Perhaps things like your age, gender, and wealth may be insulating you, allowing you to think, "these laws don't actually apply to me", and if they did, you could most likely hire a lawyer and fight it.

Many people in this world cannot. Think about how many people are incarcerated for weed-related "crimes". Just because no one is going to go after YOU for them, doesn't mean that these laws don't serve a purpose to screw over others not so fortunate.

Anyways, not to pick on you specifically - I obviously don't know a whole lot about you, but your reply irked me a bit. Cheers.

The rest seemed spot on: This law is almost exclusively broken by rich folks, so it will never be an enforcement priority.

Objectively neither activity is probably super high risk, but I still wouldn't be willing to take on either of those risks myself.

There are thousands of things that are illegal, but in practice are rarely or ever prosecuted, even in cases where people are violating those laws at pretty significant scales.

"rarely or ever prosecuted" for you. You are on the advantageous side of a system that isn't that way on happenstance. Let's take your startup. How easy would it be for a black-owned startup in the US to raise VC funds in comparison to a white-owned startup? How easy is it to get... well any sort of loan if you're a black person, compared to a white person? How many black-owned banks are there that cater specifically to black businesses of any size?

Name three black CEOs.

Now, why is that?

In Germany, the barrier to getting a drivers' license is much higher. More training, more stringent tests. But the effect of that is that drivers are (mostly) assumed to be able to adapt their driving to road conditions; as a consequence, you get unlimited legal driving speeds on part of the German road system. In good weather, traffic permitting.

Of course, there are confounding facts: in my experience the average physical state of a car is much better in Germany than the US, and highways are better maintained. But still, the contrast is interesting. In the US, lifting speed limits on even straight roads through the desert would have poor outcomes.

> "Maybe in places where code law is mostly binding, there’s a lot more pressure on the legislature to keep the law books up to date with the current norms of society."

In the US, where everything is so entwined with politics, there's a lot unenforceable laws still on the books.

For example, the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in 2003. Last I checked, Texas still has a law on the books criminalizing sodomy. Sure Texas can't enforce it, but the conservative majority in the legislature won't actually repeal the law because politics. Similarly, when the US Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, Texas had to recognize same-sex marriage. But there was no law allowing same-sex couples to divorce. So there was this weird limbo wherein you couldn't get divorced if you were in a same-sex marriage.

America is weird.

For all intents and purposes sodomy was made legal by the 2003 precedent; that those laws are still technically in black-and-white doesn't mean they're in force.

But there are lots of laws that are still in force but aren't actually picked up and used much. They're still there, though. For instance, hardly anyone was prosecuted for Espionage Act violations for decades, but nobody disputes that the DoJ can dust that law off and start using it again, subject to the current jurisprudence on free speech etc.

Just saying, there's plenty of laws here that aren't prosecuted either.

Also there are laws that reference other country's laws. An example is that is (or was) illegal to buy/posses a type of meat in the US that is illegal in other jurisdictions. This was made to protect endangered animals but can easily apply to everything as there are lot of jurisdictions and who really knows if any one of them currently doesn't allow pork or beef for whatever reason.

More details here a few minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

It's definitely my perception in Berlin. There is almost no police, prosecutors and courts are completely understaffed.

Federally. The states have made this all higgledy-piggledy. And since there's money (legit retail income and state sales tax) involved, I'm surprised we don't have more federal troops kicking down more retail establishment doors.