ARIE KLAPHOLZ

COLUMNIST

Micromanagement can be a very useful tool. However, like most other tools, it needs to be in the hands of a good mechanic to be useful.

In the hands of an incompetent or poor mechanic, tools designed to make work easy can instead make work miserable, if not impossible.

This is also true of government at every level. Congress, legislatures and administrative agencies are alike in that they all push legislation, rules, and policies that govern more and more of every facet of our lives.

Truth be known, this micromanagement by government is the exact antithesis of our Founding Fathers. Our Founding Fathers believed in personal freedoms, smaller governments and, if anything, more power at the state and local level than at the federal level.

The writers of the Constitution understood that every law, rule and regulation takes away another small piece of our personal freedom.

While the Founding Fathers understood government was necessary to provide for the common good, safety and welfare of the nation, they wanted as small a federal government as possible. That is why the federal government’s powers are enumerated; these are the areas they understood only a national federal government could undertake.

COUNTERPOINT: The government is not over-regulating us

In recent years we have allowed the camel’s nose under the tent. Like that proverbial camel, government has taken over every aspect of our lives and taken away liberty after liberty, freedom after freedom.

Government has used the argument that it has the resources, knowledge and expertise to lead us — the uninformed, inexperienced and without sufficient resources — to accomplish the right things. This assumption is not only incorrect, fallacious and insulting, it erodes our liberties and freedoms.

By way of example: A landowner in the Midwest wanted to make some improvements on land he owned. He was going to build a home near a small stream running through his property. Over the course of time, beavers had built up a dam in the stream, creating a rather large pond that covered a portion of the land he wanted to improve.

This landowner removed the beaver dam, whereupon the EPA swooped in to claim the pond was a protected waterway and could not be touched. It took years, multiple court fights and untold money for the landowner to regain use of his own land.

This is a case of government micromanaging to the detriment of the public.

Many jurisdictions require a developer to include a certain amount of artwork as part of the development project. While artwork may be a worthy cause, is it the purview of governments to force someone to create artworks?

There are thousands of pages of rules and regulations detailing requirements in the manufacturing of vehicles. While some of these micromanaging tools are said to be done for the sake of safety, is it really in government’s arena to dictate the minimum gas mileage a vehicle must attain?

Should government force me to save for my retirement? Isn’t it really my personal responsibility and obligation?

If charity is a personal choice, why does the government micromanage who we donate to through careful massaging of 501-approved groups?

The list goes on and on, but in the end we must remind ourselves our Founding Fathers got it correct — smaller government is better government.

Arie Klapholz retired to Ocean Pines after 33 years of civil service in construction management and 40 years in newspaper production services.