Supervisors often prefer rule breakers, up to a point

Fundamentally, rules almost always come with compromises — for the sake of making rules understandable by humans, they have to be relatively simple. Simple rules for complex situations will always forbid some amount of good behaviour, and allow some bad behaviour. Many of society's parasites live in the space of "allowable bad behaviour", but there is a lot of value to knowing how to exploit the "forbidden good behaviour" space.

Example?

For which side?

Most examples boil down to common sense. Nobody is going to arrest a 14 year old for driving their dying parent to the hospital.

Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.

There is a difference between law and morality, and humans will use the second to selectively enforce the former.

> Similarly, it is reprehensible but legal to pull up a chair and watch a child drown in a pool.

In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

> In which country? Even for the US I don't believe the law system is that crappy.

There's video from a few years back that shows very American cops standing outside a burning house at night, knowing there was a young child still in it. A passing pizza delivery dude[1] rescued the 6-year old, handed her to cop, and ended up requiring hospitalization. In the online discussion, everyone called the rescuer a hero, but I don't recall seeing a single condemnation of the cops (a "first-responder") who didn't enter the burning house.

edit: 1. the hero's name is Nick Bostic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBlE52qKKuw

Cops have no legal obligation in the US to protect people from crime. They can watch you be mugged without lifting a finger. They might be fired, but the victim isn't entitled to protection.

It basically comes down to positive and negative rights. Someone is at fault if they harm you, but nobody is required to help you, even the government.

If police had a legal obligation to protect people from crime, everyone would have recourse if the police failed to protect them. Bar fight? Sue the police. Domestic violence? Sue the police.

It would literally lead to the collapse of the justice system.