that's written

(09:01):
in Legalese that nobody can understand.It just needs to be plain English,
something that anybody off the street canjust come across and read it and they
understand what's going on there. Makingthings simple is not an evil request,
but I think that that is probablythe best thing that we can do.

(09:24):
And it's written in legalese, Ibelieve to obfuscate. Right. The more
complicated they make the script, themore the easier it is to exploit.
Because when a law is written,a law just exists until the courts put
some meat on the bones of thelaw, right, until that law is
interpreted in one way or another,that law is just out there. And

(09:46):
so the more complicated they make itto understand, I think they believe that
they'll have more wiggle room to haveit interpreted it in a way that may
be favoral to their viewpoint. Andthat's why I think it's written so in
such a ridiculous form. But Iagree it's completely unnecessary. It's almost like
we've managed to somehow maintain our connectionto the Queen's English and all that's involved

(10:09):
in that, and the whereases andhereto force, but only in the legal
system. The rest of us havemoved on. Yeah, it's like the
King James version of the Bible exactlyexactly, Okay, And then number four
Code of Government Ethics tell me aboutthat. Yeah, it just is not

(10:35):
reasonable to think that anybody that enforcesthe law should benefit from how they're enforcing
it. So, as an example, when the FBI sees his property from
people, that encourages them to dothat because they get access to that,

(10:56):
and that doesn't seem reasonable to me. The first, the first, third
first thought I had was civil assetforfeiture, where if police suspect you of
something, they can take your stuffright right, and if they benefit from
it, then they're more likely toto enforce those things. They're more likely

(11:18):
to twist the law in their favor. It's the same as getting traffic tickets
in a city. A lot ofcities actually trying to balance their budgets by
by writing more tickets towards the endof the month just to break even.
That's that seems unethical to me.Oh, it seems like they shouldn't directly

(11:41):
benefit from that. They are smallcommunities that that their entire town's budgets come
from the writing of traffic tickets.They don't have any other economic means.
And I'm with you. I don'tthink you should ever be able to benefit.
I do think that that last codeof government ethics should also apply to
say you cannot personally benefit by usingthe justice system against someone else in a

(12:05):
malicious way. I mean, Ifeel like, and I've said this before,
this Trump case is concerning to meon many levels, and not the
least of which is is that thelaw has been unevenly applied. And someone
on the text line said laws needto be written to apply to all citizens.
There should be no exemptions for anyonepoliticians. So could you throw that

(12:28):
in? I mean, in theorythat's in the constitution, but it sometimes
gets overlooked. Yeah, that shouldbe in there as well. But the
ethics problem comes in when it benefitsone group specifically, and if that group
is the one enforcing the law,that just seems highly unethical. You know.

(12:52):
The sad thing, Thomas, isthat these are all really good ideas,
but the people that would be boundby them are the people that have
to rewrite things right. They wouldhave to put forth these laws or ordinances
or whatever, and they will neverdo it because it's this is one of
those where the system they have thatthe devil they know is better than the

(13:13):
devil they don't, and that isa huge frustration. And I think,
you know, in Colorado we havea valid initiative system, but you'd have
to split all four of these intofour different valid initiatives because of the single
subject rule. But do you thinkany of this will ever get done?
Or do you think we love ourpolitics like down and dirty and we're all

(13:33):
somewhat satisfied, so we're not evergoing to demand significant change. I don't
know. I see a lot ofthings percolating to the top at this time,
So I think that now is asgood a time as any changes.
You know, when you look atthis, you move into a community,

(13:56):
where do you find out what thelaws are in that community? Because you're
you're driving down the road, andas you're driving down the road, new
laws come into effect and old lawsgo away, and you have no idea
what any of these are at anygiven time. And I'm pretty sure there's
some places in the United States whereit's not okay to do a right turn

(14:18):
on a red light, and wejust as that might be Okay, I
know in the city of Longmont hasa law that says you have to have
cat licenses. All your cats haveto be licensed, and I'm not letting
my cat. People moving in thereare not going to be able to find

(14:39):
that law. It's hidding some filebox somewhere in the city. Yeah,
so these things should be prominent.They should be displayed in a place that
everybody can find them and everybody canread them and understand them. That's nothing
here is unreasonable. But I mean, I've been around politicians long enough to

(15:03):
know that they don't want to changeanything that could be somewhat limiting to their
abilities to get their desired outcomes,whatever they are. And this is a
nonpartisan issue, right. This isnot like one team doesn't and the other
doesn't. This is across the boardthat they are loads to change anything that
they currently view to be to theiradvantage and keeping people in the dark,

(15:24):
especially the one this should be theeasiest one, the simplification law, where
everything has to be written at aneighth grade level. They would fight tooth
and nail against that and tell youthat there's a reason that we have to
have all this ridiculous, you know, haughty language and that it's for the
best. And the reality is isnothing could be further from the truth,

(15:45):
you know, But how do yougo back? How do you have Do
you have a team or a committeethat looks at every law and determines what
it should say in plain English?Well, we're a country that has the
highest percentage of our popular incarcerated ofany country at any time in history,
and we also have the greatest numberof laws of any country at any time

(16:07):
in history. This just is notreasonable. This has reached a point where
everything's out of control, and Ithink we're seeing it all over the newspapers
right now. We can't afford tobe putting all of our talented people in
prison because we have a one sizefits all form of punishment for everybody.

(16:29):
That's rather ridiculous. So somewhere alongthe way this is going to get changed.
I don't know when it's going toget changed or how it's going to
get changed, but I think we'regetting really close to that point. From
your lives to God's ears. ButI'll believe it when you know, we
see people actually start to vote differentlyand pay attention and make thoughtful choices,
And I just think that we are. We're too lazy. We're just too

(16:52):
intellectually lazy, we're too selfish.We're not having kids because we've decided that
having, you know, a dinkhousehold income, no kids is the way
to go. And I actually feelkind of sorry for those people who think
that their fat bank account is goingto be something at the end of their
lives that they look back on withany sort of warm and fuzzy feeling,

(17:12):
you know. I mean, don'tget me wrong, having kids is a
pain of the ass, but it'stotally worth it most of the time.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't knowanybody that's had kids that regrets having kids.
I know a lot of people thatregret not having kids exactly. So

(17:33):
yeah, I might be wrong onthat, but that's the way it appears
to me. Thomas Frye is ourfuturist. You can read this column because
it's a really good column and hegoes through and explains a bunch of stuff.
I linked to it on the blogtoday. And if you would like
him to come to your business andtalk about your industry or falling birth rates
or whatever, I mean, doyou choose what you talk about or did
they ask you to come and talkabout the falling birth rates in South Korea.

(18:00):
Actually, he asked me to comeand talk about that topic there,
so I do a lot of research. Night I was on stage with Stephen
Shaw and he's actually become obsessed withthis topic and is actually producing documentaries on
it right now. Well, goodfor him. Quite fascinating. Thomas.
We'll talk to you again next month, my friend. All right, all

(18:25):
right, have a good month.All right. That is Thomas Frye,
our future speaker. You can findhim on the blog today and you can
check out all of his contact information. I just you know, I you
never really think about that kind ofstuff about replacement rates and things like that.
You know, whatever we talk aboutstuff like that. You know what
I think of, inevitably that storythat I talked about a long time ago

(18:49):
about the mouse utopia. We're inthe sixties. This sky built a mouse
utopia that had the perfect amount ofspace for every mouse. They didn't have
to want for anything. They hadall their food, they had their water
delivered, and within two generations theyspent too much time grooming themselves and looking
in the mirror, and their entirepopulation died out. Where are we in
the mouse Utopia, just something tothink about.