Exceptions

 Exceptions are so inevitable that no rule is without them—except the one just stated.

— Eugene Rhodes

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson's many contributions to Philosophy Americana is the oft-cited "Law of Compensation."

You get what you give, it states in a nutshell.

"Nature hates monopolies and exceptions," Emerson says. 

"There is always some leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others."

If only this were true.

It's not.

Nature may hate exceptions, but exceptions—the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate—always win the day.

Always.

Consider these injustices:

• Pretty people are paid 15% more than plain-looking people.
  
  
• Blonde women are paid 7% more than brunettes and redheads.
  
  
• Educated workers of color are paid $10,000 less than their white colleagues.
  
  
• Rich people enjoy lower income tax rates than other earners.  
  
  
• Poor people die in wars; rich people do not.

Try all you might to level the playing field, exceptions will always emerge to take the lead. 

And so rich parents cheat to get their kids into Ivy League schools; advantaged whites fabricate degrees and credentials; and the super-rich lie to the IRS about their income.

Emerson notwithstanding, the Law of Compensation applies to schmucks only.

Exceptions are exempt.

No one has better depicted this truth than Woody Allen in his 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, a rich ophthalmologist (played by Martin Landau) arranges the contract-killing of his mistress, only to escape any consequence, while a smart, devoted documentary filmmaker (played by Allen) must kowtow to a slick, fast-talking TV producer, only to lose his love to him.

The exceptions win. 

The nobodies lose.

C'est la vie.