I think this is a very dangerous line to walk. A common phrase in law is "the law often allows what honor forbids" and that is because there is a difference between the law and ethics and IMO that is a good thing.
Is it ethical to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar and leave none for anyone else? No. Should it be illegal? No.
I feel confused because I didn't think I was saying that we should get rid of ethics by codifying everything into law. I thought my main point was that sometimes when people continue to break those unwritten rules, we will decide to write down those rules and enforce more strict consequences—not saying we should always do that.
I actually would prefer if we had fewer written laws and relied more on unwritten rules of interacting with each other. And when someone breaks those unwritten rules, we would apologize and forgive and work together to resolve the conflict and rebuild trust in each other, instead of pushing to punish people in a retributive system of justice.
Specifically on the topic of cookies - it honestly is "forbidden" in a lot of households to eat all the cookies in the jar. At work you'll probably face some consequences if there's a communal cookie jar (or, the more common scenario, drinking all the half-n-half and not getting more). We don't really have "public" cookie jars so this scenario is pretty contrived, but if there was one (i.e. if NYC installed a big cookie jar in Time Square for Halloween) then it probably would actually be illegal (or at least, against a city ordinance) to eat more than X cookies. But, like I said, it's pretty contrived feeling.
Your parents can punish you for eating all the cookies but the government will not sanction you nor them for doing so (even if a hypothetical and tyrannical government in theory could; maybe let’s not theorycraft absurd ordinances).
I suppose that's the truth of the matter - it actually might be illegal to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar (assuming you're not given express permission to do so) it's just that nobody cares because of the scale of the action. It's also usually a domestic affair - but just because you live in the same house as someone else you don't have a right to all their things (it's just that usually all the people are in a family and then property laws get a bit weird).
If your roomate in college had some super rare cookies valued at $10k and you ate all of them then they'd definitely be able to take you to court. It's just that nobody cares if an oreo goes missing.
Where it gets contrived is when you start talking about hypothetical socialist cookie jars policed by tyrannical municipal governments or collector’s cookies. You steal $10K worth of cookie products off the shelf, that’s robbery. You take a single pack of cookies off the shelf: that’s petty theft, and if you eat all the cookies your mom or roommate made and leave none for anyone else, then you’re just an asshole. Strangely enough the law is quite capable of making distinctions.
What the law is not capable of doing though is giving people without a moral compass a moral compass, or aligning differing moral compasses from different cultures. For all the nuances the law can make, it’s still just a sledgehammer in the face of human behavior and social custom is how we self-govern ourselves the vast majority of the time without involving sheriffs and courts and legislators. Every time the law takes something governed by social convention and puts it into the hands of the courts, private society loses a little part of itself to the people with the bigger guns for good or for ill.
Justice is a messy concept because is rooted in specific circumstances, and it’s absurd to think there’s a clear line between what’s unethical and what’s illegal.
FB are involved in unethical practices that whilst not illegal at present are much more consequential than your example.
There are obvious questions here to ask that may lead to new laws being made and perhaps even retrospectively enforced.
Social engineering for profit is a little more serious than who ate the cookies surely?
I had the impression that it was how the story ended when we talked about cookies, but maybe I didn't get the memo.
Regulating Facebook is a great example. Congress could easily react to facebook’s indiscretions by passing new laws here which stifle innovation.
But the same principle applies to me and my friends eating cookies. Each of us is incentivized to eat as many as we can - because its a limited resource and they're delicious. But in this case we use social, not legal consequences to punish defectors. If my friends see me eat all the cookies, they will be angry with me. This is a strong enough system to keep us honest.
But imagine if we adding a law here, making it a crime to eat all the cookies. Would that improve our behaviour? No. We might not want to share cookies at all if its possible one of us could go to jail for it.
I think laws are often appropriate. But laws are a blunt instrument. They can't be our only tool to protect the commons.
The issue with over-codification is one of the complexity in the laws that result - not that a large number of prohibitions is actually damaging to society. If too many laws exist then enforcement becomes intractable, arbitrary and unjust - but if enforcement could be sanely and fairly dealt out then there are lots of things that we'd appreciate being laws - i.e. sniping someone's parking spot while they're pulling in: it's a dangerous action that encourages people to park faster than they're comfortable and generally makes people act like assholes... but is it worth paying someone 50k/year to prevent sniping parking spots? Nope.
I'm hearing a hypothesis - that if enforcement was cheap and easy, we could make a better legal system (and a better society) by regulating far more human interaction. Presumably we'd have AI systems monitoring everyone at all times, and issuing automatic fines if you snipe someone's parking spot.
"Citizen #421 you have been found guilty by AI of the crimes of eating the last cookie, and failing to call your mother while overseas. Please proceed immediately to the nearest reeducation facility for behavior correction"
I agree that there is often marginal (and proximate) benefit in having more laws. I'm in favor of FB being regulated somehow. But my point is that more laws - even when restricting antisocial behaviour - can still create a worse society. The reason is not just because enforcement is arbitrary.
Another example of this is the controversial Canadian bill C16, which sought to make it essentially illegal to misgender someone. Critics of the bill argued that despite everyone agreeing that its extremely disrespectful to misgender someone, it still shouldn't be illegal. This is a subtle argument, but its an important one if we want our societies to stay free and healthy.
They allow the hosting of a lot of egregious criminal activity, including maintaining uncountable numbers of what the law would define as notorious marketplaces for criminal activity. The trouble is lack of enforcement. You cannot fix a lack of enforcement with new laws that will just go unenforced.
(arguably eating cookies that aren't yours is a crime, and I don't doubt that someone has in the past been arrested for it in ridiculous circumstances)