A rule and the means of evading it arrive together, because writing the rule specifies exactly what has to be avoided.
The proverb is older than the research and names the same thing: a precise rule is a map of what is permitted, so the act of specifying creates the design brief for avoidance. It appears in Italian and Spanish in near-identical form, and the mechanism it describes is why tax codes lengthen without ever closing.
In practice
- A rule capping one category of payment produces a new category of payment within a quarter.
- A specification detailed enough to be enforceable is detailed enough to be gamed, and by the same property.
- Standing
- Compare the Chinese idiom about policies above and counter-measures below, and Goodhart's law, which states the measurement case.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- The paradoxes of democracy and the quips of partisans