As far as we know your species' death is impossible to fix right now. But - yes, I do see what you mean.

"Oh good."

Elves look at Vancouver a bit more. 

It's a nice city. Bella cajoles Alli into making her a sandwich and is gone for two seconds picking it up when it's done; she eats and walks.

Elves are intrigued by road signs and cars and parking meters! They are annoyed by sirens and car horns, even very distant ones! They are appalled by a cigarette butt.

"I'm with you on car horns, sirens actually matter though, your reaction to the cigarette butt seems disproportionate but maybe I just haven't spent enough time in Singapore to really appreciate a clean sidewalk?"

Singapore?

"Yet another country. They cane people for possession of chewing gum, so there isn't any!"

Do they - need to do that?

"I don't know how often it comes up but I assume sometimes someone tries to smuggle gum into Singapore or forgets they have it in their purse or something and gets caught."

Punishing people for being forgetful doesn't seem fair.

"The authorities can't reliably tell the difference between actually forgetting, and pretending to forget to avoid consequences."

Oh. 

"Yeah."

Does this place have any laws where people often get in trouble for forgetting or not knowing? Because we don't know any laws.

"So there's this problem where laws accumulate over time - they get added to handle things as they come up, or as technology develops, or whatever, but are much less often removed. So there's a lot, and nobody actually knows them all, and a lot of them are minor and sporadically enforced, like driving above the speed limit. And then it's impossible to catch everybody - there isn't enough police presence, for one - so it gets enforced on a spot-check basis, but a spot-check basis means 'against whoever they're already looking at, especially if they're looking at them because they're predisposed to think they're doing something bad, for example because their ancestors were from Africa' because that's a common prejudice. I think more than getting in trouble for forgetting or not knowing, you get in trouble for taking risks with enforcement and being the kind of person they don't like."

...well that's not a very good system.

"Yeah, I know, my dad's a cop and he complains about the many flaws in his organizational givens."

Maybe people don't follow the rules because they can't and then things go downhill from there?

"I guess it's possible that unrealistic expectations are the root of all evil but it doesn't seem likely to me."

Yeah I don't think I'd kill people if the law said confusing things about speed limits.

"It doesn't seem a likely candidate on its own. There are some things that might work this way - drug laws come to mind - but it's not clear."

Can't you all sit down and agree on new, clearer laws?

"No."

Sigh.