> This is not necessarily a good thing and laws can change without requiring them to be broken.
That's kind of the problem, right? Suppose you have a system that actually allows perfect enforcement and then the government passes a law against some religious practice. Espousing atheism is banned, or Islam, or Christianity, depending on who controls the government this time; take your pick. If anybody who does it is instantly brought up on charges with severe penalties then nobody does it. But that's bad. That's the problem. You need to sustain enough friction to prevent things like that from being possible because enforcing laws like that is worse than anything that could come out of making ordinary law enforcement require more resources.
>If anybody who does it is instantly brought up on charges with severe penalties then nobody does it. But that's bad.
I don't think it's bad. Similar to closed and open source software there is room for closed and open societies. They are different approaches that have different pros and cons.
Okay, let's go with your approach. Then the closed society is China or Iran and the open society is the US and other western countries, right? In which case we shouldn't have any such thing in the open countries.
>China or Iran and the open society is the US and other western countries, right?
Sure, but of course it isn't black and white.
>In which case we shouldn't have any such thing in the open countries.
I still think being able to effectively apply the will of We the People would be good to do. Being afraid that the people will be able to want for something you don't like to happen is disrespectful to the will of the people.