Oh come on man, look around. The government provides your street lights, your street cleaning, in some areas picks up your garbage, passes laws that make society work, provides police protection from criminals and jails criminals, provides for the countries defence, puts your house out if it catches on fire, regulates your food so you don't get poisoned, Jeez I could go on for pages. Our government is a very good part of what makes this country great.
Many of those things don't have to be done by government, in some cases they already are done by the private sector, in other cases they easily could be. Also add all of that together and you don't come close to what the government does. You could post a thousand things that you think the government benefits us by doing but than there would be a thousand more where it causes harm. And not all of what it does in those areas are good (for example many laws that the government passes are not good)
I think there are some areas where the government clearly should be involved. Basic maintenance of order, and protection of the people from violence or other forms of violation.
Other areas seem to be good ideas for the government to get involved in. Perhaps defense beyond just direct response to attack or invasion (this can go to far, for example you would argue Iraq is to far, but whether or not Iraq was a good idea most people think we should have some ability to protect Americans, America's allies, and America's interest outside of our border, and a majority wouldn't limit this to retaliating against countries or organizations that directly attack the US). Also while some roads could be provided privately I don't think you could go to a completely private system. Maybe you could have private toll highways, but ordinary streets don't allow for enough revenue to support a private sector effort (and the effort to collect the revenue would itself be difficult, annoying and expensive).
And I wouldn't limit things to just those cases.
But much of what government does isn't even clearly good. And much of what is good, isn't necessarily worth the cost, or something that couldn't be done more efficiently or with less restriction on freedom by the private sector. |
