When considering the prospect of a minimal or even non-existent state, many are understandably concerned about how society would function. Doesn’t the government provide vital services “behind the scenes” that keep society running? Wouldn’t there be chaos and disorder without those services?
These are legitimate apprehensions that are worth taking seriously. Leaping into a vastly different governing system could cause serious problems, so we need to be confident before we make the leap that we aren’t jumping into a dystopia. Fortunately, economic reasoning gives us good reasons to be optimistic. Specifically, the fact that markets reliably respond to consumer demand can give us confidence that essential “behind the scenes” services will be provided by private businesses in the government’s absence.
To demonstrate how this could work, let’s consider some of the common items that get listed as examples of “government keeping society running in the background.” As we’ll see, every one of these items inevitably falls into one of two categories: things the government has monopolized and that could easily be addressed by the private sector, and things that shouldn’t be done in the first place.
Yes, free markets do work better than the government or government controlled markets to the benefit of all. If you do not have the imagination to foresee the shape the economy or entrepreneurs would provide the services that the government currently provides, that is the fault of your faulty imagination and non-entrepreneurial spirit. You already know that the free market, without government guidance, provides necessities and desires of the consumers at the most efficient possible manner, so why continue with the myth of government efficiency? The state is never efficient, is it? A good example is a privately owned and run DMV station versus a state owned DMV office. Your waiting time and transaction time are vastly different.