Coronavirus is Exposing the Pointlessness of Most of Our Laws

In spite of successfully branding itself as the “land of the free,” the USA maintains thousands of laws and even more regulations. Just how many? No one can actually say, that’s how vast our legal code has become.

In one year alone (2016), federal departments, agencies, and commissions issued 3,853 new rules while congress passed 214 bills that were signed into law. Countless others were passed by states and local governments, and by the administrative class at those levels of government.

Our founders never intended for unelected bureaucrats to run our lives, but that’s been the case for some time. And the majority of the regulations they impose are anti-free market, protectionist, crony actions that have little to no benefits for the majority of Americans but rather seek to provide privileges for a select, connected few.

Getting rid of these regulations is rough. Proponents of limited government and individual liberty have worked for decades to swim against the tide of government expansion and peel back these rules, but it’s an uphill battle with one side very well-funded (the government) and the other armed mostly with logic.

But while the government tries to claim the bulk of these regulations are needed for public safety, the coronavirus crisis is swiftly…