'Less government' typically means spending less money on government employees, when you hear it from libertarians. Paper's cheap, word are free, and abusing the law is usually profitable on it's own.
Not having certain laws trivially prevent abuse of such laws - if there's no law prohibiting possession of certain plant, cops can not extort somebody in possession of such plant, can not hide such plant in somebody's vehicle in order to incriminate them, can not force one to perform illegal acts threatening that otherwise they'd be found guilty in possession of such plant, can not seize one's home, vehicle or money because they suspected him in possessing a prohibited plant. This made possible only by existence of the law that makes certain behavior a crime. If less behaviors are made a crime or deemed worthy of government intervention, less complex laws will be needed and less abuse of these laws will be possible - you can only abuse a law that gives you a power over somebody, but you can not abuse law that does not exist.
If you go to a restaurants where only thing that is preventing them from being rat-infested is government I suggest changing you patronage to a better place. Your home, I suppose, is not rat-infested, yet how often the government checks it? Somehow you manage to keep rats out of your home without the government, don't you? Why do you think everybody else can't do the same? Are they, unlike you, lack some important parts in their brains that allow them to function independently? I doubt it.
>>> At the same time it needs to be the good, useful type of intervention that protects citizens against the abuses of the marketplace.
Marketplace is by definition a voluntary interaction, and participants in voluntary interaction can claim abuse only in one case - when one of the parties were fraudulent and did not deliver their end of the bargain. In this case, indeed, the government needs to step in and enforce the deal - or provide some other satisfactory resolution. But that's not what current law code is doing, it is very far from it. It actually tries to mold the marketplace into the shape and form that politicians prefer, and that's where most of the abuses come from.
This is a very naive view. Pretty much everything is poisonous at high enough dosages, but there are plenty of poisonous chemicals that are not immediately harmful at low levels.
You can have a restaurant, a food manufacturer, a water utility etc. contaminate (intentionally or otherwise) their product with low doses of chemicals that over time will cause health issues or even fatalities.
The marketplace itself cannot regulate such abuses. Even if such contamination was punishable by law, the time lag would ensure that consumers would not realize the impact until long after, perhaps even after the statute of limitations has expired.
Just look at third-world countries to see how the lack of regulation works out. Or China.
> ... I suggest changing you patronage to a better place.
I don't know whether my restaurant has rats in the kitchen. How could I? The entire point of health inspections is to find out what the consumer cannot possibly find out themselves.
> Why do you think everybody else can't do the same?
Trendy, swanky restaurants are routinely shut down for doing very bad things behind the scenes. So clearly they can't.
Companies don't work for you; they work for themselves. If they have no incentive to be good, they usually won't be good; because, say, it's less expensive to be highly hygienic. You just have to look at the literature of consumer abuses to see how companies will continually, eternally act for their own good, at the detriment of consumers.
