The NO FAKES act has changed, and it's worse

Unfortunately this is the inevitable outcome of information and computation (and therefore control) becoming cheap. Liberal political systems can no longer survive in equilibrium. The 21st century will be a story either of ruling with an iron fist or being crushed beneath one :(

there is a huge difference between having strict laws and enforcing them and "ruling with the iron fist"

the later inherently implies using violence to suppress people

That is always same thing.

All laws that you want to be strictly enforced, requires violence. This is why people should ALWAYS remember when making laws: "Is this worth killing for?"

I remember some years ago on HN people discussing about a guy that got killed because he bought a single fake cigarrete. IT goes like this:

You make a law where "x" is forbidden, penalty is a simple fine. Person refuses to pay fine. So you summon that person to court, make threats of bigger fine. Person ends with bigger fine, refuses to pay anything. So you summon that person again, say they will go to jail if they don't pay. They again don't pay, AND flee the police that went to get them. So the cops are in pursuit of the guy, he is a good distance away from the cops for example, then they have the following choice: Let him go, and he won, and broke the law successfully... Or shoot him, the law won, and he is dead.

This chain ALWAYS applies, because otherwise laws are useless. You can't enforce laws without the threat of killing people if they refuse all other punishments.

I don't know if the guy you were discussing with is right or not, if digital era result in the need of "ruling with the iron fist", but make no mistake, there is no "strict law enforcement" that doesn't involve killing people in the end.

Thus you always need to think when making laws: "Is this law worth making someone die because of it?"

In most places, shooting by law enforcement is not allowed unless there is a clear and present threat to life.

Your whole post falls apart right there.

Person 'x' refuses to pay a fine - OK, well there are mechanisms where a fine can be automatically applied in some cases, or taken from their assets by court order, or docked from pay. In some places bailiffs/repo men can be called to take assets after fines have been delinquent for long enough.

Deadly force is not really the backstop position to a fine, even a 'strictly enforced' one.

>a clear and present threat to life

Jacob Blake was shot in the back by an officer and it was justified by saying he was walking to his truck and there may have been a pocketknife in said truck.

Charles Kinsey was shot in the chest for no reason other than being on-scene while another mentally disabled person blocked traffic. He stayed to advise officers that the person blocking traffic was holding a toy firetruck, not a weapon. Kinsey asked the officer why he was shot, and the officer replied, "I don't know."

>Deadly force is not really the backstop position to a fine

It is, though. All of the things you listed as alternatives to force are actually escalations of force, and at the end of the day you either pay the fine or go to jail and when they come to take you to jail you either come along quietly or get beaten and maybe killed. The backstop of all law and order is a state-sanctioned monopoly on violence.