See a toddler playing with a set of keys near an electrical socket? Dog shits on the floor? You know what to do. That's you enforcing the invisible hand of government that modifies behavior to affect the decisions of others for those moments of when someone is not looking over their shoulder's. Failure to heed these social controls can result in taxes, fines, incarceration, or even death when it's taken far enough. It's just what makes society function. Encourage. Discourage. Seriously, it's the foundation of capitalism. The person that conceptualized it is the only non-monarch or politician to be pictured on a British Bank Note. Adam Smith rivals Ben Franklin on his impact in creating the world we live in today. His writing helped inspire Theodore Roosevelt in creating the National Parks System. It was from his and the writings of John Locke that we got the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Now of course on the side of encourage and discourage, larger corporations are being encouraged to outsource work while small businesses are being heavily taxed to make up the revenue. Our government signing into free trade agreements only compounds the issue because it limits their ability to bring American industry back. Adam Smith also wrote about this.
On the individual level just as taxes on alcohol or tobacco are meant to discourage, that same discouragement is used to regulate industries in other ways through secondary means. You may smoke or drink and pay the taxes because you can afford that little extra bite in the wallet. You may speed because you're OK with getting that ticket or the increase in your car insurance premiums. Just like Paul Ryan, as an avid bow hunter, could afford the extra taxes on archery equipment when he created a law that added taxes to its cost and use. It's the same as when Mitt Romney passed a law that increased fees on horseback riding instructors. He could afford to pay the little extra because after all his wife Ann is an avid fan of equestrian events. Or even when as the Governor of Massachusetts when Romney raised gun licensing fees from $25 to $100. He could afford it, but also on its face was an attempt to limit availability of the right to carry a firearm. It's the same as Romney's secondary function would limit the amount of people that his wife Ann would be made to compete against in an event, or Paul Ryan's would limit competing bow hunters in the same forest he was hunting. It wasn't exactly poaching that got Robin Hood in trouble when he was found in King Henry's forest.
