&#62; I'm not sure that's the case - the examples I gave indicate that when you force employees to abide by bad rules, they just start acting badly.<p>If there is a strong asymmetry between law makers and people who must respect the law (such as in case of employers and employees) people will obey because they have no choice. But even then they will vote with their legs leaving environment that is governed by stupid laws. In case of state and citizens in democracy there is no such strong asymmetry because government must maintain appearance that it works for the people.<p>&#62; it's quite possible that the reason the laws are broken is because they can't take every situation into account, not because their authors were stupid.<p>Same thing with computer programs or any complex system but it should not stop us from striving for improvement and inventing tools that may make such improvement possible.<p>I think that surveillance is one such tool that allows to monitor how much harm enforcing given law can cause and may lead to fixing the law.