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> Research | > Pillars of Ethics |
How do people get into conflict with each other when they have good intent towards each other? They may agree on a fundamental principle like the golden rule, they may wish for world peace, and they may seek to preserve the ecology and offer a better life to future generations. But even so they may have disputes among them in place of cooperation.
For example, consider a newlywed couple, who love each other and seek to please each other. We see in the real world that some couples have a happy marriage throughout their lives, while others become disillusioned and divorce. Yet they had the same goal at the outset.
Similarly, friendships can endure or break up, and on a larger scale nations can get along well with each other or they can fall into disputes and end up in war.
The problem in many of these miserable situations is not that the people don't know the difference between good and evil. Reading philosophical debates about "who has the best definition" will not help them. The people are making mistakes in the implementation. They may share a common desire of what they want, but their behavior is producing something else instead.
To achieve ethical results, people need more than just good intent. They need to know how to do it, and they need to understand some basic principles that have been discovered over the course of history, of what works and what doesn't. I call these supporting principles the "pillars of ethics."
These pillars are universal principles. That is, they will produce good results for anyone who can understand and follow them, not limited by culture, race, gender, or other ways of dividing or categorizing intelligent beings.
These pillars are not everything you need to know to achieve good results; that knowledge encompasses everything there is to know in the domains of engineering and science, including all the social sciences in particular. The pillars are the most important things that we want to teach our children, so that they can avoid common mistakes. No child can learn everything, but there are some things we want to make sure that everyone learns.
As I observe the state of the world today, I have picked out those principles that people seem most in need of understanding, and I present them below as the "basic pillars of ethics."
The very most important pillar of ethics is caring. In its most extreme form, it is called love.
When a person cares about another person, they want that person to be happy and they are willing to go to some effort to help the person to achieve that. If the other person is sick, and they had medicine for it, they would offer it. If the other person is doing some destructive behavior that is bringing misery upon themselves or others, the caring person would wish to intervene, so that it is corrected and the misery ceases.
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This desire to help others, called altruism, exists not only among humans. It exists also among many kinds of animals, and there is an evolutionary advantage to it.
People have the most advanced capability for caring. People can care about animals who are under their care or supervision, who could suffer just as they can. People can care about others whom they have never seen, in faraway lands, or in the future (who have not been born yet). And indeed, with the power that people have collectively, they need to care. Otherwise they destroy the future for their descendants by short-sighted practices, such as farming crops to depletion, destroying the ecology, or squandering non-renewable resources.
If a person does not care, he will not fully agree to ethical behavior. He agrees when it is in his personal advantage to agree, so that others will treat him well. But if he has an occasion to profit by hurting someone, and to not to be caught at it and punished, he will do so.
Lack of sufficient caring has been a problem throughout human history. It is why slavery has existed, and it has been a cause for wars. In past eras, war was not considered immoral; conquest was fine as long as the nation didn't pick a fight that they would lose. People would care about each other within their own family, clan, or tribe, but stretching caring beyond that was beyond the capacity of many of our ancestors.
The opposite condition, excess caring, is also possible, but very rare. A person could deplete all their resources in the aid of others, leaving themselves destitute and in need of being rescued. Generally we don't worry that people would do that. When they do, it is generally in a desperate circumstance where one person rescues someone at risk to their own life, which is something heroic rather than foolish.
So our mutual welfare for now and the future, depends primarily on enhancing caring. As with trust, which has a "trust response," there is also a caring response that is almost instinctive. The more that individuals treat others with kindness, the more kind those other people are likely to become.
This is not a new discovery. Two thousand years ago Christianity was founded on the concept that a person should love others, even to the extent of loving their enemies. It's a great principle, but people find it very hard to do. If people everywhere could actually love their enemies, there would be no more wars, and furthermore the wars in progress would be brought to a stop.
If we want a wonderful world and a wonderful future, enhanced caring is the foundation of it, as foremost among all the pillars of ethics.
People are generally familiar with voting for politicians, but they may not consider how everyday actions serve as votes. As a simple example, imagine a person is driving down a highway in their car, after consuming some fast food and being left with the wrappers. A simple way to dispose of that trash, would be to toss it out the window, onto the side of the road. It's a solution that might seem conducive to their personal happiness, because they don't have the bother of bringing it home to put it in a recycling bin.
But that decision fails to consider that they are voting for a trashy road. If it is rational for one person to behave that way, likewise it is rational for everyone else to behave that way. It wouldn't take long for the road to become an unsightly mess.
If people are going to take a self-interested viewpoint, it's pretty easy to trick them into making choices that make things worse for themselves. This is demonstrated very well in the story of the devious politician.
Ethics involves setting of standards that provide a mutual benefit when the standard is adhered to. Not throwing trash out the window is one such standard.
Sometimes standards evolve naturally and sometimes they are invented. Sometimes there are alternative standards that are being considered, and the one that prevails is the one that most people vote for by their actions. If the population consists of people who think of the "big picture," who consider the world they want rather than just their immediate personal gratification, they will get much more satisfactory results.
I call this the "voting effect." Every choice you make is a vote. Enhanced Caring and the Voting Effect are powerful principles to bring forth a better world, where each generation has better prospects than the previous one.
People tend to have biases that affect their decision-making, and in particular the confirmation bias ("Wishful thinking") is problematic. That bias leads people to seek out evidence only for what they believe or want to believe.
Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels.com
Believing what you want might seem conducive to happiness, but if that is a false belief it may have unwanted consequences. In war situations, for example, people tend to believe that their own side is justified, because they only see one side of the story: the side that their local journalists and politicians want to tell. They may wish that there would be no war, but yet they tend to support the war effort on their side.
Each side thinks the other side is evil, while they themselves are not; but they cannot all be correct in that belief. It follows that some of them must be doing evil things without realizing it. When the truth is eventually uncovered, perhaps long later, there will be some significant regrets among them!
Leaders know that if you can control what people believe, you can control the people. The purpose of leadership should be to serve the people they lead, by organizing them to achieve the things they want; but leaders sometimes get that backwards. They lead for their own wealth, fame, and glory, and the followers pay the price not just in money, but in suffering.
People need to keep control of their leaders, and a critical part of doing that is having access to reliable, unbiased information. In the modern world, it is possible to get information from multiple sources, from multiple nations, and to translate it automatically to one's own language. When a person "casts a vote," whether for a politician or in any other circumstance, it's best to know what outcome one is really voting for!
This point supports the previous one. No person can know everything, so it is necessary to get information from other people. It would help this process a lot of the other people are honest, to provide accurate information to the best of their ability.
Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels.com
There is a natural tendency for people to wish to please others, and to try to live up to their reputation. So if a person is trusted, the person is more likely to provide correct information than otherwise. That is known as the "trust response." Therefore, when requesting information from someone whom you don't know, the best strategy is to assume they will answer honestly, until such time as you have evidence about their honesty.
As for your own decision about whether to be honest or not, it is wise to cast your vote for the kind of world you want. If you want a world where people can rely on each other to tell the truth, then in most cases you need to tell the truth also.
There are some exceptions, such as if someone seeks information for evil purposes; in such cases deception may be justified, but also those situations tend to be quite rare. It is more common for people to use deception as a matter of convenience, to avoid revealing mistakes, or perhaps to avoid being caught on something they are ashamed of. These more common kinds of dishonesty may seem like easy ways to preserve happiness, but over the long term they tend to be counterproductive to that goal.
For a more thorough exploration of honesty, check out the topic About Honesty: The Story of a Man and a Dog.
Keeping of promises is related to honesty. An honest person will make promises that he (or she) intends to keep. Also, keeping of promises makes it easier to be honest, because it is easier to be honest when you don't have anything to be ashamed about, that you might wish to hide. However, promises go beyond honestly conveying intent, because it generally requires time and effort to fulfil the promise.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels.com
There can be situations where a person intended to keep his (or her) promise, but found it difficult or impossible to do so because of situations he didn't predict. Or he may have a weakness in making "time independent judgements," so that as temptation arises later he succumbs to it. Yet another possibility is that he discovers an adverse consequence of keeping the promise, and determines that it was better to not keep it. The principle of keeping a promise applies to promises made in order to produce good results.
When a promise is broken, in many cases that results in someone being disappointed or hurt. Suppose that someone is you. What explanation does the person who broke the promise give to you? Is it justified, such that you would make that same decision yourself in those circumstances, or is it just a lame excuse? Does the person who made the promise deserve to be forgiven? Sometimes the answer is yes, but if it is a repeated breach that is very suspicious!
Sometimes it may seem like the harm done by breaking a promise is small, and that the happiness to the person who avoids the burden of fulfilment will exceed the dissatisfaction felt by the person who suffers from the breach. But if that policy is applied to one such situation, likewise it is rational in other similar situations, resulting in many breaches by many people. The voting effect is relevant here: it's a vote for a world in which it becomes difficult to rely on anybody.
Broken promises cause a lot of misery in a variety of circumstances: ruined marriages (when marriage vows are broken), shattered friendships, defaulted loans, failed business ventures, and worst of all: war.
In a war it is typical for the people on each side of the conflict to wish the war would end, but they are trapped in a situation where they can't stop. Even if they could agree on what would be an acceptable solution, they are unwilling to implement it because they don't trust the other side to keep their promises. And this mistrust is often based on solid evidence: one or both sides have repeatedly violated their treaties.
A modern example of this is the war that Russia initiated against Ukraine, currently in progress at the time this was written. A precursor to the war was an armed conflict against Ukraine by Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine. A peace agreement was arranged in 2014 at meetings in Minsk, Belarus, and a date was set for a ceasefire. Compliance was to be monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Though there may have been some reduction in fighting at first, OSCE reports showed ceasefire violations practically every day, from the ceasefire date and thereafter. A second attempt at a ceasefire, again arranged at Minsk, produced the same results.
The OSCE didn't place blame for the violations. They simply reported destroyed buildings, sounds of gunfire in particular areas, military equipment missing from where it was supposed to be stored, OSCE observers denied access to conflict areas, etc.. But we don't need to get into placing blame to reach an obvious conclusion: no agreement can be sustained if either side breaches it and 3rd party enforcement is not possible or effective.
This conflict continued for ten years before Russia decided to turn it into a full-scale war to take control of Ukraine. Negotiations have been held in attempt to finding a rational solution, but the need for "security guaranties" (enforcement of promises) is a major hurdle. Meanwhile people are dying and this has continued for years.
Fulfilment of desires produces happiness, and desires arise at various times. So it's pretty conducive to happiness if a person could do whatever he (or she) wants, when he (or she) wants to do it.
If a person lived alone in a tropical island paradise amply supplied with local berries and fruits, and without any parasites, diseases, or dangerous predators, presumably a person could do that. But as soon as other people are introduced to the scenario, individuals may want different things at different times and disagree about what to do. Therefore, groups inevitably set standards to regulate behavior.
An example of this is demonstrated in the rules of the road simulation. In that particular example, a society has grown to the point where they have roads and vehicles, and they would benefit from rules that enable them to travel quickly without bumping into each other. So each society will pick which side of the road to drive on (right or left), and people are expected to follow the adopted standard. Everyone is happier to have the standard than to be without it.
Notice that the rule does not fully constrain the behavior of the people. If they adopt a rule to drive on the right side of the road, for example, that doesn't dictate to them where they should go, nor when. Some people may be going to shop, while others are going to school or work, and yet others are going home, all using the same roads as times of their own choice.
Choice of destination; designed by FreePik.com
If the rules become too constrained, however, they become counterproductive to mutual happiness. One could imagine rules to optimize road use, by dictating which vehicles shall go where, and when. Instead of having busy roads at times and idle roads at other times, usage would be even, but people wouldn't necessarily go home when they want to eat or rest, nor to work or study when they wish to do those things, etc.
As a more extreme example yet, imagine dictating to each person exactly what they shall eat, how much, and when, according to one recipe book. It would be a disaster! People vary in size and in the activities they do at various times, and they are each much healthier and happier to eat suitable foods as they feel the need.
Furthermore, people have different interests, talents, and hobbies, and they choose different careers. Society benefits when people undertake different professions, because no one person can learn and do every kind of job. Not everyone needs to be the same nor do the same things.
So, in general, people in a society will be happiest if they adopt rules of prohibition or obligation that are designed for mutual benefit, and to keep those rules limited so that people have liberty.
It is also important to note that liberty needs to be protected. For liberty, people need opportunities to do things they wish to do, and so there must not be arbitrary exclusions that deny people access to jobs, education, etc., based on irrelevant attributes like race, gender, religion, etc.
Establishment of appropriate rights protects liberty. One of the most important rights is the ability to congregate peacefully with other people to express opinions and pass on information. In some nations this is suppressed in order that the leaders can control people. For example, in a nation undertaking an unpopular war, they may outlaw public gatherings, quickly disperse any crowds that gather, and arrest the organizers. Such events are not reported in state-controlled media, lest other people might realize that they are not alone in their discontent.
This is related to point #3 above, about access to accurate information. Without that, citizens are mislead, and democratic processes meant to hold their leaders responsible will not work. That information will not be available unless there are people who can gather it. Leaving that to the leaders creates a conflict of interest. This makes it imperative that people should have liberty to communicate freely with each other in private and in public, and to organize independent, honest news gathering and reporting.
Moral behavior often involves more than just staying within boundaries set by rules. When people undertake tasks together, to produce something of value, they need to decide how to share the benefit.
As a simple example, consider a small business with a couple of men who build garages for a living. They build it together, because it requires a cooperative effort. When boards need to be put into place, it takes two people: one to hold it while the other nails it. When the garage is completed, they collect money from the customer, use it to pay the supplier of materials, and split the rest between them.
In order for this to work, they must have some agreement from the customer about how much he (or she) will pay. But how is this to be decided? Does it depend how badly the customer wants the garage, so that some customers might be charged more and others less, for garages that are identical?
Probably the builders will wish to arrange the contract for each garage before it is built, to ensure that they will earn enough to pay for the supplies and to earn something for themselves. But how much should expect to receive for their work?
Furthermore, how shall they decide to split the money for their work? Shall it be 50% for each, or will one take a higher percentage than the other?
Without any standards of fairness, these questions are typically settled by negotiations. But bargaining is sometimes influenced by differences in advantage, so it is sometimes settled as a power struggle rather than something that people consider to be fair. Consider this case, illustrated below:
Image generated via Artificial Intelligence using OpenArt.AI
This is a fictitious example, in which a bedraggled traveller reaches an oasis after a long trip through a desert. An industrious man has a well there, and he requires payment of $10,000 from anyone who wants a glass of water. It's the only well in the oasis, and there are no streams or other open water there.
The traveller is not prepared for this situation. All along his route, he was able to get water for free at towns and villages, and he did not carry a supply of water with him.
The well owner has the power advantage, because the traveller is desperate. The traveller doesn't have $10,000, but perhaps the well owner is feeling generous so he will simply take however much money the traveller has. Or maybe he will hire him as an indentured servant, to be paid poverty-level wages until he can pay off the $10,000.
Do either of those options sound fair? No? Why not?
The answer is that morality is about achieving mutual wellbeing, and that is not accomplished by this kind of action! To use the slogan on this web site, it is not a way to "spread happiness." It is not consistent with the first pillar of ethics, which is to care about other people. It is not consistent with the golden rule. The well owner would not want to be treated this way himself.
Of course, the owner built the well, and if it was merely for the benefit of travellers, then they would have some gratitude that he did it, and they may wish to pay him some gift or compensation. But it would not be a price like a ransom.
The point here is that bargaining does not produce fairness, except under specific
conditions. It can produce fairness if:
So, if there were various other water wells available with different owners, the traveller would leave this greedy owner with nothing, and get his water elsewhere.
In a large-scale economy, it is the matter of choice that produces fairness. This was described long ago by Adam Smith, who was credited as being the "father of economics." Sellers who charge higher prices than others will get no customers, so they must bring their price in line with the others in order to stay in business. There is a limit how low the price will go, however, because the sellers are people (or groups of people) who need income for sustenance. In fact, the buyers and sellers are all the same people. So the prices and wages each tend to move toward an equilibrium, as if an "invisible hand" were setting those amounts.
For this to work, there are several requirements. For example, there must be liberty, as it won't work when some of the people are slaves. If any supplier has a monopoly (as in the case of the well owner in the story), it won't work either. There are various other requirements too. The necessary conditions are often not present in the real world, and various methods may be used to try to fix that. That's covered under the topic of economics, which you can read many textbooks about. If we take fairness as a goal, then the study of economics can help us to achieve it.
Let's get back to the matter of the two garage builders. The price for their garage will be set by the "invisible hand." As for how they share the money they get, let's suppose that they each split their costs evenly (that each paid for half of the garage supplies initially). Further, they did the same hours of work, had the same amount of time invested in developing their skill, and each had the same level of skill. When all the conditions for each of them are identical, then they generally expect the same compensation (split 50% for each). That optimizes their collective happiness, because all the effort and rewards are balanced.
In fact, that "equal circumstances yields equal reward" is instinctive, found in many animals other than just humans. A famous example is an experiment by Frans de Waal in which monkeys were given rewards for doing a simple task. In general they were satisfied with receiving a cucumber for doing the task, but grapes were the preferred reward. When one monkey was given a cucumber for doing the same task that another monkey was given a grape for, the first monkey became extremely upset and he threw his cucumber away. That may seem illogical because the cucumber was better than nothing. But he needed to demonstrate that this was unacceptable, even at some cost to himself.
For a short YouTube video of this experiment, see:
Frans de Waal monkeys
Having identical conditions is simple case, but in the real world things are
often more complex. Even with our garage builders, we can have differences that
affect what the individuals consider to be fair. They might not be doing the same
tasks, as each may have their own specialty. They may consider some tasks more
valuable than others, because of differences such as:
The matter of allocation of wages is a value judgement. Value judgements are analyzed in the how to set a speed limit example, in which a population makes a value judgement on a speed limit. The optimum choice fits within a "reasonable range" and fine tuned using the collective opinion of those who will be using the roads.
Setting of fair wages and prices are a more complex situation than the speed limit example, because there are more variables involved, but the end result is the same. People in a society make a collective value judgement, and they typically they each express it by "voting with their actions." That is, people vote not to buy something that they consider too expensive, and they vote instead to buy things that fit in a price range they consider to be reasonable. The same is true of wages. The "invisible hand" is really just a group value judgement.
This process can have anomalies, because sometimes there is someone with a rare talent that they can sell to many people at once, thereby earning income far in excess of anything they initially expected (applicable to some actors, musicians, sports stars, and business leaders). Effectively, people are paying them exorbitant rewards when it's not really necessary, but each person's contribution is small so it doesn't bother them. Further, people will pay into lotteries that offer exorbitant rewards even though the winner will have done nothing whatever to deserve his (or her) win, except to be lucky.
A lottery is a peculiar thing, because it so very obvious that it is unfair. People look around them in a society and see situations where people get unfair rewards, for which they themselves have no opportunity. So they create lotteries as a peculiar sort of compensation, in which they might have a chance of getting an unfair reward too.
Lotteries that collect money for a charity mitigate the problem of unfairness somewhat, but there is still a cost to running the lottery. In a world where wealth is distributed fairly, there would be no use for lotteries, and people would simply donate to charities directly.
As one further point, in addition to distributing wealth fairly, fairness requires that everyone is given an opportunity to succeed. If a society has arbitrary exclusions for some people because of their race, gender, ethnicity, etc., those people are denied opportunities and this causes them to suffer. That is immoral.
Societies may also create anxiety and misery when they fail to provide opportunities for young adults, with businesses often preferring to hire proficient, experienced workers, and not giving anyone else a chance. It is a challenge for modern societies to fix that.
With the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics, there are further challenges arising to nations, to find a means whereby everyone can benefit from the new technologies. As things stand at the moment, those who own the machines are benefitting while others find themselves in the situation of competing with the machines.
Furthermore, different people have different skills, and some may be born with disabilities, or injured later in life by accidents or other circumstances. Those people are also included in the goal of "mutual wellbeing," regardless that some might not be able to contribute much themselves.
Fairness is a common goal, but it's not always obvious how to achieve it. There has been much improvement compared to past times, when slavery was common and states fought for conquest, but more progress is wanted. As each generation faces new challenges, new solutions are also needed. It may take a variety of experiments or "pilot projects" in order figure out how to make our economic and political systems more effective, to satisfy our mutual desires of happiness.
Justice includes fair distribution of rewards, and it also includes fair treatment of people who have broken rules.
Typically, a person's first encounter with enforced justice is as a very young child, from a parent or other caregiver. When a child progresses from baby to toddler, he (or she) likes to experiment, touch objects, and put things into their mouth. A parent will give rules for what the child may and may not do, but the child doesn't necessarily understand or accept every rule. So the parent has a choice: let the child learn from experience, or intervene.
When parental cautions are not heeded, sometimes it's best to let the child learn for themselves. For example, a child might treat one of his toys roughly, accidentally breaking it, which he will regret. Or he might go out to play in rainy weather and learn about being cold and miserable.
But sometimes there are severe consequences of a misbehavior. For example, a child may persist in running across the street when playing, despite a family rule against it. The eventual consequence could be injury or death to the child. No loving parent wants their child to suffer from such a severe pun9:38 PM 2025-12-02ishment, so they substitute a lesser one.
For example, the parent may intercept the child as he runs to the street, and give him a time-out (make him stop playing and sit in a chair for a minute or two). To a parent that's a minor intervention, but to a little child, one minute denied from playing is significant! Moreover, if the parent habitually offers praise when the child behaves well, that's an even stronger influence on the child's long-term behavior.
When children play together, playing by the rules is generally more fun. When rules are lacking, squabbles ensue. Imagine, for example, young siblings playing with toys, and each deciding they want to play with the same toy at the same time. Each can express their wish to play with the toy, but that's not a solution. It could degrade into pushing and shoving, or escalate into more extreme retributions.
A typical solution is ownership, where each child has their own toys and the owner gets to decide who may play with it. This also gives the child a feeling of security, to know his toys are safe, to only be played with by those he trusts. Little children rely on their parents to make the rules, and to enforce them when needed.
Moreover, because the goal is the wellbeing of the child, forgiveness is legitimate as an alternative to a punishment. If a child regrets their action and does the best they can to make amends, we call that "repentance," and in such cases there is no benefit to apply a penalty. When the lesson is learned already, adding a penalty just creates unnecessary unhappiness.
If we now imagine the child grows up to join the adult world, he can no longer rely on his parents to serve as "judge and enforcer." Instead, the society has rules decided by political processes, and a legal system to enforce it. It is a more complex system, but many of the principles are the same that apply to families:
Without justice, people get into disputes that escalate. Consider this scenario: One person feels offended, so he makes some retribution to another person. The other person decides to make sure the offender will never do that again, so he makes it a big retaliation more severe than what he experienced. Now the first person is even more offended, and so reprisals continue in circles of increasing severity.
This may sound crazy but it actually happens in real life. It happened in ancient times between clans, and in the modern world it can turn conflicts between nations into wars. Innocent people get dragged into the conflict, and they are made to suffer too.
If there is no impartial judge to settle the matter, then to avoid the vicious circle, any reprisal must be clearly of equal or lesser magnitude to the original offence. Often lesser is a wiser choice, sufficient to deter the offender but not so much that he believes he must do more to "get even" again.
Prevention is also an important strategy. Establishing good relations between people make them less likely to over-react, and this is also important between nations as a proactive way to prevent war.
There is much more to be said about the administration of justice, but my purpose here is not to write a textbook on that. The point is that in any society, no matter how well it may be run, there will be instances of individuals who break the rules. So, in addition to making the society as fair as possible, to enable every person to be happy, the society needs to protect itself.
A demonstration of this principle is built into the NewWorld computer simulation, involving a population with some individuals of the "cheater" behavioral type. Those individuals gain benefits from the group as if they were participating as productive members, except they actually contribute nothing. The result is a relative advantage of cheaters over the others in their accumulation of wealth, resulting in increasing poverty among the non-cheater population. If this is allowed to persist across generations, the population of cheaters will increase until it becomes an unsustainable burden on the remaining non-cheaters, and the society collapses.
The simulation also has some law enforcement options that can be turned on, in order that the society can manage to identify some of the cheaters and apply corrective action. The simulation options are fairly crude, but they are sufficient to demonstrate the difference between a society that protects itself from cheating vs one that does not.
The last part of the puzzle is to determine which of the societies ethical rules are to be enforced, and which will not be enforced. Enforcement can be expensive, and furthermore there are some kinds of offences that are harder to enforce than others. Furthermore, if there are any immoral activities that are widespread in a society, it is generally impractical to cure that through enforcement; rather the people need first to be convinced to change their behaviors.
In general, legally enforced standards of behavior in a society are a subset of what most people in the society consider to be moral. Furthermore, the legal system tends to be more complex, because it must not only decide what is permissible, but also the nature and severity of the penalties and rehabilitation that are to be applied in each circumstance.
On this website, the focus is on offering good advice, that will produce mutual happiness when people follow that advice. That's a much simpler problem, and it would work quite fine if everybody decided to behave morally.
As for the legal system, it is up to elected politicians to decide the priorities of what is to be enforced, and to put in place the best procedures and personnel they can for enforcement, investigations, judgements, and reformation of offenders. Doing that effectively is a whole field of study of its own.
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