I think we need a new take on that phrase, something like "ignorance of the law must not be a reasonable defence" — when the law is too complex for most people to understand, it is vulnerable to capricious enforcement, malicious compliance, and unwitting everyday violations being held against the politically undesirable.

Not only do I have absolutely no idea how to get from here to there, I also assume the degree of simplification I desire — to the point that normal people know what's going on most of the time — is the legal equivalent of saying "Twitter doesn't need 6000 employees because Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facebook by himself in college" in a software engineering context, and wrong for much the same reasons.

I think we could start by requiring mens rea for any felony offense.

One of my favorite saying is this: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state" (thousands years old saying and nothing has changed).

And, oh boy, do we have many laws.

It is by design, to oppress the people.

At work do you also say the legacy projects that are a pain to work with are by design, to oppress the programmers?

You don't even need to consider ALL laws. Just look at the tax code in isolation for good examples.