Mental Floss is a great publication. They're constantly creating cool content that in many ways is a kind of geeky twist on popculture. It's great for fun facts or looking at scholarly subjects in a fresh perspective.
Naturally, I follow them on Twitter and came across something they recently published. It's an article titled California's Proposed Straw Ban Won't Actually Threaten Restaurant Employees With Jail Time. I'm assuming you've heard at least a surface account of what this is all about. A state legislator in California introduced a bill with the intention of reducing the amount of plastic straws used, and consequently the amount of straws needlessly littered.
The problem with the Mental Floss article is in the title. It says that the law won't "actually" threaten people with jail time. Ian Calderon, the man who introduced the bill has said that it seems harsher than it actually is and that they don't intend for anyone to suffer jail time. The only thing he intended was to impose a $1000 fine for those who disobey. Regardless of the incidence, whether it falls on the waitstaff or the restaurant owner is irrelevant. The point is that a fine is never just a fine, it always means there is a possibility of jail time, and of murder.
Laws are not just suggestions. The government isn't Bill Lumbergh coming to your cubicle saying "if you could go ahead and not give out plastic straws, that'd be greeeeeeaaat." The point of a law from the people who create them is to physically force people to obey them, otherwise this anti-littering law may as well have just been a press release issued by the Sierra Club. When a government makes a law, the implication is that it will be enforced. The intended punishment is a fine, but when a person refuses to pay a fine, the government will eventually send them to jail, and if you refuse to go to jail, the government will kill you.
The cognitive dissonance here is that in most situations people obey the law. The Mental Floss article isn't malicious, it just lacks the full context in which laws exist and therefore misleads the reader. This is why laws shouldn't be made on a whim as they often are. The implication behind every law is that if the law is disobeyed, there is a non zero possibility that the government will literally murder you. This is what legislators are saying every time they make a law, and by extension it is what you are saying every time you vote for someone who is very explicit in laws that they want to implement. You are implicitly saying that it is acceptable to murder someone for disobeying it if that's what it comes to. Remember that.