I have often argued that we are far too swift to turn to government to answer all our problems, far too ready to assume that government, and only government can resolve problems. And when I say that, usually I get fairly strong support. at least until I get to the specifics. And then the doubts creep in. "How will kids learn without public schools?" Or "If the government doesn't control the money, who will regulate the amount of gold?" Or "What about predatory businessmen?" Or "How will we deal with natural disasters?"

The list goes on and on. Every matter which government has ever touched having now become, in the minds of many, inextricably bound up with the government solution. And so, the moment someone suggests that that specific issue could be resolved without government, the question arises "How?"

To which I respond, how did your house get built? How did your breakfast get cooked? How did you get to work this morning? How did your gall bladder get removed? How did you get dressed this morning?

You did it yourself. Or you paid someone to do it Or, in a few cases, someone volunteered to help. But in all those cases, private individuals came together, and, through voluntary agreement, they made or did something they all wanted accomplished. And they did it without the slightest hint of government.

And if we can use that solution to run almost every aspect of our daily lives, if we can use that approach to run almost the whole of our economy, then why can't it solve many problems we now think must be solved by the government?

There are two examples I like to use, as they seem to embody the sorts of problems people always suppose "must" be solved by government. Those are the barn raising and the volunteer fire department (at least as originally conceived). Let us look at the second first.

Before volunteer fire departments were absorbed by the local government in many districts, and some even became semi-professional, the volunteer fire department was precisely what its name said, a group of individuals who came together, raised money, trained themselves, or hired experts to train them, and agreed to help fight fires in an area poorly served by existing fire departments. It was, originally, independent of government, being a purely private venture. And yet, if I were to suggest today that a disaster of some sort could be handled by private initiative rather than government, I would be called an extremist nut. Yet the existence of such fire departments says otherwise, it argues some others agreed with me that problems, even life threatening ones, can be resolved by the community itself, through individual action, without needing to involve the government.

And the barn raising is a similar example, though a bit less clear. So, allow me a tiny introduction. In general, the left's argument for much of its welfare "safety net" is that private charity is not enough. Even in a rich community, people would not help. However, the barn raising argues against that. Barn raisings, for lack of a better description, are, effectively, collective assistance to those unable to afford to complete a task. I know the others who wax enthusiastic about barn raisings stress the "community" and "collective support" and all the other high sounding abstractions, but I look at it more simply. Those obtaining a finished barn from a barn raising supply the materials, but in general could probably not afford to hire the labor they receive for free. In effect, a barn raising is welfare. In exchange for a commitment to provide the same for others, the individual receives more labor than he could hope to hire. And all without the slightest sign of government.

Of course, in the past, before welfare (and the collapse of families) changed the nation, families also supplied a similar safety net, providing support for members without the state. But now the idea that families could support their members is mocked, thanks to our modern "Jerry Springer" mentality which sees no value in families.

There are certainly many other examples, from colonial era private militias* to privately run poor houses many things we consider government functions exclusively were once run, and most of the time run better, by private individuals. And perhaps that should not be a surprise, as many things we consider governmental functions today only became so when the government took over private concerns. But even in areas which have always been at least partly controlled by the state, there have been many examples of private versions. In fact, excluding police, courts and armies, there are few if any government functions it is impossible to imagine being run effectively by private bodies.

But, rather than continue with examples, let me make a very simple general case here.

Anything the government does is done, in concrete terms, by private individuals. The workers are all private individuals. The tools they use are purchased with funds taken in taxes from private individuals. Everything came from the private sector. Which means that, were we so inclined, we could eliminate the government body and perform an identical service with private staffing and funding. In fact, given the additional levels of oversight government requires ("Bureaucratic Management", "The Bureaucratic Mind", "Bureaucracy Revisited", "The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", "Bureaucratic Management and Self-Policing", "The Irrationality of Government Redistribution", and the general inefficiency in bureaucratic management, odds are good that a private venture would be less costly.

Of course, we don't want to do precisely that, as getting rid of the government body to replace it with an identical private body would be like getting rid of a bad house guest by filling his bed with someone just as annoying. Government often performs functions poorly, either because it splits apart tasks that should be combined, or combines tasks that should be separate. It also tends to pile upon excessive management, to manage things with excessively intrusive management, and otherwise make a mess of things. All of which would be bad practices to model in our private replacement. Similarly, some of the functions government performs may not be needed at all, and so a private substitute would be just as pointless as the government original.

But that can be discussed elsewhere, precisely what can be done privately, and what should be done. My point is only that the government has no special traits making it better at, say, disaster relief than private individuals**. When it comes to many functions, though we imagine they must be performed by the state, the fact is the state has no special insight, no skills, which make them a more likely candidate than your community association, the Boy Scouts, your book club, knitting circle or the Rotary. And yet, for reasons that are beyond me, we inevitably turn to the government to solve our every problem.

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* Clearly, self-defense is probably a poor choice for a task to make private, especially as that is one of the few tasks which the government should be performing. But my point here is that functions we consider "government" have not always been so, and almost anything can be done privately.

** Some would say government has a monopoly on the use of force, but that is not true. As I argued in "A Right Is A Right", "My Vision of Government", "My Vision of Government Part II" and "Free Speech, Absolute Rights and the Absurdity of "Balancing Tests"", we only deputize government with powers, so individuals still retain the same rights to the use of force as government. Of course, as government is created to serve as a collective self-defense, it does make sense to entrust it with such tasks, but no more.

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POSTSCRIPT

I have written many posts on the same topic. The best place to start would be my posts "Defending Freedom?", "Impractical Pragmatists", "You Lose When You Think You Win", "Selling Yourself Cheap", "The FairTax's Liberal Assumptions", "Doing Something", ""Doing Something" Revisited", "What We Deserve",  "Don't Blame the Politicians", "Who Is To Blame?", "What is Wrong with Us", "The Single Greatest Weakness", "The Difficulty of Principle" and "Damn the Torpedoes!".

POSTSCRIPT II

I suppose the best argument to make would be to say that government is itself just one form of collective action. If we divide things into "government" and "non-government", we elevate its importance, the same way dividing good into "eggs' and "not eggs" would over-emphasize eggs. Instead we should view government as just one of many ways individuals interact, so as not to grant it too great a significance. But, as those in government gain quite a bit from their privileged position, I doubt this view will gain much support.