The reason most of the rule mazes exist is the same exact reason for which there are 613 commandments in the old testament: dumb uneducated hordes.

It might sound like shit to hear one thinking with sweeping generalizations about society and call people dumb and uneducated. But, allow my transgression, for illustration purposes, the truth is people in general do not think very far into the future. That is why rules start to appear on top of the existing rules, they bring the future (a.k.a consequences) closer. For example, in case of driving under the influence, it is easier to foresee that a random police will run a breath test on you, than to foresee the complexity of your path home, or to calculate the probability of killing or hurting someone.

The less rules you have in place, the more people ought to be trusted with self governance. The problem is people in general are unreliable. Think of the overused Stanford prison experiment which, by all means, could mean nothing, but, if it does mean anything, it is that people require enforced rules to function in structured groups, because the only thing that allowed that violent path to unfold was the clearly stated lack of repercussions for anything that might occur in the experiment.

Education is not enough in a society to allow for less laws. Education by itself helps the individual only in part. Experience too is crucial, people make different things of their education, according to their direct experience. That is why intelligence, in the end is the key element: to transform your education and experience to the best possible outcome, one requires intelligence. It appears that, indeed, less rules and simpler mazes are a good aim but assuming by default that billions of people are ready for a simple body of laws ignores human history and a million other things.

Making “high tech” cities in the sky, “futuristic” ones on the sea or on “special” pieces of land, and calling intelligent and educated people “refugees”, because they setup camp and create small societies to “test” laws, is the shitty future everyone envisioned, from Sci-Fi authors to political writers, there is nothing revolutionary about that: wiping off all debt towards humanity, just because we can, doesn’t make anyone a better human. It is quite funny how libertarianism can so easily shift from a fight for freedom into a shape of social eugenics.