[gloriana]

Nice story. Laws and regulations are broken all the time, but only used/prosecuted very rarely when the circumstances are egregious and the parties are pissed. E.g. violent criminals in jail have committed 10-30x more violent crimes than the single one they have been convicted for. Similarly most minor infractions go completely unnoticed and unreported because no one cares. The laws are are there to make things prosecutable and punishable. But they are not there. You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm. You respect the laws in spirit, but not in practice. E.g. you don't do all the paper work, but you also are a good citizen and respect the rules in spirit if not in practice.

[throwaway0a5e]

>You can operate many businesses completely outside the law without running into any problems as long as you are courteous, unnoticed, and do no harm.

The problem with this is that if you're doing it enough to make a living off of (i.e. not a side gig) it makes you a massive target for enforcers looking to issue fines. And there's always the Karen who'd rather narc on you than politely ask you not to do something that you didn't even know was pissing them off.

[toyg]

> it makes you a massive target for enforcers looking to issue fines

True, but you might actually never get close to the top of their pile of priorities.

[InefficientRed]

Yeah. One of our other neighbors ran a tutoring side business out of her apartment, which was technically illegal but of course didn't bother anyone and went unnoticed.

[_fat_santa]

Often times you see rules that are broad, but really intended for a specific thing. Like the example you gave, making it illegal to run a business from a private residence. That rule was never intended for the tutor, it was intended for the noisy neighbor running a mechanic shop out of their garage.