What is the optimal level of government involement in our lives?  Consider a jurisdiction where individuals lived as and how they like.  Ideally laws would not be needed provided individual behaviours were self governed not to negatively impact others.  The government could focus on common infrastructure everyone used, roads, power, water etc.

In this ideal state (which is probably as practical as communisum) lawyers and courts would not be needed as everyone would self govern and conflicts resolved through consensus.

Moving to the other side of the balance beam a central authority (i.e., government) would manage both infrastructure and social interraction.   This would extend not only to behaviour laws but also intervention in commerce (the economy).

My utopian situation is somewhat like that described by Any Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged.  The opposite exaggeration described here is alarmingly close to the current state of governance in Canada.

Focus on the Few

As Canada appoaches a federal election I am singularly dissapointed at the focus by all contenders on small constituencies as opposed to the population as a whole.  As the promises become more targeted to specific groups both the complexity and cost rise.

While it may seem positive to the few that benefit, for the country as a whole this is a detrimental approach.

This brings me back to the basic premise of this post,  too much involvement by governments in  day to day behaviours ultimately will lead to bad results.

In Canada,  it is time to swing the control and involvement pendulum the other way.