The problem with your scheme is the protection of the commons.

[1] To your point: it's true that we have more things we can make laws about, but I suspect that it isn't true that we should make laws about every specific thing. Fraud is fraud, murder is murder. It shouldn't matter whether you use the internet, a telephone, or pencil and paper to defraud someone, in the same way that we don't need a separate murder statute for each choice of murder weapon.

Of course, juries work better when they are able to find on both the facts and the justice of the law. We've deviated from this at our peril.

Mens rea, criminal intent, has historically been the simplifying agent in law. That's why you don't see a terribly complicated set of case laws surrounding, say, murder. The problem with lots of current criminal statutes is that you can be guilty of violating them without any intent to harm.

What about if, in self-defense, someone goes further than necessary? He's attacked and choked by someone bigger and stronger. He reasonably fears for his life. Through chance or skill, he gets the upper hand, and knocks his attacker out. Then, before caveman adrenaline has faded, he slams the guy's head into the pavement until he dies. Do you apply the single "thou shalt not kill" law?

I don't really want answers to these specific questions, but to the meta-question: how do you handle actions which are harmful to society, but which cannot be resolved by straightforward common-sense ethical reasoning?

The hard, borderline cases that you mention are relatively rare. No matter how complicated your system of laws, these cases tend to require humans, either judges or juries, to make a careful decision.

If you have 10,000 laws rather than 10, you end up instead having to decide which of the many conflicting laws that could be applied should be applied to the situation. In marginal cases, human judgement is extremely difficult to replace.

One simple law about theft that can't neatly answer the question seems preferable to the current tens or hundreds of possibly applicable pedantically worded laws that can't neatly answer the question.

Common law has tended to focus obsessively on mens rea. Statute law has tended to disregard it. The difference probably has something to do with having to make a judgement about a particular case with the humans that are going to be affected standing there in front of you, as compared to dreaming up a bunch of laws in the abstract, or coming up with laws to address a politically attractive but wildly uncommon situation.

I believe this argument is empirically strong. You can see for yourself that there are (at least) hundreds of years of case law about murder. And yet the law surrounding murder seems quite a bit more straightforward than the laws surrounding, say, exporting electronics. This is because criminal case law has been sharpened by a focus on criminal intent.

http://www.huntingtonnews.net/state/090605-rutherford-statet...

And in any case, arguing around the edges of self-defense is a far cry from the sort of felony paperwork violations that got us into this discussion.

So perhaps the most clarifying question I could ask is: how many examples can you find of case law criminalizing paperwork mistakes with no criminal intent or intent to harm others, as compared to how many examples of that are there in statute law?

Like (I think) most reasonable people, I'm not in favor of criminalizing paperwork mistakes with no criminal intent.

Common law? Worked out pretty well for the English for about 1000 years.

Technology, a capital infrastructure, and pervasive wealth solves this problem, not politicians.

Once again we see free markets failing to cope with externalities and twisted incentives. Children don't want to work on farms, nor are they qualified to make such judgements, nor are their parents, in exactly the same way that parents can't consent to numerous other things for their children (for instance, a parent can't consent to marry off an 11 year old daughter).

Whether you're poor or not, having your children pad your income isn't a viable solution, nor is it efficient, and yet it is the short-term solution the free market demonstrably arrived at.

I'm certainly not defending the FLSA's farm exemption, which was clearly just a bow to a powerful special interest group [1].

Of course children don't want to work on farms or in factories. Does anyone want to work in a factory?

My point is simply that if you go to some random third-world country where children are working in factories, and you do nothing else than prevent them from working in factories, you very likely have not increased their quality of life. To your horror, you will see an increase in children scrounging for food in dumpsters. You will see them selling wares on the street. And you will see fewer families escaping a brutal life of farm labor to seek a better life in cities.

Your point about free markets also misses the mark. You could repeal all the child labor laws today in the US, and you would not find (a statistically significant number of) factories hiring children for the simple reason that with modern industrial techniques children wouldn't even be productive enough to justify their space on a factory floor. This is part of the reason why teenage unemployment is so high even though teens will work for minimum wage.

[1] Not to say that I think much harm comes from this today.

That the complete solution to this problem involves more than simply outlawing child labor doesn't mean that outlawing child labor is itself ineffective. There are child labor problems in economies that can otherwise provide for children --- even if you have a stable economy, you still need the rule of law.

Finally, it seems hollow to argue that, after 70+ years of regulation of child labor, repealing child labor laws would not change the facts of child labor on the ground in the US. While the economy certainly has more to do with the end of child labor than the law does, the law still plays a significant part. As a society, we've eliminated child labor and adapted to that circumstance. That is, at least in part, a victory of child labor prohibition.

To say that child labor is simply an artifact of outmoded manufacturing practices misses the fact that plenty of modern companies do engage in child labor, in jurisdictions that allow it.

At any rate, you can have the last word, because this conversation is devolving. I think the idea that society can get along just fine on 10, 100, or even 1000 laws is naive; child labor is a simple example, but I could come up with many more vivid examples as well --- for instance, the fact that marital rape has only been addressed within the last century or so.

Seriously?

I can simultaneously believe that we have many unjust or incompetent laws on the books and not be a libertarian.

Once a law is broad and vague, it is subject to interpretation and may become subjective. Which is the original point of this article.

Sorry, no solution found yet :-)