At the Mall

The dramatically different legal landscape here makes for some memorable scenarios: some personally dangerous to me the traveler, like automobile traffic, some dangerous only to those voluntarily assuming risk, like the kids in bungee harnesses in this video. This is an ordinary mall entertainment in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.

I sometimes picture civil society as this kind of living tissue, punctuated with the bruises and scars of tort law and legalese and binding disclaimers wherever the conflicts between agents colliding on its surface have built up too violently. Wherever there's a puncture wound in the surface, the law has to well up like blood or antigen to knit the tissue back together. What's interesting are the different grades of dings or scrapes or gouges that different societies seem able to tolerate without forming the 'bruise' of liability law.