Commerce first, law second.

I've been thinking.
I intend to share my thoughts.
This is simply my opinion. Dialectics are welcomed.

At this time, I believe that commerce is of greater weight than even law. Law concerns itself with things and people. The corner stone of English Common Law is property.

One must administrate their commercial affairs first before beginning their personal political journey.

In the history of Western civilization, those people with stuff (property) come together under trust to create a system for administering that trust in addition to protection of their stuff.

Or those with military might take the stuff of others and create a trust to protect their gains in addition to themselves.

In either case, assets and property (I maintain there is distinction between the terms) come first. A system for protecting it comes second.

A government isn't much without the assets of its people in support of it.

On another note, government is a way to tap into the assets (in the strongest sense of the term) of others under the guise of protection and public good.

The private property of citizens become assets by way of pledging into the public pool from which disbursements can be made and incomes created out of its profits.

I recall when I was editing treaties for phone companies there was a conundrum about valuing assets. The equipment depreciated only a small amount but was worthless a lot sooner by technological advances. So the problem was how to value worthless equipment. It was still worth thousands of dollars and functioned fine but the company had to keep up with advancements.

As advisor I recall the fellow I was working for decided that fiduciary responsibility presided. The phone companies were advised to mark the value way down and sell the old equipment at a higher price if they could find a buyer at all.

Definition for ASSETS from Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1856):

Quote:

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ASSETS. The property in the hands of an heir, executor, administrator or trustee, which is legally or equitably chargeable with the obligations, which such heir, executor, administrator or other trustee, is, as such, required to discharge, is called assets. The term is derived from the French word assez, enough; that is, the heir or trustee has enough property. But the property is still called assets, although there may not be enough to discharge all the obligations; and the heir, executor, &c., is chargeable in distribution as far as such property extends.

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Property in status of jus privati is distinct from assets subject to charges for obligations.

I continue to maintain that one's accumulations in commerce are surety for outstanding obligations.

I remember from Winston Shrout that he stated that commerce always requires some sort of bond in order to participate.