> Can you give me one example of government wealth creation?
I think that's the wrong question, and a loaded one at that. It is probably more objective to think about government's role in providing a stable foundation for the private sector to produce wealth. There are countless examples of that, such as a reliable and just regulatory framework within which to operate, negotating treaties for international trade, creating infrastructure that lead to incredible wealth creation (think the internet), to name just a tiny few.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has the Rom-- government ever done for us?
At best, government and civilization is a chicken-and-egg relationship, where you could perhaps argue that anywhere civilization occurs, a government does as well. I doubt that's even provably true anyway.
But the idea that a government first forms and then bestows upon us the gift of civilization would be incorrect. I suppose you're being flippant since you didn't bother to justify that comment.
> that anywhere civilization occurs, a government does as well
This is because beyond a certain amount of complexity (e.g. on the path to civilization), you better have a government what orchestrates favorable outcomes.
One way to frame it might be a chicken/egg problem, as you say, but that just begs the question whether one can meaningfully exist without the other?
If we wanted to do this properly, we would have to look at opportunity costs, and see what that money / resources could have done otherwise.
To give a related example: war often leads to innovation. In our current universe, the second world war lead to digital computers.
However, IBM (and others) were already hard at work improving their computing devices and would have landed at electronic, digital computers sooner or later, too. Without spending something like ~50% of world GDP nor killings tens of millions of people.
For another really egregious example: have a look at manned space exploration. Specifically the International Space Station. Google said its total costs were about 150 billion USD. Compare '20 Breakthroughs from 20 Years of Science aboard the International Space Station' https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/iss...
That least is pretty meagre. They even have to cite spending money by itself as a 'breakthrough'. Almost all of their 'breakthroughs' could have been done for cheaper with unmanned space flight (and most of them are useless and irrelevant anyway.)
They could have left those 150 billion USD with the taxpayer, and private industry would have surely used them better.
Yes. I didn't bring them up, because most of their customer base is still governments, and that would have muddied the argument.
(I think that (most of) space exploration should be left completely to the private sector, not just the execution, but also the financing.
Even if you think that the government should be involved in the sciences, manned space flight is pretty much a more expensive version of unmanned space flight.
It's useful as entertainment only, so far. Eg the moon landing was great entertainment, better than a Marvel movie. But also more expensive. I don't think the government should be involved in providing entertainment.
But in any case, after the moon landing, the amount of inspiration coming out of manned space flight has dropped dramatically.)
There's more to the private sector than profit seeking corporations. Basically, everything that's not the government 'lives' there: clubs, charities, churches, foundations, etc.
If there's enough will in the population to vote for spending tax payer money on space exploration, surely there's enough willingness to crowdfund the whole thing?
And if people only want space exploration if they can vote other people's money to finance it, but don't want to put their own money where their mouth is, I'm not sure that would be a ringing endorsement?
> If you’re fine with there being no space exploration whatsoever. Which is a reasonable view, it’s very expensive and highly unprofitable.
I like space exploration, but I wouldn't want to force other people to pay for my aberrant preferences.
There's almost no use of nuclear weapons against two nuclear armed countries that doesn't walk up the tit for tat escalation ladder. Perun did a video about this a while back and it's pretty terrifying.
I think that's the wrong question, and a loaded one at that. It is probably more objective to think about government's role in providing a stable foundation for the private sector to produce wealth. There are countless examples of that, such as a reliable and just regulatory framework within which to operate, negotating treaties for international trade, creating infrastructure that lead to incredible wealth creation (think the internet), to name just a tiny few.