There is something — probably many things — wrong about the way laws are made at the legislative session each year. What should be a deliberate, thoughtful process becomes a melee.

It has to do with the frenzy of it all, the lack of perspective, the scrum for limited resources and the constant awareness of how it all looks.

Elected officials spend so much time thinking about the next election and how their every move will play out. Voters remind them constantly that not only could they lose their position in the next go-round, but they also could be humiliated and have to go back to some flop job where they don’t get an expense account for fresh lei and nobody calls their name to stand up and wave at community events. Their adversaries are always there to second-guess and whisper-whisper and jump them at a moment of weakness.

It’s so “Hunger Games.”

If you’re not into teen dystopian lit, “The Hunger Games” is a pretty good trilogy of teen novels that were made into movies starring Jennifer Lawrence. They’re bleak, violent but fairly stylish and with a strong moral spine.

The story describes an annual survival contest among representatives of 12 districts. The Games, which are controlled by the Capitol, are a fight to the death over basics, like food and supplies, but also luxuries.

There’s a scene early in “The Hunger Games” when all the contestants emerge at once and have to scramble for the packs of supplies and weapons that the Capitol has put out for them. Some grab and run. Some use the opportunity to take out as many competitors as they can. It’s brutal, but it’s only the beginning of the game, and what counts almost as much as ruthlessness is popularity and stage presence.

Just like opening day of the Legislature.

Except at our state Capitol everybody is in the game.

The thing is, though, we are not living in a time of scarcity. There’s enough for everyone’s basic needs. The state is flush. Yet the game continues because somebody always wants more, be it wealth or power or both. It’s not that everyone involved is consciously making it so bleak and desperate. It’s more systemic, like the machine of government that undoes the best of human nature.

If compassion and reason won out instead of cunning and the careful culling of public image, maybe more good would get done — actual good, like the solving of existing problems rather than the endless debating of new rules for state departments smothered by thousands of rules already on the books.

Legislators who fail to introduce bills — putting no points in the board — are seen in our current game as being ineffective, ripe for knocking off in the next election.

Maybe we should start putting a premium on restraint, giving the nod to the person who submits five smart, relevant, workable bills per session rather than 40 empty ones that just take up everyone’s time but give the impression that our legislators are somehow “playing hard” and “winning.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.