Believe it or not, I'm a pretty reluctant "rebel".
In high school, I had all the preppy clothes, right down to the Swatch wristwatches, with every color guard imaginable (I didn't like the rubber band ones that went across the face, though). I tried so many ways to be "normal", but it just didn't pan out for me.
Why not? You ask. Well, to put it simply: STUPID laws. They stopped making sense and it stopped making sense to me to pay attention to them.
Don't get me wrong; some laws are there for a very good reason. And I know pretty well that anarchy would be as doomed to failure as would capitalism. But some laws make no sense at all.
Take, for instance, laws forbidding residents in smaller cities from raising chickens. Now, chickens in, say Cabrini Green (in Chicago) would be a pretty stupid idea, but in many smaller communities, properly raised chickens should not pose a reason for complaint.
The reason the chicken example stands out in my mind comes from an experience a few years ago (when we still lived in Wisconsin). I was walking down the street and a police officer drove up beside me and asked if I knew who among my neighbors was raising chickens. Some had been seen loose, and he was out to throw the book at the "perp". My reply: "No, but if I catch 'em before you do, I guess I know what I'm having for dinner" (the officer was NOT amused...but I digress).
It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now why these communities ban raising chickens, assuming one lives on an adequately sized lot. Now, I remember my stepmother's irresponsible chicken raising that created a toxic hardpan at the bottom of the coop, put us up to our ankles in chicken excrement after a good thunderstorm, and irritated our normally docile next door neighbors every time the wind shifted to the west. But that's a board of health issue. I understand a motorist not wanting to be confronted with a squawking flock when driving down a residential road. But that's an animal control issue (the same thing that applies, for instance, when Ethel's 25 foot Burmese python hogs the roadway). It makes no sense to ban chickens in these communities.
Similarly, I could dredge up inane zoning laws, building codes that have no apparent outcome but to make the construction industry wealthier, and a multitude of other stupid laws. Stupid laws only cause some individuals to have a greater contempt for the law MAKERS, and in some cases, to disregard a few LESS stupid laws because they're convinced the government's filled with morons. They also add to the cost of government, as the more stupid laws there are, the more police we need to enforce them.
Me, I feel better knowing that the Wisconsin police force is rounding up those rogue chickens rather than focusing their energies on more serious crimes.