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Comment by munchler | Hacker News Reader

I would suggest the US is slightly better. At least we don’t have an unenforceable law that offers the illusion of privacy protections.

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There’s an implicit assumption in this snark that the only purpose of a law is to create legal consequences (a subclass of error that’s very common on this forum, some type of “literalism”).

This is IMO a bit shortsighted: laws impact culture, laws represent ideals worth striving for, and in a democracy, laws help define the type of society in which the people would like to live.

A law’s utility is not limited to its ability to be enforced. In fact, in a democracy, when a law is not enforced, it is a strong signal that the will of the people is not being carried out by those charged with enforcement. See: the current USDOJ.

"Will of the people" aside, the law is indeed a teacher. It sets a norm and an expectation even when not enforced.

Except when “not enforced” becomes the norm and the expectation.

But you would agree that, despite the DEA not raiding dispensaries in legal states, the fact that marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug still has some meaning? It’s almost retained as a pretense to keep certain prisoners behind bars despite the rest of society kind of moving on from the Reagan-era propaganda. So even though non-enforcement is the norm and expectation, the law still has an impact on society.

The purposes and effects of laws are complicated. This thread started because someone blithely claimed that the US is in a better situation because they have no laws concerning privacy because GPDR is difficult to enforce. I’m pushing back against that (as a US citizen) because it’s a damaging and myopic viewpoint that may or may not be based in American exceptionalism or techbro cynicism or something else entirely.

That's not the norm or an expectation in question, though. People get away with breaking laws all the time. It's very common. But the fact that something is illegal by itself exerts a psychological effect that sets an expectation and modulates the Overton window of the perceived norm. Such laws also enable enforcement. It is untrue that unless a law is perfectly enforced, it is useless or bad.

how is having NO law better? I'd say 12 out of 20, is better than zero.

I think you mean 8 out of 20. Fewer than half.

When enforcement is this shoddy, it’s easy to create corruption through selective enforcement.

“We don’t have the resources to go after everyone, so we must prioritize” - but it turns out there’s a bias to the selection process…

I believe that justice is only true when we are all treated equally under the law.

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