Problem is it just takes a lot of resources to police, more than the fine revenue. But with CCTV and computer vision it's getting increasingly cheap.
The barrier in the US isn't cost. It's a right to privacy and a culture of distrust of government.
But I think the shenanigans of ICE are making people more aware of the importance of privacy. Look at the backlash Ring (lost dog superbowl ad) and Discord (age verification) and Nest (Guthrie case) received just this year.
It really seems to boil down to whether these types of people can be effectively sold on the virtue of tearing down the barriers of privacy and government. If they aren’t already implicitly sold to that then all it takes is for the powers that be to do a better job at marketing their initiative.
Unfortunately, the US and many other countries have chosen the other path (sporadic enforcement with severe punishment) largely because it's easier to implement. There's a lot of momentum to change this but it's politically difficult at least in America.
No one breaks the rules intentionally anymore.
Not just the consistent small punishments, but the painful punishments. Pain is an extremely good, human motivator. Why destroy someones life and spend valuable taxpayer money with a 10 year imprisonment, when a rigorous caning session will be 10x more effective ? Many criminals will loudly thump their chest if punishment is merely jail but will dance on eggs to avoid buttock-pain.
Singapore recently introduced 24 strokes for scamming and fraud.
https://apnews.com/article/singapore-caning-scam-law-4f12fbb...
Pain keeps Singapore Polite!
Singapore's judicial caning officers (jokingly called "commandos") are trained to deliver strokes in a way that inflicts MAXIMUM pain while staying within strict procedural limits to avoid permanent injury.
Officers undergo specific training on posture, swing technique, accurate aiming, and using full body weight to generate high force and speed, up to around 160 km/h at impact, with forces exceeding 800–900 Newtons.
"Strokes are precisely placed to avoid criss-crossing (creating a neat "ladder" pattern) and to ensure consistency and full effect rather than randomness."
The explicit goal of the technique is to maximize pain per stroke: they are trained to induce as much pain as possible with each blow.
There are several examples of criminals who had multiple arrests and jail sentences, but after their first and last caning session quit criminal life and turned over a new leaf.
Press freedom is limited in Singapore and that is a significant problem for its democracy. As a tourist this is unlikely to impact you. Otherwise, rule of law is paramount in Singapore.
Think about it: Is it better to have a posted speed limit of 65mph and a real speed limit of 75mph, and you just have to learn from experience where the real limit is? Or is it better to post 75mph and fine any driver as soon as they exceed it?
And this applies to most other laws too - we can't expect everyone to know all the edge cases so some leniency for honest mistakes is needed.
Surely the entirety of the law is encapsulated in your comment. Certainly you won't get in trouble for carrying something as innocuous as an empty vape cartridge. You won't get fined for crossing the road in the wrong place, absolutely.
Singapore is just an example. Its more invasive big brother can be found just north of it.
There is another side to this, which is that the police need to not hassle people who are not committing crime. Which is why you'd struggle to adopt this anywhere in America.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory?wprov=sf...