Good way of putting it. Basically a contractual vs. gentleman's agreement.
To get a little philosophical here: IMO, "official business" like contracts exist to create trust where it previously doesn't exist or where there's no reason for it to exist without state-enforceable formality. It enables strangers to do business with one another with a solid guarantee that fraud and/or physical violence won't be a part of the transaction. In your own Heathen terms we might frame this as contracts being a necessity for allowing nonviolent/nonpredatory "frith-less" relations to exist; such enables economic prosperity and internal security to be possible in a complex society. The State becomes a necessarily evil when society scales up to the level that people must engage in constant "frith-less" interactions as a matter of day-to-day society. When society is scaled-down to a level small enough where one's own daily interactions are all "face-to-face", i.e. only really among with family members, friends, and oath-bound local community members (via guilds and/or patron-client hierarchical arrangements), then we can say this is a wholly organic social order and that informal agreements are sufficient for things to run smoothly. We can say, where frith is lacking, lawyers and bean-counters prevail. A wholly "inorganic" social order like this is one where low-trust is king.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-07-08 05:52 pm (UTC)To get a little philosophical here: IMO, "official business" like contracts exist to create trust where it previously doesn't exist or where there's no reason for it to exist without state-enforceable formality. It enables strangers to do business with one another with a solid guarantee that fraud and/or physical violence won't be a part of the transaction. In your own Heathen terms we might frame this as contracts being a necessity for allowing nonviolent/nonpredatory "frith-less" relations to exist; such enables economic prosperity and internal security to be possible in a complex society. The State becomes a necessarily evil when society scales up to the level that people must engage in constant "frith-less" interactions as a matter of day-to-day society. When society is scaled-down to a level small enough where one's own daily interactions are all "face-to-face", i.e. only really among with family members, friends, and oath-bound local community members (via guilds and/or patron-client hierarchical arrangements), then we can say this is a wholly organic social order and that informal agreements are sufficient for things to run smoothly. We can say, where frith is lacking, lawyers and bean-counters prevail. A wholly "inorganic" social order like this is one where low-trust is king.
Sorry for the rambly tangent.