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dublinben · 4595 days ago · link · · parent · post: What are the benefits of government that cannot be replicated?
Anything that is a public good cannot be protected or delivered except through collective action, most commonly by government. Examples of public goods would include lighthouses, clean air, national defense, street lights, broadcast radio/television, etc.
There are plenty of other things that are not necessarily public goods, yet are still more equitably or efficiently delivered by government, like health care or law enforcement.
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That may be true, but the question is a matter of which collective actions can be performed better without government.
I don't know of an example where fire protection worked well when not organized by a governing body. It was private at one point in the US. That didn't work too well.