A society based on contracts based entirely on unbreakable wows would kill far too many people, or alternatively, would require fairly insane levels of OCD checking that no contract conflicts with any other. And, as a practical matter, asking people to submit to lethal enforcement of employment contracts, and other minor business is just not going to fly. A multi-million-galleon deal? Sure. Having someone fix your plumbing... eh. No.
On the other hand, the government would be warped completely out of recognition. Because oaths of office would be unbreakable, and based on a long tradition of very careful wording. So you get government by the utterly incorruptible oath bound. Which would look nothing like any government that has ever existed. Because it would have perfect trust from the citizenry, virtually no agency problems, and no need for any checks or balances other than the oaths whatsoever.
Wait, is the Unbreakable Vow really unbreakable, or does it just kill you when you break it? I thought it was the first.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 87. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: