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.

Bureaucracies typically move slowly, clumsily, and without much regard for the wants and needs of the people they supposedly serve.

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.

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.

Markets are nimble and efficient, gathering the collective but disbursed intelligence of the economy's players and communicating up-to-the-minute realities of prices, product availability, etc. Government is typically cumbersome, plodding, and slow.

Instead of doing more badly, government should focus on doing less well.

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.