Your focus on the “law” in such matters in amusing.
I have a true story for you.
A good friend of mine worked for the IRS for many years. He a very sharp accounting type and his boss let him pick clients to audit because of his amazing collection rate.
Then my friend decided to really “go for it”.
He showed up at town and city halls and pulled out all the building permits for the previous year. On the building permits were the trades for the work done, the name and address of the contractor, and the estimated amounts for the cost.
He then sorted the data by contractor and compared the dollars to the contractor’s tax return for that year.
What he found, of course, is that the majority of most contractor’s work was not reported to the IRS. He then started auditing a bunch of them—and he was nailing them to the wall.
It was a total slaughter.
It took a few months, but finally the contractors contacted their local trade association who in turn contacted their lobbyists in DC.
A few months later my friend was called into his bosses office.
He was told to stop auditing all contractors immediately.
He was also demoted and removed to a function where he couldn’t cause any trouble.
Eventually he quit in disgust.
We live in a kleptocracy—the laws only apply to those who don’t have the clout to ignore them.
I think all large government entities tend to kleptocracy. I’ve been reading about the early philosophers, the Stoics, and their battles back then were against the Greek and Roman systems that acted in the same way politicians and bureaucrats do today. Give free stuff to the masses and steal as much as you can for your friends and yourselves.
Amazing story.
Can you say about how long ago that was?
It's like that everywhere. Having a king is cheaper because there's only one thief to worry about. If you like your king, you're set for life. If you don't, you just have to move once.