It's interesting that you bring up environmental issues. Those are especially tricky, since they deal with the commons: our air and water, which are typically not privately owned and thus are legally forbidden from being handled by the free market.

And the military? Well, sure there are issues there. We can all agree on that.

Now, the military and environmental regulation are inextricably linked to the economy, no doubt about that. And their impact on the economy can be large, no doubt about that either. But there is so much which the government gets involved with - and where there is SO much money to be made via lobbying and influence peddling - which the government really doesn't need to be involved in.

I guess I'm saying that if the EPA and military corruption were the only issues we had to deal with, we'd be in a much better space than we are now.