How do you figure? Its a pattern of human and governmental behavior that can be observed over the entire period of recorded history.

When you create enough rules, especially in a vague enough manner as to where you can conceivably apply a supposed infraction against practically anyone.. this is a problem. It becomes more of a problem when the enforcers have little or no oversight, and again an even larger problem when the over-sightless enforcers are rewarded for finding application of rules... and again an even bigger problem when those whom the rules were designed to inhibit become politically protected.

So we have a situation where the people who should be being pursued by the authorities aren't, and the authorities instead focus on finding ways to prey on the innocent to justify themselves and their budgets.

Or in the case of more minor regulations as opposed to felonies such as in the other thread- have people dedicate their resources to checking off the regulatory boxes because it is more cost effective to operate in that fashion, than it is to truly address the problems the regulations were intended to address.

Consider it the flip-side of enabling tort action via unmet regulation. You pointed out that non-complient actors can thereby open themselves to lawsuits , which is correct and you correctly point out that in many cases this can be a good thing.

However on the flip side, when you have large amounts of ineffective or unnecessary rules/regulations people still have to play CYA and spend resources getting those boxes checked which can result having fewer or no resources or incentive to properly address real problems.

The question of how to properly structure complex legal protections is not an easy one. But one thing that is apparent, is that when you reach a certain number of rules per issue.. perhaps a term "Regulatory Density" would be better... once that density is reached, I think you see negative returns. And I think this concept applies across all industries and facets of society, though the ideal Regulatory Density of certain areas like Health Care and Commercial Flight might be different than say that of package transportation or machine assembly.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)