Government intervened only when there was a compelling public interest. In other words the default position of government was to be absent. It was present only when called for. The perfect expression of this model is emergency services. The fire department is nowhere to be seen until someone reports a blaze.

Five years ago, the Fire Department showed up to demand I change the plans for the house I was building to include a circular driveway large enough for a firetruck to turn around in. Of course, that meant a larger driveway which pushed the total amound of “impervious” surface over the limit and required a more significant surface water mitigation plan including retention ponds which forced the plan to cut down several “significant” trees which would require an exemption from the local environmental agency because the previous owners had logged the property seven years earlier…

We ended up buying an existing house and nobody got paid any money to build the new house. The property still has the old rotting double-wide trailer on it that was there when we bought it.

“Naked Justice: Arrested for Nudity in His Own Kitchen
Pajamas Media ^ | Oct. 25 | Michele Catalano “”"”"

Agreed. The first thing that struck me about that story was that this woman was walking through this guy’s yard, and therefore technically trespassing. On the other hand, was this guy visible from the street in such a way that anybody passing by couldn’t possibly miss him? My latter point is that he is being a “public nuisance.”

Either way, not too much should be made of the incident by the authorities.

Lots of arguments right now about euthenasia, a coming thing in the US, looking at Oregon, the NHS in UK, and the inevitable consequences of Obamacare.

Used to be, before the lawyers and the law got involved, that the individuals involved, their families and their doctors just quietly dealt with those kind of end-of-life issues, in their own way, the way that worked best for them. But once you make it a matter of State interest, whether as a regulator or a libertarian, it is beyond the power of the people actually involved, and will be decided by bureacrats or judges who don’t have a clue.

And I daresay we are all much poorer for that.

The policy as outlined above is merely State theft: how can one sanely argue that the state should seize control and confiscate (steal) a person’s possessions simply based on the argument the the relatives , in a few cases, might steal them?

Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? And you do mean “bitch”.