The problem with precise law enforcement is that the legal system is incredibly complex. There's a tagline that ‘everybody's a criminal’; I don't know if that's necessarily true but I do definitely believe that a large number of ‘innocent’ people are criminals (by the letter of the law) without their knowledge. Because we usually only bother to prosecute crimes if some obvious harm has been done this doesn't cause a lot of damage in practice (though it can be abused), but if you start enforcing the letter of every law precisely it suddenly becomes the obligation of every citizen to know every law — in a de facto way, rather than just the de jure way we currently have as a consequence of ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’. So an increase of precision in law enforcement must be preceded by a drastic simplification of the law itself — not a bad thing by any means, but also not an easy (or, perhaps, possible) task.

One issue is that imperfect enforcement is often how the momentum to change the law is created.

If the police had been able to swoop in and arrest the "perpetrators" every time two men kissed, homosexuality would have never been legalized; If they had been able to arrest anyone who made alcohol, prohibition wouldn't have ended; if they had been able to arrest anyone with a cannabis seedling, we wouldn't have cannabis legalization.

I don’t know, law enforcement in the US is already heavy handed in terms of enforcement. Not that it’s done equally, which is your intention, but it’s that the enforcer already thinks they are overly powerful and already commonly oversteps and abuse their power. This pushes further into a police state.

Maybe my YouTube algorithm just shows me a lot of it, but there’s no shortage of cops out there violating people’s rights because they think when they ask for something we have to comply and see anything else as defiant.

I think we need perhaps less laws so people can actually know them all. Also, I think we need clarity as to what they are and it needs to be simple English, dummy’s guide to law type thing. But there’s a lot of issues that simply stem from things like 1) when can a cop ask for your ID? / when do you have the right to say no? 2) similar question as to when do they have a right to enter/trespass onto your property? 3) as every encounter usually involves them asking you questions, even a simple traffic stop, when and how can you refuse to talk to them or even roll down your window or open your car door without them getting offended and refusing to take no as an answer?

I don’t think we generally have any understanding of what our rights actually are in these most likely and most common interactions with law enforcement. However, it’s all cases where I see law enforcement themselves have a poor understanding of what the law and rights are themselves so how are citizens to really know. If they tell you it’s their policy to ID anyone they want without any sort of probable cause then they say you’re obstructing their investigation for not complying or answering their questions or asserting you have to listen to anything they say because it’s a lawful order; it’s just common ways they get people to do what they want, it’s often completely within your right to not comply with a lot of these things though.

Imperfect enforcement is a feature as often as it is a bug. You can't make "antisocial behavior" in general illegal but you can make certain behaviors (loitering, public intoxication) illegal and selectively enforce against only those who are behaving in an antisocial manner. Of course the other edge of this sword is using this discretion to blanket discriminate against racial or class groups.

Speeding is brought up as an example that most replies refer to, but it really is not limited to that. How about jaywalking? Using the road on a bicycle when there's a bike lane available of varying quality? Or taking a piss in the bushes after a drunken night out? Downloading a 60 year old movie? Besides, perfect enforcement does not work with vague laws. It's not a world I would like to live in, where there is no room for error.

To add some context -

> Imperfect enforcement is too easy for law enforcement officers to turn into selective enforcement. By choosing who to go after, law enforcement gets the unearned power

This is by design, in an American context of building a free society. By default, you are allowed to do whatever you like to do in a free society. To constrain behavior through law, first a legislator must decide that it should be constrained, then they must convince their legislator peers that it should be constrained, then law enforcement must be convinced to attempt to constrain it de-facto, then a judge must be convinced that you in particular should have a court case proceed against you; a grand jury must be convinced to bring an indictment, a jury of 12 peers must be convinced to reach a verdict, and even afterwards there are courts of appeal.

The bar to constrain someone's freedom is quite high. By design and by wider culture.

The existing laws are rarely well specified enough for precise enforcement, often on purpose.

You cannot have precise enforcement with imprecise laws. It’s as simple as that.

The HN favorite in this respect is “fair use” under copyright. It isn’t well specified enough for “precise enforcement”. How do you suggest we approach that one?

There can also be an argument that laws are always only an approximation, and they should be broken in corner cases where they clearly don't work as intended.

Civil disobedience can also be a useful societal force, and with perfect law enforcement it becomes impossible.

Enforcement stops completely at around US$1-billion.

The far left and neoliberals are united on this. Whether it's by malice, self interest or incompetence (or a combination), they end up discriminating against the lower classes.

Neoliberals and the far left, when forced to work in the real world, both tend to prefer putting power into rules, not giving people in authority the power to make decisions.

The upside is there's less misuse of power by authorities, at least in theory. The bad news is, you now need far more detailed rules to allow for the exceptions, common sense, and nuance that are no longer up to authorities.

The worse news is, that the people who benefit from complex rules are the upper classes, and the authorities who know how to manipulate complex rules.

"Don't be evil" requires a leader with the authority to enforce it.

A 500 employee manual will be selectively implemented, and will end up full of exploits, but hey, at least you can pretend you tried to remove human error from the process.