AmitU's Zeroth Law about Legislations
There are some laws whose only effect is to make critizens criminals.
Consider speed limit rule on Bandra Worli Sealink in Mumbai. The speed limit if 50KMph. It is atrociously low. It is violated by 99% of the people who take the sea link. The law provides no safety, as well its not followed, but also the speed limit on expressways in India is typically 80kmph, and the sealink is no worse than express way, be in terms of purpose, or be in terms of quality or width of the road. The limit of 50kmph is simply absurd, and is there only because of the technicality that the speed limit in any city road is 50kmph, which itself is absurd to begin with.
The speed limit is up for updation since quite some time, there was a planned amendment to bring the speed limit up to 100kmph, but its pending since 2007.
Take the case of ceiling on election spending. EVERY single MP or MLA is violating that law. It has been called to update, its so thoroughly out of the date.
There are numerous such laws. And they are there to make honest people criminals. They allow corrupt police men to then exploit the newly made criminals. And they offer absolutely no benefit to the masses. They are just plain rot.
My point here is not to highlight one or two such laws, but the highlight the absurdity of such laws. The law books are filled by laws that nobody looks at. The law that only serves one purpose: make people criminals. Such laws must be abolished.
As per the zeroth law, any law which is violated (not want to be violated, eg tax evasion) by 90% of people who potentially fall in purview of the law, should become void by default.
If 90% of people are violating a law, the state has no right to persecute a few. If the law is important for the state, then state must persecute everyone violating it.
Why?
In order to further understand the motivation behind this please read this brilliant article about What Strengthens and Weakens Our Integrity -- Part I: Why Small Choices Count. The key idea of which is:
Once you commit one dishonest act, your moral standards loosen, your self-perception as an honest person gets a little hazier, your ability to rationalize goes up, and your fudge factor margin increases. Where you draw the line between ethical and unethical, honest and dishonest, moves outward. From his research, Ariely has found that committing a dishonest act in one area of your life not only leads to more dishonesty in that one area, but ends up corrupting other areas of your life as well. "A single act of dishonesty," he argues, "can change a person's behavior from that point onward."
A simple traffic rule, forces a person to decide for himself if they are going to be honest or not, and a mindless rule will force more and more people to break the rule, and skew their moral compass and make it more likely for them to break more rules (or feel bad about themselves).