Think about the difference between how your local gas station and congressman respond to a spike in oil prices. One has the price placard outside changed to reflect the reality of the market within hours. The other sends out a press release, tries to organize a hearing, and at the end of amount accomplishes nothing. Meanwhile, the gas station has already made at least thirty additional adjustments to the realities of the market while your politico fails to get anything more than easy media.

The government doesn't create wealth of its own; it can only take it from some and distribute it to others or dictate particular public uses of private resources.

With its brutal excesses and reliance on snitches and finks as informants, I don't think it's far off-kilter to describe the modern-day drug war as oddly similar to the Salem witch trials.

Today, the law is a crazy quilt of provisions and clauses that very often have little to do with securing general happiness but instead are designed to secure the particular happiness of various advocacy groups, politicians and bureaucrats.

Every day Big Government heaps demands and restrictions upon businesses that sink some enterprises, cause others to direct resources away from serving customers and instead toward jumping through hoops of lawyers and regulators, and prevent other operations from ever getting off the ground.

Markets help people pursue their happiness more efficiently and effectively. Because they are so effective, markets provide benefits right here and right now, even while government is busy batching the protection of happiness.

To best serve the public happiness, government shouldn't do things it cannot do well - anymore than Wal-Mart should provide goods and services that people don't like.