A Nation of Law-Breakers: The Unseen Strategy of Inflated Legislation
How Governments Can Use Excessive Laws to Control Citizens
Note : This article is the 6th in a series on over-legislating a a path that more and more nation-states are taking in an attempt to emasculate the disruptions that threaten them.
Here is the first 6 articles in the series :
"Did you really think we want those laws observed? […] We want them to be broken. […] There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. "
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"Show me the person, and I'll show you the crime".
Lavrentiy Beria, head of the political police under Stalin
One of the problems with this inflation of laws and regulations is that it's impossible for anyone, including professionals in the trade, to keep up with all the legal developments, which, as Ayn Rand pointed out, makes everyone a potential criminal, who will be judged innocent or guilty not just because of what they've done, but also depending on whether or not they're targeted by the authorities.
In theory, not only are laws and regulations the same for everyone, but they must be applied blindly, i.e. without any desire to use them to punish individuals and institutions for unrelated acts.
That's the theory. In practice, unfortunately, things don't always work out that way, even in democratic countries, as a few examples will show:
McCarthyism: A period of intense anti-communist campaigning in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy without solid evidence, resulting in a veritable "witch hunt1 ". Initiated to settle personal scores and intimidate, this episode shows how the powers of the state can be used to create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion, and how this can have a destructive effect on the lives of innocent individuals.
The GDPR: an example of complex regulation that we've already discussed at length, and whose application by underfunded agencies leaves many VSEs and SMEs out in the cold, except in the case of disgruntled political figures or media scandals. This underlines the potential instrumentalization of laws for specific interests.
Political attacks: The example of the Biden administration's harassment of Elon Musk2 , notably via astonishing government investigations, is evidence of the use of regulatory controls as a political weapon, here probably triggered by Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
Tax audits as a weapon of discrimination or censorship:
English-speaking countries: several of them imposed per capita taxes specifically targeting certain populations based on race, ethnicity or ancestry in the first half of the xxe century3 .
Nazi Germany: "In Nazi Germany, Jews were subjected to far greater tax discrimination, in addition to all their other persecutions. The catalog of measures put in place is mind-boggling: emigration tax representing a quarter of wealth, prohibitive taxation of any transfer of goods or money abroad, higher taxation of all Jewish property from 1938 onwards, iniquitous tax controls enabling Jewish entrepreneurs to be robbed and their businesses "aryanized", spoliation of Jewish families deported or executed... To all this is added the difficulty for survivors to regain their rights and obtain compensation in the post-war period4! "
India: The instrumentalization of tax authorities against critics of the Modi government, illustrated by the raid on the BBC after the broadcast of a critical documentary5 .
United States: The attempt to politicize the IRS under Nixon to attack its political enemies6 and the 2013 IRS targeting scandal against conservative groups7 , demonstrating the vulnerability of tax agencies to political exploitation.
Finally, we all know that the principle that the law applies in the same way to everyone is false, and that it largely depends on your behavior, whether it triggers a control or not.
Remember this: the more laws and regulations there are, the easier it is to misuse them.
For this reason alone, we should keep the number of laws and regulations to a minimum, and prevent their galloping inflation.
This will preserve a pillar of the spirit and essence of effective democracies.
Coming soon
We'll now look at another example of state abuse of laws: a double standard in their application, when they don't even respect the very laws they've put in place.
Stay tuned ! In the meantime, feel free to follow Disruptive Horizons on Twitter and Linkedin, and join the tribe of Intelligent Rebels by subscribing to the newsletter :
And here are the first 6 articles of this series :
Arthur Miller, "Why I Wrote 'The Crucible'", The New Yorker, 1996
"The Harassment of Elon Musk", The Washington Post, 2023
Jeremy Bearer-Friend, "Race-Based Tax Weapons," Washington University Law School, 2023
Histoire mondiale des impôts, op. cit.
Astha Rajvanshi, "How the Indian Government Uses Raids to Silence Critics", The Times, 2023
Joseph Thorndike, "Timelines In Tax History: Nixon Aide Tried To Weaponize The IRS By Pressuring The Commissioner," Forbes, 2023