George Walford: Laws

Laws make criminals. True; without laws there can be no crime.

But attractive though it sounds, the absence of crime does not make it easier for people to live together. Observation of hunter-gatherer communities, which have no laws, shows that although without crime they yet suffer from individuals who take things from others against their will, injure other people and sometimes kill them. It’s just that in the absence of law these don’t get defined as criminals. Neither do they come up against any institution intended to suppress their activities.

from Ideological Commentary 46, July 1990.