Government DOES create wealth. I will give you one key example:
It was the government ie kings and the feudal aristocracy which built the legal order, suppressed the banditry, civilized the barbarians, created the stable money, safe roads, defeated foreign enemies, protected the cities and merchants on the roads.
Thanx to the above merchants became prosperous and powerful, removed the king from power and demanded that market becomes the highest standard. Merchants want state to exist only in the aspect of protecting their wealth ie police, courts, prisons and military. The rest of society to be damned.
But it does not work that way, the revolutionaries have seen the opening and the Communism and Fascism filled the vacuum. Merchants are not fit to be the guides for the society, left to their own devices they will wreck it.
The kings of the world are grown old, inheritors they shall have none. In childhood death removes the son, their daughters pale have given, each one, sick crowns to the powers to hold. Into coin the rabble breaks them, today's lord of the world takes them, stretches them into machines in his fire, grumbling they serve his every desire; but happiness stills forsakes them. The ore is homesick. And it yearns to leave the coin and leave the wheel that teach it to lead a life inane. The factories and tills it spurns; from petty forms it will uncongeal, return to the open mountain's vein, and on the mountain will close again.(Rainer Maria Rilke from Book of Hours. Translated by Albert Hofstadter as part of Heidegger's What Are Poets For?)
I see. your opponents quote a Nobel-prize winning economist and you quote poetry and damn 'merchants' for daring to be 'ungrateful' to kings.
"It was the government ie kings and the feudal aristocracy which built the legal order, suppressed the banditry, civilized the barbarians, created the stable money, safe roads, defeated foreign enemies, protected the cities and merchants on the roads."
Er, more likely, it was the kings and lords who created a legal that enabled them to keep the spoils of production and reduce others to servitude, aka serfdom.
The alternative to it is known as Freedom. America decided to get rid of Kings in 1776, and the decision on whether slavery or free labor was the right and just way to organize economies was decided by 1865 .... so your points are a tad out-dated.
The general point that Governments proper roles to "built the legal order, suppressed the banditry, civilized the barbarians, created the stable money, safe roads, defeated foreign enemies, protected the cities and merchants" ... is agreeable to me. Government is designed, as Locke noted, as a civil compact that enables societies to protect the rights of the citizens therein. The government role includes:
1. Build the legal order
2. Suppress bandits/criminals and have safe roads
3. Create stable money
4. protect from foreign enemies
...
These are the kinds of things Governments can do. By itself though it is NOT wealth creation, it is merely creating conditions of stability and safety so that private enterprise can flourish. That's my point ... NONE of these things are about restricting commerce, but about ENABLING commerce. I support such a conception of Government, as does any 'free market' or 'free enterprise' supporter.
"Thanx to the above merchants became prosperous and powerful, removed the king from power and demanded that market becomes the highest standard."
Oh dear, those ungrateful merchants! They should keep the King on high, and let him enjoy the fruits of their labor eh? LOL. and btw, what 'higher standard' is the king upholding?! Violence, despotism, beheading of dissidents?
"Merchants want state to exist only in the aspect of protecting their wealth ie police, courts, prisons and military. The rest of society to be damned."
Man are you a misguided soul... You actually think there is something wrong with rights of property!
Protecting property protects everybody. Property rights are the cornerstone of human rights. Without property rights, no newspaper can exist; without property rights, a man is a serf to the state-owned enterprise to whom his living is owed.
After all your caterwauling against free enterprise, it comes down to this - you hate materialism itself!
Well, you could have cut to the chase and *told* us you have no need for prosperity!
"But it does not work that way, the revolutionaries have seen the opening and the Communism and Fascism filled the vacuum. Merchants are not fit to be the guides for the society, left to their own devices they will wreck it."
Let's review your weak grasp of history one more time:
Communists have taken over in pre-industrial societies and in Russia. In Russia they engineered a coup d'etat against a government that in turn had just taken over from an autocratic monarch. Likewise in China, it was an autocratic regime the communists were fighting... You praise kings, yet it is Kings, Czars, and other despots who inevitably lead to other forms of despotism like Communism and Fascism... In the cases where democracy was murdered, like Hitler did in Germany, it was severe economic distress, brought about by Government mismanagement, NOT the merchant class and not free-market economic policies.
You are simply wrong. You desperately want to believe that we somehow 'need' some useless Government chains and anchors on our economy to avoid some wrose anchors and chains being applied. Hogwash, successful economies like Ireland and USA since Reagan era show that economic freedom begets prosperity and political success both.
You are wrong about your romantic notions of previous eons. In those ages my ancestors had their land stolen by other brutes, lived short lives and were forced to work horribly poor soil. Life was nasty, brutish and short until Capitalism arrived to create the modern world and free millions, nay billions, from drudgery and toil. Now I have time for internet debates.
All these things that capitalism did for you, and what did you do for capitalism? ... Some people can be so .... ungrateful.