The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power.

Bovard’s line distills a recurring theme in his libertarian critique of the modern administrative state: as government grows in scope, ordinary life becomes more exposed to coercive encounters with bureaucracies that can punish first and justify later. By naming concrete, feared points of contact—tax enforcement and child-support bureaucracy—he emphasizes that “big government” is not only an abstract budgetary issue but a daily risk of investigation, seizure, or sanction. The claim that agencies have “little or no legal restraints” underscores concerns about broad discretion, weak oversight, and procedural imbalance, suggesting that expansion of state power tends to outpace the safeguards meant to limit it.