51�Թ�

Dissenting in Lochner, Oliver Wendell Holmes said the Constitution “does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s ‘Social Statics,’ ” a book advocating laissez faire economic policies.

The applications for monitoring trends and social statics are fascinating when applied to other industry sectors. Given the extent of the monitoring, I’m sure this post itself is now coming up on the DHS radar, so please feel free to leave a comment with any insights.

“Let us never forget,” Mr. Spencer says in Social Statics, “that the law is—adaptation to circumstances, be they what they may.”

After giving up engineering, Mr. Spencer joined the staff of the Economist, and while thus employed, published, in 1850, his first important book, Social Statics, or the Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed.

That law confirmed the prevision indicated in the passages quoted above from Social Statics, and impressed him as one of the three doctrines which are indispensable elements of the general theory of Evolution.