Sure, lots of countries agree with this. But bunch of countries still have "death penalty", even one that is usually heralded as the "Savior of the West" still has judicial murders.

Besides, if everyone agreed "murder is bad" we wouldn't have wars, so obviously not everyone agrees with that.

> Stealing is bad?

This I don't even agree with 100%, depends on the context. You're starving while someone else is hoarding food for themselves for no particular reason? Totally justifiable to steal food from them to survive.

War argument kind of fits with this one too, clearly not everyone agrees stealing is bad.

I don’t even know what to say.

Every police state claims it’s only “trying to get its citizens to be responsible”.

I'm in complete agreement with you, I first got scared with the potential for profiling individuals through data collection over time some 15 years ago. I was working on a very small project from a startup, related to football/soccer, where we collected behavioural and sentiment data from football fans over time, in our service and around social media (mostly Twitter at the time), and had a first glimpse on what could be inferred about individuals just based on very public datapoints they'd produce.

That project opened my eyes, and the paranoia it created in me never really went away, it's a constant thought in my mind about how much data I'm generating for massive companies creating very accurate profiles of who I am: what I like and dislike, what I access, where I am, what I'm doing where I am, every single time I click on a link, a video, etc. I feel a little dread that I provided even more information about myself to machines programmed to crunch through all of this and materialise a view of who I am as a person. Right now it's mostly to serve me ads but the potential that absurd amount of information gathering has in the wrong hands truly terrify me.

The worst part is that there's almost no escape living a contemporary lifestyle, the only way is to engage with anything digital in very, very cautious ways, trying to cover every single trace and track you might leave behind while interacting with any digital product, and that is simply exhausting.

The EU is authoritarian in many ways. How the laws get made is secondary to whether or not they are authoritarian.

One is populist strongman rule, usually but not always of a right wing bent. We have this rising in the US.

The other is technocratic corporatism, the model of China and it seems a faction of the EU.

Both endlessly malign democracy and liberalism as decadent, chaotic, and responsible for an endless parade of bogie men they will protect you against.

Being held accountable for crimes is your definition of a "police state"? Interesting.

What you're trying to hint at is political persecution, and there is the possibility of asylum for that. But let's differentiate between persecution and running away from crimes, and not muddy the waters. Not all crimes are the result of persecution.

Otherwise what's stopping anyone form breaking into your house, murdering your family to rob you and then fleeing abroad on asylum to avoid legal repercussions? If that was the status quo, you probably wouldn't exist anymore right now.

The "police state" is the one ensuring your family's safety. In our modern societies, we have outsourced the monopoly on violence to the police state, so that we can focus on work and hobbies, and that comes at the expense of trusting the state and holding it accountable through democracy.

It is much better to define acceptable boundaries on actions and let people believe what they want if their actions do not violate those agreed on boundaries.

Please do try this, I've tried it in the past, and always been able to come up with counter-examples to whatever I came up with. It's surprisingly hard.

"Always be kind" is one example that for me should obviously be shared with everyone, but it's almost disgustingly easily to come up with whole cultures or countries where this is actively seen as a "bad thing" because of reason X and Y, or has to have exceptions because of Z.

Most societies that we would consider worth living in hold up the principle that matters of justice should be decided by the impartial and uninvolved. If the victim's feelings should determine the punishment, what would stop any petty theft and spicy insult (for the vast majority of countries where those are considered crimes) from being answered with the death penalty?

Of course, reality is that whether justice is forthcoming is dictated by economic interests, not law, and certainly not your idea of law. In other words, whether you criticize China's treatment of Uighur, or point out how gigantic the scale of pollution the CCP is responsible for, or which economic disaster they caused this week, will get you in hot water more than committing a (scammer) crime will. Whether you criticize India's rich, Thailand's or Saudi Arabia's royalty and actually get some attention (which, as has been demonstrated, will make them get diplomatically immune embassy staff kill you. Perhaps that's not legal, but they cannot legally be punished for that, not even financially). And if you either insult or otherwise pose a problem to western copyright interests (e.g. make a tutorial about LibreELEC) you'll get the hammer put down on you:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/tags/libreelec

Of course, it will remain trivial to sabotage judicial proceedings if you're outside of the jurisdiction of that court (and because second/third world courts simply side with scammers against victims), the stated reason of the argument is NOT something you can do in practice, and whether the law is on your side? It is already on your side if you go after scammers! It is impossible to use local laws to go after scammers. What protects scammers, as everybody knows, is less anonymity than it is third world states and attitudes, especially their total lack of respect for international treaties they signed, combined with the reach FANGs, incumbent Telco's and Banks give to scammers. Given that one of FANGs, TikTok (in practice even if not in theory) runs from within the third world even that option is fast disappearing. This law does nothing about that.

Even within the west, there's an expression from the legal profession: "you cannot get blood from a stone". It is meant to illustrate the problem that scams and most fraud are committed by people who are "on the margin" and have no money or options (almost all fraud is committed by tenants). On the margin means that while they aren't poor, even a 1000 euro judgement would make them destitute for 6 months or more. You will not get a judge to convict these people. It doesn't matter how much you legally are in the right, the justice system will refuse to destroy their lives, make them homeless, instead they will correctly point out that will achieve nothing, and leave you hanging. This is another thing you can't change. (yes, with the current attitudes if the criminal is an immigrant you may get them removed. But you still won't get your money back)

And to follow your accusatory style: is this what you want to achieve? Support scammers to advance the interests of extreme rich third-world autocrats? Because that's what you're doing.

Not sure why you had to go make that parallel but it really isn't. You can control yourself from committing crimes, you can't control yourself from being born gay.