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Someone asked me about a dozen years ago to name a problem government solves that it doesn't first have a hand in creating.

I still haven't come up with one.




That doesn't seem too difficult.

- Maintenance of roadways and bridges - Governments don't create wear and tear, vehicles and weather do.

- Food safety standards - Governments aren't harvesting lettuce with e. coli or selling diseased meat.

- Public healthcare - Governments don't create disease, but they ensure access to healthcare (at least the good ones do).

- Building codes - Governments rarely build houses themselves, but they do enact requirements for acceptable building materials, wiring standards, safe insulations, and so on.

- Environmental regulation - It's not entirely accurate to say that governments create zero pollution, but it's an insignificant factor compared to the industries for which they control regulations.

I'm sure some could try to argue each of these points with very narrow counter-examples, or try to stretch the meaning of "have a hand in creating" to be so wide as to encompass everything. Governments are a major part of society, after all. But on the whole, these are solutions created in response to problems in society that emerged naturally, without government oversight, programs, or committees behind them.


I can think of a few:

- being invaded by another country - food safety - being robbed - being paid by my employer

Many more. They are not completely solved but vastly improved. Try places like Sudan or Somalia and see how life is without a functioning government.


This is such a tiresome cliche I can only assume you intended it to be humorous.

Reagan’s “nine most terrifying words in the English language” works just as well when you replace “government” with “corporate” or “church” or “mob” or even “next door”.


Reagan did enormous damage with this quote. Instead of asking for better government people now believe that government can never work. Unfortunately things don’t work without any government so we have a permeant state of bad government.


You can not think of a single problem anarchy might have?




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