Keep in mind also, even those people who support legalization (myself) do not necessarily believe that that means that existing laws should be ignored and unenforced. This creates a situation where police and politicians can choose, based on whatever subjective factors they want, who to prosecute. This leads to anarchy.
There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, it's kind of hard to know where to start:
1. Take 'Going against legal X yields more illegal X': This is a meaningless statement. For example, going against legal murder yields more illegal murder. It is a non-statement, tautological.
2. Take a revised and more debatable statement: 'Going against legal X yields more X' (much rarer, but possible, for example cocaine proliferation brought about by prohibiting less damaging drugs). This deserves careful consideration. Do our laws assume from the outset the required enforcement to enable their utility? In some ways yes, in other ways no (for example, our laws shouldn't need to take into account politically motivated lack of enforcement).
3. Even if we say that a particular law leads to _more_ of the exact averse outcome and the legislature should have known the challenges of enforcement - illegal drugs being a good example of this, or illegal immigration, it _still_ doesn't follow in all cases that the answer is to decriminalize. A debate must be had, for sure - and some change is required, but that change may be subtle, enabling better enforcement for example.
However, your above logic as it stands is essentially an argument for anarchism, though I'm not sure you intended it that way.
But whose right is it to decide when someone is exempt from the law?
If people disagree with the law, they should campaign for it to be changed. (And indeed, a change is in the works in Missouri, apparently. But as of now, possession of marijuana is illegal.)
A society where people feel they can pick and choose which laws to respect and which to ignore is a worrying proposition, IMO. The law as a whole may be far from perfect, but it's better than anarchy.
We supposedly live in a democracy, but the ability to affect what laws exist is not distributed equally. Sometimes there are two groups with opposing views of what the law should be, and the smaller group loses out. Oftentimes those people gather together in a place and have the local law enforcement disregard the law in their area. For example, pot is legal in Colorado even though it's illegal in the United States as a whole. Similarly, the residents of this neighborhood don't want the noise ordinance to be enforced, and they have been just fine with the way things have been going for decades. The newcomers can certainly appeal to the city that the law is being broken, but in doing so they are exercising political power to undermine the will of their neighbors, who spent time and energy to build a community they would be happy to live in. Having the law on their side doesn't make it a nice thing to do.
That makes sense, but surely trying to keep to an unenforceable law that clearly is being flouted (eg. pot) everywhere undermines the legal system even more.
Well, ideally laws that don't make sense to enforce (e.g. drug laws) wouldn't even exist in the first place. Failing that, not enforcing them would be the next sensible step.
It isn't so simple when the voting public wants to see laws enforced. A lot of people consider it a betrayal of public trust to selectively enforce laws, or to outright ignore them.
A lot of Americans are hoping that the next federal government will crack down on states flouting federal laws regarding marijuana, for example. (No, prostitution isn't a federal crime. I know that. It's an example.)
Saying all of these things are wrong is indeed consistent, but I don't think many people would agree that it's a good idea to have no way to enforce laws.
Unenforced laws are not good. They can choose to enforce it at will, when needed. Imagine a cop wanting something not entirely moral from a drug addict: you either comply, or else...
There are lots of examples, some kinda funny "that would never happen in western civilization":
Actually, I believe there is precedent for laws being struck down for pretty much exactly this reason. I think prohibition and the newly changing attitude against marijuana and the laws surrounding it are examples of this.
If the majority populace is committing illegal acts it's often because they believe the act should not be illegal. I believe that many/most laws exist for the exact opposite reason. Murder is illegal because most people believe it's wrong. So we created a law saying so.
My main problem with the current laws is that they could only be enforced effectively by extremely draconian measures. Same as my problem with the drug laws, really. Unenforceable laws just breed disrespect for the rule of law.
As someone with a civics background once explained to me, what you don't want are laws that inspire contempt. Contempt for one law tends to blur into contempt for The Law, and then you've got anarchy.
If you want an action to be made legal, you legalize it. Don’t blame the enforcement of the law. It makes for great virtue signaling but is useless for bringing long-term change and it doesn’t help provide a stable environment for people illegally in the country.
I tend to agree, but many people get so riled up on the topic that they forget that just because something is legal doesn't mean it's good and just because something is bad doesn't mean it should be illegal.
The legal system shouldn't be the single tool humans use to decide how to act. It should be a very High bar to prevent the most egregious and destructive Acts, not a tool for achieving optimal human behavior
So laws are only worth having if everyone already agrees that the things they prohibit are very bad and they can't really change anything about what behavior people engage in? I think we have a lot of counterexamples, from litter to drunk driving to accessibility to discrimination. In my experience, appeals to laws being unenforceable are often made by people who just oppose the laws in the first place.
I think a problem with that mentality is that it's antidemocratic. Basically you're saying that potentially the only laws you'll recognize are those with which you agree.
If other citizens were to also adopt that policy, we'd literally have anarchy.
First, I didn't say you support every law. I am talking about every law that you do in fact support.
Second, by support I don't mean voting or authoring or anything like that. I just mean if you are not an anarchist then you believe there should be some laws.
Third, I think you know what I mean. I am not talking about any specific law, but laws in general. If you are not an anarchist then you likely support having a law against murder and rape. Both of those laws are about forcing your views onto others. This is not about any specific implementation of murder laws, but a murder law in general. Every murder law is about forcing your view that murder is bad onto others.
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