The government does us more harm than good.

The merit and good of government in our affairs can be simply proven through empirical and historical evidence. Let's look back to a simple measure such as food safety before and after Theodore Roosevelt as one great example. In the late 19th century, our nation could best be described as a corparatocracy. Corporations ran and financed most of the major presidential campaigns and ensured that populists such as Willian Jennings Bryan were shut out of any real chance of winning office. More importantly, the supreme court had time and again limited federal government ( and state courts had limited state government) ability to impose restrictions on trade. The supreme court had continually argued that corporations were just like private individuals and deserved the same right and safeguards. In this government free vortex, we saw the emrgence of essentially a market of low wage labor exploitation and the degradation of standards in terms of products. The court used a caveat emptor ( buyer beware) standard that stated that consumers were responsible for all of their purchases not corporations. What emerged from this policy was a cespool of foul filth and disease. Food companies employed few if any checks on their production ( as best seen by the classic muckraking work the jungle) and sold utterly unsane and nutrient products. Furthermore, corporate monopolies were free to crowd the market and force higher prices for their vastly inferior products. When the government took action-limited, tentative and admitedly flawed as government action can often be- many of these measures improved for the better. Resonable laws against child labor or unfair practices allowed children to have the time and ability to go to school and improve their prospective futures ( not to mention that without government we have no public schools and all of these poor children would continue to be uneducated), improved safety standards on food products ensured that consumers would not recieve poisonous filth that would get them sick, ( Indeed, today's problems with e coli stem from lax enforcement on the part of the FDA and an unwillingness to require corporations to fully disclose what goes into their prducts or hold stringest checks- once again government falls at the behest of corporations and public interest falters) and anti-monopoly actions on the part of the government ensured that corporations would have a harder time conspiring to artifically raise prices. The most important thing to emphasize here is that all of these changes could not have properly happened in the free marker and without force. Consumer demands and even worker strikes could never reach a proper level of agitation to require serious changes and monopolies ensure that consumers have no where else to go to voice their complaint or vote with their dollars. It is only through a robust government that such nefarious corporate domination can be stopped. I am uncertain from your argument if you are trying to argue for a purely anarchist system without any government or meerly one that does not limit market forces. If you mean the later my above arguments are appropriate, but I'd like to adress an extra point if perhaps by implying that the government does more harm than good that it should be abolished in total. I would love to see you explain a system of law and order that can not be enforced without government at some level. How do we create and impose basic laws and punishments for violations of these laws without some institution in place. The closest model for a non governmental society that also had law and order would perhaps be iceland in the 10th or 11th century in which feudal family warfare was rampant and families came together at feast time to form a legal body to rule of matters. There was no total government but instead unending warfare between members of different clans structured around a notion of honor and revenge ( see the epic Njal's Saga). Is this really what you support, or do you have an alternative vision of no government. Furthermore, the burden falls on you to prove exactly how said system would be better than the status quo or any democratic government in the world today.