Читать книгу The Great Cat Massacre - A History of Britain in 100 Mistakes - Gareth Rubin - Страница 8

The law is the point of friction between the individual and the state – a set of restrictions on personal freedom. That is because there are many freedoms that no one should have, such as the freedom to push someone off a bus on an afternoon whim. Laws also demand that you keep others safe when those people reasonably expect you to. If the law had stated that the RMS Titanic’s look-out had to present his binoculars to the captain before the ship set sail, things might have turned out differently for more than 1,000 passengers who found they didn’t need the return halves of their tickets.

Often terrible outcomes have happened because keeping others safe would have cost time or money. But, in the first case we’re going to look at, the protagonist made his error because he believed he could mock the system, without taking into account the size of the beast he was taunting.