I've been thinking along these lines more and more. Trying to specify exact limits and trying to account for every possible situation when making rules just encourages people to find holes and workarounds. It creates a game, a competition between the rule makers and everyone else.

When instead you state higher level values and ask for cooperation, it encourages us to work together. It's the Honor System instead of a deliberate competition between rule makers and everyone else.

Concrete example: sports

When you are playing with a group of friends and there's no referee, most everyone does their best to just play hard and follow the rules. It's not perfect, but it works for the most part because we all love the game and want to have a good time.

Once you introduce referees, the game within the game of "what can I get away with?" starts and you end up with players learning how to foul without getting caught and then players overreacting to fouls in order to make sure the rule breakers still get caught, and then it evolves into flopping to get a foul called even when there was none, and eventually people start to hate the sport altogether (see: NBA, FIFA)

Concrete example: government and police forces. Do I even need to elaborate on this one?

That's actually how EU law works! I think it's also why US companies keep getting in trouble here, they try to loophole-lawyer like at home, but it just... doesn't work that way.

I had a whole long conversation about this with another commenter a while ago if you're interested in learning more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697