&gt; Many economists would consider this to be a problem that falls under their realm of expertise.<p>Econ 101 doesn&#x27;t opine on the relative efficiency merits of government vs private sectors...makes me wonder if you have ever even taken an economics course. You misrepresent both Economics as a field of study <i>and</i> the argument I was trying to make (which was an argument by logical reasoning, not economic reasoning). If you&#x27;ll notice, I even mentioned a specific government (the german government) as one I would entrust my money to, so it should be pretty fucking obvious the argument never was about government vs private, but rather <i>our</i> government vs private.<p>&gt; Can you provide counterexamples? If you look, there is plenty of competency in both sectors.<p>Yes, I can provide counterexamples, but that I&#x27;m not gonna beat up your straw man for you. There <i>is</i> plenty of competency in both sectors, but you can&#x27;t deny that if my money goes to the US government, that a <i>significantly</i> large portion of it will go to extremely bad ideas, such as blowing arabs up and funding the militaries of foreign governments that will help blow up more arabs, subsidizing millionaire farmers, subsidizing automobile travel, creating laws that imprison people for victimless crimes and building the expensive prisons to house them for mandatory minimum amounts of time, etc.<p>Sure, we democratically elected this shit, but we could democratically elect any pile of shit and it would still be a pile of shit. I see no utilitarian value in respecting the whims of 51% of the population.