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 And the real key to this was making the laws subjective. It wasn’t that they outlawed everything. The laws looked very reasonable to most people like today but they were complex and subjective enough that you could ensure everyone could be considered a criminal if you needed them to be one. This enabled lawfare, which is alive and well today 
 All positive law (i.e. legislation) is subjective. It is imposed from above and administered by State employees who happen to work for a different department than the legislators. 
 This occurs with plainly worded laws too unfortunately. You can have the top judges in the US sitting on the federal Supreme Court, who you would hope are equipped with some of the best legal skills and knowledge (lol), and they come to opposite interpretations on matters like firearm rights/the 2nd Amendment. The fight becomes about types of clauses, the intent of the drafters, history, and how technology has changed.

Code and math (cryptography) is the law that works, IMO. Remove the human intepretation and enforceability from the equation and there is less corruption.