We Need Fewer Laws, Less Reform, Less Government

After an extended discussion with a member of the Sierra Club, he indicated to me that government should be put in place in order to ensure a fair usage of the Commons, by which he was referring to the environment, including the Port of Los Angeles and the surrounding cities in the Harbor area.
He then argued that the reforms put in place to prevent fraud, deceit, and the deprivation of investors in the past made it more difficult for smaller investors get involved in trade, real estate, and other financial developments. These interventions created an economic bubble in the region, which dried up capital for other investments.

His train of thought then shifted to the role of populism in forcing government to respond to the needs o the people. The larger entities in our country, including corporations and government agencies, require more rules in order to be held accountable.

I disagreed. It is the multiplicity of rules in the first place which is creating more of our problems. The more laws, the more criminals, as Lao-Tze wrote. Paul the apostle wrote, "The strength of sin is the law." The fact that government has grown so large, infusing itself into more local element of our lives, only exacerbates the problems that we are attempting to correct. The more decisions that government gets to make, the more opportunities for corruption will emerge. The greater the role that government plays in our lives, even if intended to institute reform and accountability, the greater the incidence of fraud, deceit, and dysfunction.

We need less government in this country. Less government means fewer opportunities for large corporations to infiltrate and frustrate the rights of the people in this country. Turning back the size and the scope of the state is a worthy goal.

Populism, as a means of effecting change in our country, inadvertently creates more government. Depending on state force to compel morality and protect people from their poor decisions only creates more government, and invites more corruption.

We need fewer laws, less reform, and less government altogether if we want to see more liberty, less waste, less deceit and dysfunction in this country.