I'll tell you, I hate the idea of half-measures like laws that don't get enforced. (I'm not talking about hundreds-of-years-old archaic laws that are ignored by everyone, I mean real current laws that have some implications. )<p>Why? Because good law-abiding people -- we want people like that, right? -- follow them with inconvenience and cost to themselves, while the people who don't care just go on with the undesired activity the law is aimed at. Think about when you have had to pay extra or buy something, or do something where you found out no one was actually following up on it.<p>This creates a lot of frustration among the law-abiding. If you can't see that and understand why that's a problem, you need to seriously think about it -- if you're of the opinion "what harm can it do?" or kind of "go with the flow" about it. Just try taking an example from what you would feel at work if this kind of thing allowed to happen. You would not be pleased.<p>I have to say, that is in no small measure a certain part of why people are unhappy right now in public discourse. It seems like everyone is picking and choosing the laws they feel like following. And the law-abiding on every side are asking, "why are we suckers for wanting laws to be enforced"? Pick the issue and you'll find examples of it. Maybe we should retreat a little from our self-confidence and think "maybe I should follow rules even if I don't agree with them" -- inject a little of this approach for everyone's benefit until we figure out what's wrong with us lately.
It’s to solidify a certain position before someone can. Suppose a state or states have a law that is consumer friendly and has teeth behind it through private right of action and penalties. Businesses don’t like that so they lobby US senators and Reps to pass a law that preempts those state laws it has no enforcement or penalties. Even better, the new law will, on the surface, appear to “take the issue seriously.” But how can it if it has no penalty? This can happen on the state level too—a good example is the Michigan VRPA which sought to limit data sharing through penalty. It started to work, so state legislature took away the penalties. Oh well.
There might be no penalty for breaking a regulation but if you do that and cause harm, then you are at fault, which obviously has legal consequences.<p>I think a large part of the road code is like that in many places.
This might be a very naive take, but perhaps you need to spell out what people are supposed to do, so they can do it? "Murder bad" is obvious, but there's a ton of much subtler regulations that might not be obvious or intuitive unless they're explicitly written down.
Because if you put important people in office, public servants cannot earn $5MM a year, or more, when they return to private practice.<p>google: Eric Holder