With no laws or rules to influence your behavior, how do you think you would behave?

"It would be nice to think that people’s inner compasses would choose morality even without laws or rules.  However, in the past, without as much governance, there has been more crime, earlier death rates, and less economic and social opportunity under these circumstances.  Though we have the potential to create a society of morality without the threat of punishment, all it takes are a minority of people disobeying this to cause mass hysteria, panic, and fear and cause the system to crumble."

"Unable to cope with the infinite possibilities, I would immediately set to work, building a new set of laws or seeking some other way to limit myself."

"Humanity started with no laws. In the beginning we behaved like animals. We killed when we were hungry. We killed when we were scared. Eventually, we learned that if we work together we could do more. If we had no laws, eventually a civilization would arise resembling a lot like the one that we have today. Laws arose because the strongest survive. For humans, the strongest meant the strongest group not just the strongest person. Laws allowed us to work better as a group and thus to become a stronger group. You could even say that it is natural for humans to develop laws where there are none. There would be people who would act on their own but they would quickly be dominated by those...

"While we may not agree with all the laws in place, they are there to prevent our ‘freedom’ from encroaching too much into others’ freedom.  What would start small - like lying or stealing - would increase until the entire system collapsed.  That said, what would emerge would be a system of morals based upon instinct rather than imposition.  Actions would be based upon an inner decision of morality rather than an outer one.  A society governed by the inner voice of the people."

"Most people would likely behave exactly like they do now. I really do believe that most people don't interact with the law on a daily basis. We don't really need to be told not to steal things, not to murder people, etc. We'd probably drive faster, on average, but not by much as the "Flow" of traffic would settle on some speed not much faster than people currently drive. We likely wouldn't change a whole lot about what we normally do. On the other hand, if there were really zero laws, of any kind, you could make an argument that society would completely collapse. There would no longer be any laws governing international or interstate trade so you would not be able to buy anything....

“Fundamentally people behave in a social and rather compassionate and “good” way rather than aggressively, even without specified rules. That is the result of a study from the Institute for Science of Complex Systems at the MedUni Vienna under the leadership of Stefan Thurner and Michael Szell. They analysed the behaviour of more than 400,000 participants of the “Virtual Life” game “Pardus” on the Internet. The findings are that only two percent of all actions are aggressive, even though the game would make it easy for war-like attacks with spaceships, for example….”
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“I’m not sure it’s the rules or laws that govern’s one’s behavior. 2/3’s of the population don’t adhere to speed limits.Those who are hell bent on doing their own selfish thing, with no regard to the law or another’s safety, do it anyway! Our laws are an indicator of behavior that’s acceptable in a specific society. They don’t, in themselves, control people. They are a guide to acceptable behavior for those who care about acceptable behavior. The best influence to behavior is how you are brought up in this world, and time and place. A person born into poverty with poor parenting will probably consider life “unfair” and probably not follow the rules. Emotional development also plays a part with one’s behavior in life. For some, it’s stunted….”
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