Any place (country, city, you name it) where people have high trust in government is authorized to develop a lot of laws to "protect" citizens. Part of the trus

Any place (country, city, you name it) where people have high trust in government is authorized to develop a lot of laws to "protect" citizens. Part of the trust comes from the fact that laws are not enforced (the more you have, the less anyone knows them all) and most voters feel like they are on the "good" side of the law. However the more obscure laws and rules are out there by different agencies, the more the legal profession becomes a power. Those wealthy enough to afford multiple lawyers or tax experts also become unscathed. So government starts burdening its regular citizens far more than the most powerful. If the government, or a corrupt official, or a really bad dictatorial newly elected official ever has beef with you, or is short on money because of uncontrolled spending, they can always find a rule to convict you by to extract whatever you have they need (a decision by your company, or a vote, or your money, etc). So leftover regulatory debt needs some kind of mechanism to be cleared, or a system needs to be created that allows you to thoroughly evaluate your standing with all rules. Or you do a civic test every year and if majority of people don't know about a rule in it, the government has to drop that rule (so it puts an onus on the government to not only clean up its laws, but communicate them better, and fix/reduce them if it cant be clear about the rule).