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.
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.
lo_zamoyski|24 days ago
datsci_est_2015|25 days ago
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.