Yes, but then pesticide is an example of when the collective must be weighed against individual behaviour. It has an impact beyond your garden to the larger environment. Does your right to spray a potentially harmful chemical weigh more than others right to a safe environment?

I do not disagree that we are buried in rules and regulations. But I would not place all the blame on bureaucrats. they don't like them as much as you imagine. Rules and regulations can increase their workload as well as create risk (public exposure of a rule being broken leading to death or injury). Certainly the laws and regulations are the tool of the trade and default reaction is to bring out the tool for any problem. Then again, just what is the problem and why?

Then there is public demand. Just look at the public response to that poor young toddler who died at a daycare - there was a public outcry against the government even though the daycare in question was an unregulated daycare.