Ahhh, Pace, now you're talking about a different issue.
As I said, I may not agree with the rules, and I do what I can to influence them during their drafting stages. But once they're in law I will try to follow them and I make assumptions about the actions of others with the expectation that they, too, will follow the rules. Maybe I'm just a bit boring like that but that's how I approach things in aviation. Strangely, I take a slightly different view in some other domains like motoring, for example, but that probably a whole different topic.
One of the reasons I treat the aviation rules as I do is that I may not (or probably certainly do not) understand the entire objective of each particular rule and how it interacts with the multitude of other aviation rules that exist. Whilst the implications of infringing some rules may appear obvious, in other cases this not be so - and even when we think it is obvious it's quite possible that we have not seen the whole picture.
xrayalpha's final comments are, perhaps, the most important to bear in mind. In aviation, prosecutions are done less to protect the community from wrongdoers and more to try and change behaviours.