Civilized society is rule based. These range from the undocumented rules which can be religious in nature or just based on logic and common sense ( e.g. etiquette) to those are clearly documented (often called laws)
Undocumented rules are typically maintained through social pressure while documented laws are maintained both through preventive and detective methods by designated guardians with unique powers of enforcement.
Law Enforcement
Those that enforce our rules come in a variety of roles and levels of empowerment from private security to local and national police. Depending on the role they may be subservient to governments, corporations or just private individuals.
The power granted these guardians or referees of our rules can lead to corruption and so we also have specific enforcers to monitor, detect and prevent or end corruption by our law enforcement officers when it occurs.
Working Together
Unfortunately the multi-tiered enforcement structure leads to turf wars and other inefficiencies. Basic human nature can cause our law enforcers at different levels to battle each other just to exercise their authority and prove they are right.
Sadly maintaining perspective when regularly exposed to deceit and malfeasance requires incredible strength of will and our guardians or referees who we respect and grant license to keep the rules are not always able to maintain an unbiased view.
Flawed but Works
With the the many process flaws built into our rule enforcement it never ceases to amaze me the respect and authority we grant our designated enforcers and their leaders nor the fact so few cases of self enforcement by individuals occur.
I guess flawed as it may be the current enforcement systems work well enough, although there are times those when I been personally exposed to the inadequacy of the systems that I wonder if there is a better way, we just have not found it yet.
