What do you think government does? What does it do for you?

Government paves my roads, provides air traffic control so the plane I’m on doesn’t hit another plane, regulates building codes so my house doesn’t collapse around me and punishes people who intend to harm me or take advantage of me.

It provides emergency services and garbage and recyclables pick-up.

20, male, rural, mixed political views.

The government kills an awful lot of people it shouldn’t be killing.
It also gives me roads and the shitty public schools I went too (though I did have some good teachers).

You win some, you lose some.

It spends lots and lots of money that it doesnt have.
If a business or person acted as the government does, they would be either bankrupt or in jail for counterfeiting money.
And as fiddle said, it kills an awful lot of people.

Government at its best makes civil society possible. If you want to find the real hell holes of the planet, look around for places with little or no government. Even hideous totalitarian states like North Korea are better places to live than places with completely failed states.

Here’s a writeup about what the US government does to make our lives better. Conservatives, please avoid the knee-jerk desire to dismiss what the author says because you don’t like the messenger.
http://tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_middle-.html

-Infrastructure
-Education
-Safety (police, fire, military)
-Enforces fairness in business
-Enforces rights of citizen against other citizens, companies and even government itself
-Law and Justice
-Health
-Welfare/Social Security
-Safety, quality and code-of-conduct standards for industry, both for products, services and employment
-excellent public transportation

Government is a tool, for the people to use so they may achieve their goals.
Not using it and making things harder for everyone out of pure selfishness is pure silliness to me.

If you feel I missed things, feel free to add.

The US government is a monopoly gobbling up ever-larger swaths of free enterprise. People like me have mailed in as much money as we earned in an entire decade of our lives but yet the government still loses money. The government borrows money in the trillions but finding this insufficient prints even more. Like an 1800 lb woman some tiny portion in there is functional and necessary.

Idaho, US, rural, human.
“Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.”
-John Locke. Quotes are lovely ways to sum up philosophy without much typing.

The sole purpose of government is to maintain government.

Government, among other things, allows us to do together what would be incredibly burdensome for us each to do for ourselves.

Enforces law and order.
Without it we would still be living in the wild west.