I've been rereading Tocqueville's Democracy in America while rocking my fussy infant to sleep (as one does). And I'm on the section where he talks about Administrative Despotism. I thought it was fitting considering my current predicament.
He predicted a situation in which the regulatory state:
"…extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through… it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."