Comment by stavros
3 months ago
This is going to be a disaster. Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress. There's no way to create a critical mass of resistance and disobedience that will lead to the toppling of an unfair law if you enforce the law perfectly and universally, and this will lead society to ossify.
Imagine if every single gay person were caught and put in jail the moment they acted on their urges, or every single person who bought or sold weed (or alcohol, during the prohibition) were similarly arrested. We'd still be stuck in the mindset of a century ago.
A society that has removed its own ability to progress is truly a horrifying prospect.
> Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress. There's no way to create a critical mass of resistance and disobedience that will lead to the toppling of an unfair law if you enforce the law perfectly and universally, and this will lead society to ossify.
Don't worry, it won't be perfect and universal. Politicians, the police, and their friends and family will surely make themselves exempt.
Yep, every society believes itself perfect (or about to become perfect with just one more law), and then 10 minutes later is proven hilariously wrong.
> Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress.
This is quite a leap.
Societies would be perfectly capable of evolution as long as they are not totally convinced of their own perfection at any given moment. It is quite possible to have everyone follow a law while simultaneously supporting changing it.
Do you have any such examples?
>Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress.
No, they rely on leadership to progress.
>There's no way to create a critical mass of resistance and disobedience that will lead to the toppling of an unfair law
Encouraging the breaking of laws is not good. Changing laws does not require them to be broken. Allowing for a critical mass of criminals to be created is a bug and not a feature.
>if you enforce the law perfectly and universally, and this will lead society to ossify.
Even if true, that is not neccessarily a bad thing. I find unequal enforcement of the law to be a bigger issue and it allows for vague laws to exist which are selectively applied. If things were perfect much more thought would need to be put into the design of laws.
>We'd still be stuck in the mindset of a century ago.
I'd prefer living in a society like that with strong morals that doesn't cave in and make compromises.
>A society that has removed its own ability to progress is truly a horrifying prospect
As I mentioned above progress can still happen via leadership. Leadership can take in information and make decisions in the way society should be led. Cutting off the information of how much crime is happening doesn't seem like it will make it impossible to make new decisions. There are more data sources that can be used.