History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to live in.
In time of trouble, you can turn for help to family, friends, neighbors, private charity, or government. In roughly descending order of efficiency and humanity.
Including government at the end of that chain is a noble attempt to make sure no one falls through the cracks--like the federal reserve as a "lender of last resort". The problem is that, like the federal reserve, the guarantee at the end of the chain changes the dynamics at the front.
We respond to a government guarantee to care for the old and infirm by not doing it ourselves. Why plan to care for your mother when the government will do it? Why support private orphanages when you pay taxes to support institutionalizing them?
The result is emaciated expectations of family, friends and neighbors, and sickly private charity. Government may be inefficient and inhumane, but it's cheap--spending someone else's money--and it's guaranteed. So it dominates the space. And when the other options die away through disuse, it looks like there are no other options. And all that's left is dependence on the state.
The idea that it's government care or no care is an illusion created by a couple generations of government dependence. I am convinced that our way -- institutions, beaurocrats -- is really the inhumane way to care for the poor. I want to get rid of it, not because I don't care, but because I do.
Almost all of the industrialized nation have some sort of safety net and/or universal health care. On the other side of the spectrum you get countries like Somalia, where they, you know, do let people die.
I had thought I would find counterexamples in places like the Antebellum south, or ancient Rome, and while I found a reduced emphasis on the state, I did not find it completely gone. And while my off the cuff memory is that there are places in the world, even today, where the obligation for children to care for their parents in old age is so complete that people have children for that very purpose, I don't have a citation for it. And I really don't have the experience to know whether it's preferable.
On a personal level, I see very vividly the evils of institution and bureaucracy: the people it misses, the way it mistreats even the people it helps. I have helped homeless friends with transitions from shelter to shelter, even opened my home to them when it was appropriate; I don't think highly of the treatment they get, well out of the public eye. And I'm pretty sure if the city hadn't been there as an option, I'd have done more, and they'd have been better off. Is it good the city was there? I guess. But I hate the false dilemma that says it is the only way, and my instinct is that family, friends, and community are far better.
I do not know what the correct role is for the state, but I cannot but hate anything that weakens the responsibility of a man to care for himself, or that seeks to replace the hospitality that family, friends and neighbors owe to each other.
NPR's excellent Planet Money podcast did a few shows on Denmark, which is like an economic bizarro-world. Employment law is such that it's really easy to fire people, but they have a very strong social safety net (2 years unemployment, or something like that) so the workforce is very fluid. Employers aren't as afraid to hire people (as they are in countries with strong labor laws like France) because they don't have the same fear of legal or interpersonal repercussions. Firing in Denmark is no big deal.
Taxes are progressive, crazy high, support fully subsidized health care, and the people there are the happiest in the world.
Note: I'm not trying to say every country should be just like Denmark, but just that the way we've always done things isn't the only way that can work.
On the other hand, you see people who complain about how "government can't do anything right" and "all regulation is bad" yet they don't realize the only reason that their houses survive earthquakes without killing them is that their houses comply with government designed and enforced building codes. There's a reason the Haitian earthquake killed more people than stronger earthquakes in other places. Haiti has had "limited government" for decades.
It's easy to paint limited government as a moral ideal, and it's easy to find prominent examples of government failures. I personally hate bureaucracy as much as anyone else. The fact remains that a lot of people (often quietly) get meaningful help from our overall society via democratically elected governments.
> There's a reason the Haitian earthquake killed more people than stronger earthquakes in other places. Haiti has had "limited government" for decades.
That's actually false. Haiti ranks as the 141st economically free country in the world out of around 200, and 24th out of 29 in the Caribbean. Government spending is around 20% of GDP, the income tax rates are comparable to the USA, but the property tax rate is sky high - up to as much as 15%. So no, Haiti hasn't had "limited government" the way Singapore or Hong Kong has limited government. They've got quite a bit of government going on, it just happens to both inept and corrupt.
I still like building codes, though :)
Building codes have got nothing to do with it. My sister went there a few weeks ago. I've seen pictures. Some of those houses look to me like they'd fall over in a stiff rainstorm.
[Edit: The hospital my sister helped build is the subject of the video featured on this page: http://heartlineministries.org/EarthquakeNeeds.aspx . If you haven't seen Haiti, it's worth looking at the community they served and the problems they solved.]
There are good arguments for having some services provided by the state (though we may argue whether they are good enough arguments). I did not take the grand parent as making the argument that everything the state does is evil.
It baffles me that people think social development can be somehow exempted from evolutionary processes. Call it callous or compassionless, if you want, but there will always be less fit members of a species/society. Humans didn't get to this spot on the food chain by subsidizing failure. If we want to increase prosperity, we should stop encouraging the propagation of actions/ideas/genes that would otherwise be unsustainable without throwing short-sighted policy and/or tax money at it.
I just don't buy the idea that the short-sighted whims of politics can make the world a better place.
[edit: adding for clarity: "stop encouraging" DOES NOT translate as "start discouraging"]