"Good" Government

The litmus test for "good" government action is: Does this action violate anyone's individual rights in the name of privileges or manufactured rights? Yes? Then the government has planned a crime. Conspiracy charges anyone?

One simple truth that could be endlessly reiterated, and effectively applied to nine-tenths of the statist proposals now being put forward or enacted in such profusion, is that the government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from somebody else. In other words, all its relief and subsidy schemes are merely ways of robbing Peter to support Paul.

from Henry Hazlitt's Man vs. The Welfare State

One of the key words in that passage is "robbing." Government is literally stealing your money to finance social engineering.

And that's just government's redistribution schemes. The government has invented rights like the right to live in a state that bans prostitution, or "protects" us form unlicensed physicians. Those manufactured rights violate the rights of others to do whatever they want to do, as long as that work or behavior does not harm another person.

And control of careers leads to another form of theft. Government steals opportunities from individuals, by outright banning potential jobs or by making the cost of entry too high for many to attempt. Tack on to that the testing and interview requirements for many occupational licenses that limit additional numbers of individuals able to enter occupations beyond any manufactured "safety" standards, after individuals have already invested in government-mandated training to enter those occupations.