The most often ignored and misunderstood “elephant in the room” in modern US political discussions is the evil of excessive government regulations. In my opinion, excessive laws and regulations do more harm to our economy, individual prosperity and happiness than anything else. Excessive regulations kill personal and entrepreneurial dreams, they keep the poor poor, and make a joke of the American Dream, the supposed “land of opportunity”. The examples are everywhere, if you’d only objectively seek the truth and investigate the ultimate cause of society’s ills. I could give thousands of examples of how excessive regulations kill prosperity, opportunity and happiness, but I’ll list a few and hopefully you’ll get the idea.

• Property regulations: Once upon a time, if a person could afford some land, he or she could use that land any way they saw fit and build a home or other structures any way they liked. It was truly their property. Today there are so many regulations regarding real estate, the poor cannot hope to have anything of their own. Between minimum acreage division regulations, sewage regulations, building code, EPA regulations, zoning and much more, the government has made the costs artificially high to have the dignity of buying a property and actually being able to live and do things there. This cost may be 10 to 100 times more than it could be, depending on the severity of laws in your state, county or city. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (I hope) to see this hurts the poor the most and all but forces them onto welfare and government housing and into defeated, undignified state of mind where they are more likely to vote for the big-government policies that created the very hell in which they live!
• Business regulations: Again, excessive regulations artificially increase the cost of doing normal, natural things. The poor, especially those from a less educated background find it extremely hard to get into business and even those better off get the distinct feeling the government sees small business an enemy to be destroyed. Small business creates real and sustainable jobs. When government kills or cripples small business with excessive regulations, there is much more unemployment.
• Drug war: The usage of harmful, recreational drugs is certainly tragic, but the drug war is even more so. It has only resulted in an oppressive police state, terrorizing innocent citizens caught in the crossfire and mistaken raids, and imprisoning too much of the population to make them effectively a permanent burden on the taxpayer. Of course the drug war disproportionately hurts the poor, but it erodes all of our legal rights and prosperity.
• Medical/health regulations: You can over-regulate anything, even a critical industry such as medicine. Examples of over-regulation include requiring prescriptions for too many types of drugs, having too rigid and out-dated qualifications for medical personnel and much more that goes too far. When people can not afford the most basic, preventative care on their own, something’s wrong. Unfortunately, instead of addressing these real issues, the best the liberals and neo-cons can think of is to force private socialism on us and fine the poor for being too poor to afford insurance!
• Food regulations: SWAT team raids on raw milk farmers? A new excuse for police state tyranny? Regulations on food make your food significantly more expensive than it needs to be, from produce to meat and more. Everyone needs food, even the poor, so again, who suffers the most from these increased costs due to over-regulation? The poor, of course. Obviously, an increasingly aggressive police state raiding our farms and gardens is yet another thing to worry about on top of economics.

Excessive regulations are the poison that needs purged. It can be theoretically done, but like any problem, you need to recognize it first. The liberals and neo-cons certainly won’t fix things, as they make it worse. The only hope I can see to rescue us from this walking prison and let prosperity bloom is in the Libertarian candidates or Libertarian-Republicans like Ron Paul.