Once again I’m lucky enough to be back in Nova Scotia.

In the summer.

Here, the Conservatives (“Progressive Conservatives”, to be exact, in an oxymoronic way) just got booted and the New Democratic Party is in. When I left over twenty years ago, the NDP was the fringe party. Too liberal (in the modern, Western sense) for a proud liberal province in a proud liberal country. So I’ve been talking to people to understand what’s going on here.

The first thing I discover is that nobody really knows what the policy of NDP is. They might have become the most moderate, mature and cautious choice.  They might be to the left of Greenpeace. Nobody knows, and for the most part, nobody cares. The NDP, despite being in power now, are still the butt of jokes. Indeed the fact they got elected is a source of (I suspect – unfair) political humor.

But few are concerned. And few are hopeful. People have accepted that not much will change. For better or worse, the nanny state is no longer in the hands of elected officials. It functions via the enforcement of many tens of thousands of constantly growing and changing regulations. The state is run by career bureaucrats and supported by a profoundly liberal court. And business has long adapted to the redistribution of money and regulatory agencies that are at least as powerful as the market. Business always adapts.

And the nanny state won’t grow much, because it can’t. Taxes are already beyond the point of diminishing returns. Even the current and still popular environmental religion is showing signs of regulatory fatigue here.

Elections are viewed as a way to contain corruption via indirect terms limits, and a tool to give officials fair time at the trough.

This is the terminal state of nanny states. These things are much harder to unwind than to create. And the reason is that is harder to reduce public sector spending than to increase it.

The Democrats in America know this. They are trying to capitalize on the popularity of Obama, the power of a super majority and fear of economic collapse and any other crisis to quickly ratchet the state up.

 It might work.

Mike.