[FreqSep]

Look, I am far from pro-government interference. That being said, I personally disagree with much of your argument here.

You implicitly agree to some measure when you participate in the society set up by government.

There is today a very common attitude that governments are intentionally only serving a small elite. This populist - perhaps even intuitive - rhetoric is exaggerated for most of the Western world.

If you’re living on your own out in the wilderness, I can see your argument. But this actually does exist to some degree in how uncontacted peoples[0] are generally not subject to the laws of the government whos jurisdiction they fall under. This isn’t a lifestyle most of us would choose but perhaps there is some merit to making this path easier to take for those who desire it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

[jdasdf]

I dispute your assertion that society is setup by the government.

[FreqSep]

Yes, I agree and see now that I made a bad choice of words there.

Correcting it I would rephrase it to say that massive components of society are directly facilitated by the government as one example: (roads -> shipped goods, travel experiences, etc)

[verisimi]

How do you like that the roads previous generations paid for are now being turned into bike lanes, that you pay to park, etc.

Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?

[FreqSep]

Well, roads are temporary and it becomes a bit of a ship of Theseus question there to say who actually paid for them.

> Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?

Government is allowed to occasionally make the wrong decision. Perfection is an imperfect standard.

[photochemsyn]

A small elite utilizing a governmental structure to control a much larger human population is basically the story of history since the dawn of agriculture and the formation of city-states.

A radical relatively recent notion is that democratic systems of government which allowed the public to elect representatives to the decision-making positions within the government would alter this historical dynamic and would eliminate the concentration of real power in the hands of a small group of elites. This notion hasn't really worked out in the USA as it's rather clear that American politicians today almost universally serve as the equivalents of corporate middle managers within a larger power structure controlled by entities like large banks and hedge funds, industrial conglomerates in energy/tech/pharma/ag/etc, military industrial contractors and affiliated government bureaucracies, and corporate and state propaganda organizations, who funnel wealth up to a tiny minority (quite similar in proportional structure to say, the House of Saud's ~15,000 affiliates relative to the Saudi population of what, ~35 million?)

The alternative approach of communism has merely replaced one set of elites (inherited aristocratic wealth) with another (members of government bureaucracies selected by internal bureaucratic politics, see China for example), where the general population doesn't even have the illusion of being represented in a democratic process. In some cases (Cuba) this has indeed raised the average standard of living for the majority of the population, which is an uncomfortable fact for many, although repression of all dissent tends to be the price for that.

Now, maybe equalizing technology can get us out of this mess to some extent, but it truly dates back to the origins of what we call civilization. Kings and priests weren't really possible until farmers figured out how to grow far more food than they themselves needed; some narcissitic types figured out they could control this excess and use it to set themselves up at the top of the social pyramid (rather literally as in Egypt, Mesoamerica, etc.), and that's continued relatively unchanged right on up to the present day (with some improvements of course, for example the elimination of chattel slavery in most places).