Thinking about government

I spend a lot of time thinking about the role of the state in my life. I’m interested in the legitimate role and how far that should extend. For more than a decade, I’ve been thinking about how the state is bigger than I am comfortable with. I’ve concluded that the state itself takes too much and gives too little. Thinking about how to fix that could easily consume the next century of my life. Luckily, I’m not alone in thinking about the role of the state. Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek is also thinking about government . The cleverly titled Your Dog Does Not Own Your House is well worth reading. Even if we stipulate, for purposes of argument, that the state is the only possible, or the best possible, supplier of protection against violence and the best possible supplier of dispute-resolution services, society as we know it would nevertheless collapse were it not for farmers, tailors, home-builders, physicians, lawyers, stockbrokers, engineers,...