Government by the people seems to be our problem. States, Feds, Regulators, and Planners stand ready for manipulation by interest groups for the institutionalization, legalization and ossification of rules to benefit the health, safety and welfare of the majority.
A veneer of honorable partisan politics provides cover and election rhetoric to periodically move the needle left or right, and re-order the primary beneficiaries under successive elected administrations.
Consent of the governed is a myth. We will be governed one way or another as opportunities for acting freely outside of the rules of our free society shrink each day.
Got an interesting idea with attractive optics that speak to the health, safety and welfare of Americans? Can you generate funding for communications, contributions and legal process? Then you will get to direct the legal machineries at whatever level of government to write some law that must be obeyed.
The tautological requirement is that each new law must be a consistent development from the law already on the books. Our great construct of reasoning grows each day. No human behavior is immune from its reach. More importantly, no human behavior will be permitted to frustrate its objective.
The beneficiaries of whatever class, corporate interest, or personal feature, benefit. The rest provide at least obedience, indirect funding, and implied consent.
I’m sure this is not the system the Founders intended.