‘Don’t you hate to pay taxes!’ said a secretary once to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. ‘No, young feller. I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.’ Whether or not we really ‘like’ them, the old American judge had a point. The trouble is we do not yet have a consensus on our measure of ‘civilization’. While most countries have pursued ‘growth’ in ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP), this perversely counts all economic activity as positive, all contracts whatever the effect, even when they damage our health, well-being, environment or security.

This chapter considers the disadvantages arising from the reduced capacity of the common law to serve as a general regulator of contracts. Four areas of ordinary (non-commercial) contracting activity are examined: consumer debt management, payday lending, student loans and non-disclosure agreements. Judicial engagement with these areas of contract has been minimal or non-existent. The examples show how little influence some common problems in consumer contracting, or other contracts involving inequality of bargaining power, have had on the development of contract law rules. The law’s lack of exposure to some common issues generated by its rules only serves to compound the hold that commercial contracting has over legal development. The dearth of legal engagement with these issues also closes off an important forum for the debate, development and communication of contract’s deeper normative values, including the general standards of conduct that are, or should be, inherent in contracting. This accelerates the process of common law impoverishment.

‘The power of communication of thoughts and opinions is the gift of God,’ said Lord Eyre CJ in 1794, ‘and the freedom of it is the source of all science, the first fruits and the ultimate happiness of society.’ For those with slow Wi-Fi, a ‘gift of God’ might seem a stretch, but there is no doubt that modern communication is both a source, and a wonder, of science. Historically, most of us communicated in person, or not at all. A post open to everyone and mass literacy only developed in the nineteenth century. Then came telegraph, telephone and now the Internet. The Internet works with devices (like a phone) sending data over the radio spectrum to receivers (like a Wi-Fi box).

This chapter sums up the arguments in the book and reaches some brief conclusions.

The history of enterprise law, the evolution of state and corporate power, is essential to understand why our economic constitution is as we see it today. Why is enterprise financed by a mix of taxes, savings in the stock market or banks, prices and regulatory subsidies, but without any clear consensus on what should be public or privately owned? Why are the votes in our economy partially spread among investors, workers and the public, yet decisively influenced by asset managers and banks? Why are social, economic and political rights enshrined in international law, yet their realisation in national law is so uncertain? Why has enterprise law changed, and where should it go? History does not let us see into the future, but when we learn from the past, we understand our options better for deciding what to change.

Education is probably the most important enterprise for a country’s future because it influences people’s capabilities in almost all of life’s endeavours. At the very centre of a just society is the ‘essential importance of human development in its richest diversity’.1 ‘Everyone has the right to education’ in international law. Elementary education ‘shall be free’, and higher education must be ‘equally accessible to all on the basis of merit’ and ‘in particular by the progressive introduction of free education’.

When God says ‘Let there be light’, the Old Testament refers to one of Earth’s greatest natural resources, but also the hope of human enlightenment itself. Light and heat come to Earth from our Sun. Heat differences create air pressure. Air pressure creates wind. And both light and wind can power the modern world a thousand times. With water, light gives life to plants, trees, algae, plankton and creatures including ourselves. Plants photosynthesise light, they live, they are eaten, they die, and over millions of years they become fossilised. Coal comes from ancient forests, which were buried and compressed before they decayed.