i've thought of this more often in terms of putting natural brakes on otherwise problematic activities that are too hard to control other ways At low levels the

i've thought of this more often in terms of putting natural brakes on otherwise problematic activities that are too hard to control other ways At low levels the friction doesn't matter, but when the undesirable activity gets out of hand it slows it down. Think eg: sending spam, or in a completely different domain, authorities abusing power to search people's possessions, track people everywhere etc. Of course all these examples are on my mind because it is the natural brakes on them that are falling away with technology and hence we have to suddenly question if there needs to be an artificial brake. Which then seems highly counter-intuitive to the people involved - police go crazy when confronted with process designed to deliberately slow them down and effectively waste their time from doing what they think is just their jobs.