In a somewhat ironic way I agree with you. However I am speaking from the perspective of what I want the US government to be more like instead of what it is right now. When you have no faith in your government I think you want no leash at all. Put all the details in the laws if you want more power than you already have.
But when you have sufficiently capable and competent actors in government I would lean on the side of trusting and giving the leash.
EDIT: And come to think of it, enormous weight of huge bills / laws I imagine could become a hindrance to a government's ability to do its job. Think about it. What if you inherited a highly complex legacy application that you were not allowed to rewrite from scratch or even refactor it, but were stuck maintaining it. And all that you ever get to do is add more code on top of the old (alot of times bad) code. It seems a cycle of futility. Instead given limited resources of a government I want a lean system where people are allowed to use their judgment and intuition.
>But when you have sufficiently capable and competent actors in government I would lean on the side of trusting and giving the leash.
The elected and appointed members of government change. Their terms expire, they retire, they're voted out.
The law doesn't suddenly change when a bad actor is elected or appointed.
And laws don't generally have expiry dates. The now nearly 100 year old Espionage Act of 1917 is being applied to Edward Snowden, imagine how out of touch laws will become, and how misapplied they will be?
tl;dr: the government changes and the length of the leash doesn't adapt to suit it.
But when you have sufficiently capable and competent actors in government I would lean on the side of trusting and giving the leash.
EDIT: And come to think of it, enormous weight of huge bills / laws I imagine could become a hindrance to a government's ability to do its job. Think about it. What if you inherited a highly complex legacy application that you were not allowed to rewrite from scratch or even refactor it, but were stuck maintaining it. And all that you ever get to do is add more code on top of the old (alot of times bad) code. It seems a cycle of futility. Instead given limited resources of a government I want a lean system where people are allowed to use their judgment and intuition.