Policing, hospitals, roads, rail, ports, legislation, water... most people can't afford these things. Without the government we would have to pay as much as the person who own's the dams likes. For one. Everything else, for another. The consumer watchdog, public education - I know Olivia supports the forming of a (de facto) oligarch, but it would mean a terrible life for 90+ percent of the population. Somalia is the most obvious (and extreme) example, but I can think of no populated area a people could exist well without a government.
The government serves the people - Americans want that country to become isolationist, supremacist, and civilly militant, so that is what is happening. I say this because it is often what the government is doing politically on which a person decides whether taxes are worthwhile. No matter how many hundreds or thousands speak out against things like the USA PATRIOT act (not 'the patriot act'), there are more that quietly support such things, as was shown in the ELECTION, and many more who do not have a care to know. Apathy - yes, another reason people need a controlling body.
The welfare state here is not so bad as Europe - I'm not sure about the US. Here, though, there are MANY Aboriginals that survive on it, and has been for thirty years been creating a spiral of poverty, as these people are entitled to it depending on their skin colour - they need not be looking for work. It's a bloody joke - it has come to the point where whole communities live off nothing else, children having no need to finish school, parents no motivation to teach their kids to function in society - petrol being made so they can't get high off it, threats of pay-cuts if parents don't wash their kids or keep some semblance of cleanliness... . Similar in the outer suburbs of Paris, where those famous riots began (I saw the famous ones, because riots in France are an everyday event). Those are the immigrants, though (mainly Arab) whereas here it is the original inhabitants. I fully support social security, so long as its not abused like this - people need to look for work or be dropped from it.