  Rather than appealing to a background conception of a good human life, indirect arguments more frequently appeal to more mundane facts about the competence of modern governments. For a variety of reasons, it is often thought that modern governments simply are not up to the task of promoting the good. It will be helpful to distinguish local from global versions of this objection. It might be true that a particular state should not directly promote the good. Those in power in this state might hold false beliefs about the good, for example. In addition, it might be true that states in general should not directly promote certain objective goods. Friendship is a good that plausibly contributes to the objective value of human lives, but if states try to promote it directly they may do more harm than good. These are both instances of local worries about perfectionist politics.