The function of a law, a rule or a moral is not to erradicate totally the behaviour against which it proscribes but rather to reduce the probability that the majority of society faces of becoming a victim of that particular behaviour to such a low degree that it becomes more reasonable, from a cost/benefit basis, on the part of any given individual member of that society to forgo taking prohibitive precautions against such an occurence in their day to day lives.Boy, that was a long sentence.
What I want to express, but perhaps have not done so well enough is to highlight that as a member of a 'lawful' society I do not need to become expert in say some defensive/offensive discipline - such as fencing or shooting or a martial art - because the penalties I will incur in terms of the time invested and risk of injury involved in their pursuit is no longer outweighed by a reducement of the risk of injury and death from - I don't know - a duel for example, or a mugging.
In being a member of a society where such an option exists - ie. paying through taxation for a judiciary system and accepting the governmental veto on my expressing dissatisfaction through direct violence against another person or persons - I incur less penalty than would be entailed by having to aquire the skills and equipment necessary to maintain a reasonable degree of protection within a society without such an externalized system.
However, in realising that no level of judical control - at least a level that would be acceptable in a 'free' society - will ever totally erradicate the threat of violence, loss or injury, and by refusing to take direct responsibility for either their own [absolute] protection or that of others, any individual member of that society must accept their complicity in the effective sponsoring of 'sacrificial offerings' in the form of the people who actually do roll snake-eyes and become the latest statistic on the evening news, if that sacrifice could have been prevented by the acceptance of stricter curtailments on individual freedom by the members of that body politic or a society-wide [and equally shouldered] investment in self-defence.
Those statistics on the news, the lost boys, the chalk outlines on the street, the wounded hookers - they are the price of conscience we [willingly or unwittingly] pay to maintain a both balance of personal freedom from governmental scrutiny and intervention in our private and public lives, and the luxury of non-acceptance for our own welfare.
We forget this at the peril of totalitarianism.
Laws and moral-codes can also be seen to operate as markers dilineating the topography of benefits incurred either by the individual(s) at the expense of a wider group loss, or benefit to the group en toto - embodied within its given form of governence - at the expense of the individual(s) subject to it.
It doesn't have to be a zero sum game - ideally, a good law should aim to keep the expression of a particular human behaviour set within a range such that it benefits both the individual and the social system playing host to that individual.
If that is impossible it should aim at least attempt to curtail the extremity of its expression to a limit where the expense incurred either to the social system or individuals effected by such behaviour (but not benefitting from it), is tolerable, preferably negligible.
For example "the holding, expression, and discussion of different beliefs and ideas amongst individuals."
This carries an attendant behavioural range: One end of this range being freedom of speech, and debate, at the other is repression, violence, murder, vendetta and war.
The laws affixed to this range should aim to keep a given society tolerant enough to stimulate productivity both technologic and spiritual - whilst acting as a buffer against the social-cohesion destroying consequences of fanatacism.
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