[54mf]

"Society creates government, not the other way around..."

And government supports and enriches society. It's symbiotic, not parasitic.

"claim credit for what people have created on their own"

Nobody creates anything on their own. Full stop. Every single citizen is supported by countless public infrastructure initiatives, from transportation to safety to education to etc etc, without which no significant achievement would be possible.

[logicchains]

>Nobody creates anything on their own. Full stop. Every single citizen is supported by countless public infrastructure initiatives, from transportation to safety to education to etc etc, without which no significant achievement would be possible.

America's fastest growth rate was in the 1800s, when public spending was extremely small compared to today, so clearly the current level of spending isn't necessary for achievement. Especially given most of the US budget is spent on military and welfare.

[54mf]

Do you mean the Industrial Revolution? I think there were other factors at play besides the amount of public spending.

[nybble41]

> Every single citizen is supported by countless public infrastructure initiatives, from transportation to safety to education to etc etc, without which no significant achievement would be possible.

And who do you think is paying for all those initiatives? The government doesn't create, it only redistributes. Transportation, education, etc. would exist perfectly well without the government getting involved. Their "contribution" consists solely in taking the money that would have gone to those things—or other things that people considered even more valuable—and channeling it through their own programs. There is no value-add, just concentration of power, curtailment of viable alternatives, and a much increased scope for corruption and general inefficiency.

> And government supports and enriches society. It's symbiotic, not parasitic.

It's not a pure parasite, true, but even if a symbiote happens to perform some necessary function for the host as a side-effect that doesn't imply that the host wouldn't be better off fulfilling that need some other way. This is not a healthy relationship. The point is to maximize the value to the host. The needs of the "symbiote" are irrelevant, yet it actively discourages competition and violently resists being removed or replaced.

[theplague42]

So many assertions, so little evidence. Surely there is value added by basic research funded by the government, technology created for space or military purposes, and providing the enforcement of laws necessary for people to want to start businesses in the first place!