Your mindset is responsible for so much corruption and abuse. It is sad to see someone smart spend so much time on this - even worse is to imagine the untalkable things you have seen and done.
If you want systems to work they have to reflect how people will respond to them in reality. Otherwise you get unmitigated fiascos like the War on Drugs.
If you make something more expensive, people do it less. If you make engaging with the government more expensive, it's not different. Imposing costs on group members who are not themselves the perpetrators will do that. Creating a system that can ruin the accused even if they're innocent motivates people to circle the wagons.
This isn't an argument that the way people respond is normatively good. But the way people respond is what actually happens, so if that's not what you wanted, you need a different system that doesn't cause people to resist its mechanism because the system itself indiscriminately damages friendlies.
You see, it is not because something is logical that we should accept the immorality of it as a fact. You don't need to be evil because the world is full of evil people :)
You do, however, need a system that accomplishes what you want it to in practice, rather than only on paper, if your goal is to make things better rather than just getting reelected by telling people what they want to hear.
I completely agree with you. It's astonishing how many policy makers think in terms of how they wish the world to function, instead of how it actually functions.
