Too many laws ossify culture

Disapproval of values or practices is not a valid reason for banning them.
They are valid reasons for applying political pressure to curb what you light consider as unhealthy excesses.
For instance, social pressure from the community applied to media companies trying to get them to "self-regulate" or "self-censor"is a perfectly healthy dynamic.

These "intuitive" assessments of "the right thing to do" (and what happens culturally if I don't !) are far better methods of social control than through ossifying our culture with more and more laws.

Legal codes do provide some protection when brokering within cultures that have very high levels of diversity (or very low levels of tolerance) but, their complexity and the impossibility of defining all possible present and future circumstances make them increasingly oppressive, inefficient and ultimately counterproductive.

There are so many laws in Australia that literally no-one knows them all. To understand even one of them often requires professional assistance (e.g. paying your tax, seeking government benefit, starting a business etc).

Most people come to accept that daily life requires action that may or may not be legal and maximising life opportunities will often require disregard for one or more laws.

The more we rely on law alone, we strangle ourselves with complexity and encourage the amorality of merely obeying the law.

To remain healthy a society needs to continually maintain social consensus over "the right thing" to do.

Stephen Digby

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