There are certain people who are firmly on the side of the need for ever more law and order. The question to ask, though, is how many of these people are people who are struggling, or oppressed, or disadvantaged, or ill-educated, and thus treated as second-class citizens, at best? The bottom line is that those who declaim the loudest that we need ever more laws and ever more order are the very same who have something of real worth in their lives, whether that is their home, their person, their savings, or their good place in the hierarchy of society. These are the very same that want laws that, for all practical purposes, protect them and are of use against those that they fear or that annoy them.
While it could be said that there are also people that have fairly modest lives that also believe that we need more law and order, but we find though that these people come typically from a different perspective, which is that they are fearful within their own community that some of those that are its congregants are bad people that are causing trouble to the community, and reflect poorly upon that community, and what they want is more peace and quiet, so that they can live fairly decent lives. At the same time, what they are not asking for is some sort of quasi police occupation that puts the hammer down upon those people without really ascertaining where the problems actually lie, and of which that policing arm apparently doesn’t seem to care who they wrongly affect or harm unduly in their actions.
So too, those who cry the loudest for more law are the very same who want that law selectively applied. That is to say, should they or their children do something that clearly is unlawful, they want to be treated with kid gloves, because at their heart, their perception is that they are good people, that may have made a mistake but it is the type of mistake that can be dealt with as a family matter that does not need the long arm of the law to apply itself; and when it does, to take into full consideration that because they are successful taxpaying citizens that they should be treated differently and ultimately should be free to be about their business with just a warning and nothing much more.
So then, the real reason why there are so many laws, of which the general population is never fully informed or knowledgeable about all of these laws, is never about justice or doing the right thing by the people, but is in fact a structure created to arrest just about anyone at just about any time under just about any circumstances in which some portion of some law can be applied. In other words, the law as implemented by the policing arm of the state, is the tool of the powerful and connected, structured to keep those that need to be put in their place, in their place, and is never meant to be used against those of that privileged milieu that effectively runs the show, unless it becomes necessary as an example to put them in their place, as not only as a bone to the people, in general, but to sell the illusion that the law is equally applied to all, and no respecter of persons, even though it clearly is not.