Yes, of course, the legislators set the rules. That's excactly what people are debating about in California, isn't it?

The legislators are theoretically supposed to represent the "will of the people"....while simultaneously upholding the established rule of law.

The established rule of law normally derives from founding documents such as the US Constitution, plus a host of other laws and statutes that have been enacted in the years, decades, and centuries following.

Do the legislators really represent the will of the people in actual practice? Ha!!! Fat chance. What the legislators normally end up representing is the will of the most powerful monied sectors in a society, that is to say: big business, the banks, the rich, the military-industrial complex, the insurance companies, the professional organizations, and the established bureaucracy, all of which are in it for their own maintenance and their own pecuniary interests.

The legislators do, of course, make an attempt to convince the public that they are acting in their interests...and sometimes they are, to some extent, but they are far more responsive to the above-mentioned most powerful monied sectors, because those sectors control the government. The public does not. The public merely gets to choose between a few talking heads every few years on election day, and right after that is over and done with the usual power groups continue running the show as they always have.

I mentioned that not to necessarily fight with you about anything you said, Don T....but just because I find it interesting in its own right.