In looking for a proper term for the tyranny of the busybody, one of our pernicious current social problems, I consulted with our associate Greek scholar, Jan Libourel, who is an editor for Petersen Publications. Jan took his advanced degree at Oxford and should know about such things. It turns out that the Greek term for a busybody is polypragmaton. If you tag "ocracy" onto the end you get a big one - polypragmonocracy. It is used to denote a social condition in which people charge madly around tending to other people's business. This is rife in the US today, but it is even worse in England, where the Brits, who have no Bill of Rights, are continuously passing garbage regulations infringing upon the behavior of the private citizen. As I understand it, you even have to have a national permit to acquire a pet. The human race got along for centuries without this concentration on regulation of all phases of life. There are some cases of this in classical Athens, and of course, we have the example of the Puritans in New England, but generally speaking, respectable behavior was a private matter, not reasonably actionable by law. Certainly throughout the world we have far too many people, and "percentage-wise" that means we have too many lawyers. When you have too many people and too many lawyers you have polypragmonocracy.
