Psst, the govt is doing more harm than good, it needs to be scaled back. We don't need more bureaucrats, more programs, more funding. Americans overwhelming just voted for Trump, you're dying on a crumbling hill.
Psst. There's a reason you can't give us any significant examples of doing more harm than good. You've bought a myth.
1. Looking at it as harm and good isn't even a very helpful framework. In many cases, the government is doing what needs to be done. Another poster mentioned mail service. Or park rangers. You can't have national system of parks without rangers staffing it. And there isn't anyone else to do it. It's not good or bad per se; it's necessary for the choices that people make. If you don't want to have national parks, then that can be your opinion. I don't think it would be popular.
2. In economics, there's a concept called "public goods." These are goods that have broadly positive impacts on society, but won't be supplied by the market because no market actor can capture all the benefits. A great example is the Erie Canal. Toll revenue can only capture the value of the canal transport. The economic explosion of New York can't be monetized. Another example is the interstate highway system. That couldn't be built privately. I mean, it could, but it would be much less extensive. All the economic growth the highway system pursued is dispersed throughout the population, and can't be recouped by the builders. So a private interstate system would connect big cities on heavily traveled routes. Would there be an I-85 or I-77? Almost certainly not.
Much of government spending consists in the provision of public goods. The ultimate public good, of course, is a military. Roads. Parks. Rural electrification. So on and so forth. There are a million examples. Fishery management to prevent overfishing.
You benefit from these public goods every single day, without realizing it. I don't know where you live. Say you live in RTP. A generation or two ago, RTP was a backwater. How and why did it change? First, a concentration of government funded educational institutions. Second, a quality highway (I-40, not much traveled back in the day). Third, research support. And it was those factors that led Cary to transform from rural outpost to vibrant suburban community. When I was a kid, people called Fuquay-Varina "the redneck capital of the world." Not so much any more.
So everyone who works in or around RTP has benefited from the public goods provided by the government. Let's say you run a restaurant in Cary. Your restaurant only exists because of I-40, because the RTP only exists because of I-40, and your clientele is only there because of I-40. You don't see the impact because it's invisible to you in daily life, but the government support was critical.
3. There are thousands of examples all over the country, in all aspects of life, of society benefiting from the government's provision of public goods.
This might be why I don't get bothered by "waste" in government like you do. Could roads be better maintained by private actors than the state DOT? Maybe. Let's assume the answer is yes. But we'd have many fewer roads. The choice isn't between "good road" and "bad road." The choice is between "road" and "no road at all." Are there inefficiencies in federal research subsidies? Probably. But again, the choice isn't "efficient funding" versus "inefficient funding." It's between funding and no funding.
No amount of cajoling or auditing or whatever can remove all of the inefficiency. Leaving aside the significant inefficiency in private companies (note: I earned 90-100K per year during law school for about 10-15 hours of week of work because Bristol-Myers' IT staff was unable to complete relatively simple IT projects, so they hired it out to me and I did myself what 5-7 IT people would otherwise do, and better), inefficiencies in government are going to exist. You can't motivate people to work 60 hours a week for many years on a government salary. Government employees punch out promptly at closing time. Fine. It can be annoying. But again, the choice isn't "efficient versus inefficient." It's whether the service exists at all.
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