Sadly, this exists in reality with absurd laws. Examples include "possession of stolen property", "civil asset forfeiture", or "constructive possession" laws surrounding some goods.
All of those sounds like an entirely different kind of seriousity(lol) than fake money, in that they are far from as damaging to society.
If someone is stealing stuff then the stuff is still as valuable as before, but if they distribute counterfeit currency then the trust of - and thus the value of - said currency can totally crash.
This is akin to laws against ownership of firearms, but no amnesty carve-outs for people reporting and submitting said firearms to the law enforcements (where stopping people from doing so will only ensure the firearms remain in circulation + make it much harder to find out about illegal distribution of firearms, and the channels thereof).
Another example is some US states ban keeping bottles of alcoholic spirits when they are empty. There's literally a law mandating you are supposed to smash them when empty. You heard that right: collecting empty bottles on a shelf like a college student is a misdemeanor, for each bottle, and you can potentially go to prison for life if a prosecutor "selectively enforced" you.
Sounds like a recipe for the state having to pay much more money in public healthcare for cuts by glass-shards. As if it wasn't already way too big of a problem that ppl smash their bottles when they are done (and govnts are doing all they can to dissuade stupid drunks from doing so), leaving shards everywhere from the street, to bus stops, to beaches, to even deathtraps in the water itself.
Corrupt politicians claim it's to "stop bars from faking and refilling liquors". But then the actual crime is "selling mislabeled goods under false pretenses" or "food code violation of misrepresenting contents of ingredient label". They've conned the public into normalizing an absurd crime. "Malum in se" versus "malum prohibitum" simply because it's convenient for those in power.
over here, we simply solved it by making it illegal to sell alcohol if you don't ensure people can't take the bottles with them when they leave (empty or not. this is to ensure ppl don't litter bottles and glass-shards in public). Literal requirement to either always pour the alcohol in a glass, or to use bottles that can't be de-opened (though ppl totally can recap bottles...) and have a bouncer indoors to try and spot transgressors.
Welcome to our legal system, not justice system. You understand how broken it is as you get older. So I thought author did a mature take here.
You are talking about dumb laws. Those exist everywhere. I am talking about rules that actively harm the state itself (and in a way that can easily snowball and not just be tolerated) by criminalizing whistleblowing, without any clear way for a corrupt politician to have benefited from this fact. And in a non-democracy at that (monarchies tend to have the powerful crack down hard on any such laws as it actively harms their own income)!
