by armchairhacker | 2025-11-17 00:46:09+00:00
DUI laws are examples of OK laws: uncontroversial, concrete (BAC above X level), and easy to enforce. I specifically say that laws in that category are OK.

Bad laws are:

- Controversial. For example, prohibition. Such laws also tend to be hard-to-enforce and “immoral”, but even with effective enforcement and moral justification, they’re bad because they decrease societal QOL and cooperation.

- Vague. For example, a law that allows a cop to search your vehicle if they “smell drugs”. Since in theory cops aren’t allowed to arbitrarily search people’s vehicles, and this seems to be something most people believe; except “smell drugs” is entirely subjective, so bad cops use it as an excuse to arbitrarily search people’s vehicles anyways. Likewise, it may not be common, but a cop can choose to ignore a vehicle that obviously contains drugs, by claiming they can’t smell anything. If there was a specific criteria like “X ratio of drug particles in the air…well, technically cops aren’t required to enforce laws, but at least it would be easier for bystanders to prove they deliberately weren’t enforcing that one (vs the current law, the cop can argue and may actually have a weak sense of smell).

- Hard to enforce. Specifically when the cost of enforcement surpasses the benefit from the law existing (by definition).

These are the laws that are most affected by loopholes.

- People purposefully ignore loopholes to controversial laws that break said laws in spirit, if not outright (“loopholes” not in a law’s text but in its enforcement).

- Judges side towards innocence, so borderline (in theory) violations of vague laws are (in practice) effectively allowed. Even non-borderline violations require more evidence to convict. Also, while all laws are selectively enforced, vague laws tend to be moreso, because proving selective enforcement is itself proving something vague. “Borderline violations” are loopholes, “selective enforcement” is sometimes loopholes (the loopholes are the parts that aren’t enforced).

- Laws that are already hard to enforce, enforcers don’t have the effort or ability to target loopholes. Some laws are hard to enforce mainly if not entirely because of certain loopholes.

Also, my argument (and analogy to the article) isn’t just that some laws are bad, but that laws aren’t enough to prevent crime. Because some crimes are accepted by large parts of society, some can only be defined vaguely, and some are impossible to enforce (without severe downsides, like an authoritarian police state, if not literally impossible). Another way to mitigate crime is through norms; teaching people not to do things, by explaining why and/or just telling them, without formal enforcement. That’s analogous to convincing students not to play video games in class by their own volition, instead of only blocking video games, because not all “games” can be blocked.

That corrupt/bad people ignore laws doesn’t make every law pointless, but it means the rule of law isn’t enough to stop corrupt/bad people. And good-intentioned people who rely on the rule of law too much create laws which, still aren’t all pointless, but cause more harm than good.