I hate this sort of thinking. You are making the implicit assumption that everything about our social environment happens simply on 1 variable: heavy-handed enforcement.

When I put it like this, I hope you can see that it doesn't work like that. There are hundreds of variables you could change that would affect everything. We can prevent Congress storming (it was, btw, Congress, not the White House, that got stormed) without moving even 1 micrometer in the direction of reeducation camps.

I’m not sure. About half a year ago I’ve put a perfectly good sign, kindly asking to let the grass recover on my front yard. The grass was getting a bit too much of dog urine, from the dog owners trespassing onto my property to urinate their dogs and poop there.

You’d think that the kind neighbors could read and pause for a bit. But no. They care about their pets. And happily let them go, resulting in the damage to landscaping and the bills to clear contaminated ground and replace the grass.

I’m guessing these are the same people who wouldn’t wear a mask and spread their disease somehow, during the pandemic.

I initially read the comment you are responding to differently, in that I saw the ‘observer’ in the statement as not the state but the community, on re-reading I’m not sure that makes sense. All the same, reading HN politics, it often seems that a spectrum is presented that spans from freedom to state oppression. There are democracies where the public will not accept the state using power for its own benefit, but is comfortable with the state enforcing the social contract, because there is a stronger sense that this is defined democratically. This may be simply a matter of population size, the state in a nation of 20 million is a different beast to a state of 350m

This brings up another question... How is a social contract defined when you have 20m people and 50m AI enabled bots forming relationships with them trying to change their mind on said social contract?

If you are walking and no cars are coming by when crossing the street, should you really be forced to wait for the green light?

There's no other reason for that except verifying compliance.

Yes. If this is a competence test, which allows you to demonstrate your understanding of social contracts, you should absolutely wait for the green light.

Social contacts always have two or more sides.

For example red light cameras. Makes perfect sense right, running red lights is bad as it can cause harm, and harm would be a violation of the social contract.

.... except the cities were commonly taking the yellow light timing down far below recommended levels in order to maximize profits.

AI in a world that demands profits spells the end of freedom.

The example that you’ve given of light profiteering with yellow lights doesn’t sound like the end of freedom to me.

Particularly, if you’re allowed to contest that yellow light fairly and efficiently, using the records from the same cameras and AI technology.

Ideally, you’d just register a complaint and the thing would give you a video and a clear explanation of what did you do wrong and why it was not a good idea. Traffic laws are relatively straightforward after all.

See, this is what the privilege of someone that has the resources to defend themselves sounds like.

>if you’re allowed to contest that yellow light fairly and efficiently,

That's a pain in the ass already in our current system and there is no alignment in our politics that will make it better. If you have money and don't care, you'll pay the ticket. If you have money and do care you'll spend a lot of time with records requests, and resubmitting records requests and pushing trial dates because the system won't give you the records you need in time.

The legal system does in no way work in ideals. It's not until you're on the wrong side of the law you realize exactly how fucked up it can be. It is then you realize how many laws exist that are unenforced until you bring too much attention to yourself.

It still doesn’t sounds like the end of freedom. But yes, ideally the system should be rigged in a way that the amount of money you have doesn’t influence how much it sucks to be on the wrong side of the law. It’s a regressive tax otherwise.

How is it a competence test? It doesn't show any competence. It's a compliance test to see if you are willing to behave non-optimally and sacrifice your time to prove that you are compliant.

In fact a person who goes over with red light when it's safe to do so might be in total paying more attention compared to the one who only watches the lights. The one who watches the lights may miss a car speeding by even though the light was green.

It isn't a competence test for demonstrating your understanding of social contracts though, it's a completely arbitrary rule.